My Week in Words: June 24-30, 2023
A seven-day stretch that truly highlights why I love my job and am so passionate about what I do
Even with a couple things not coming together early in the week — one out of having a ton of paid work to focus in on, the other due to travel issues — this was still one of those weeks where a ton of content I was involved in putting together went out into the world.
I say “involved in putting together” because one segment of things — which you’ll see shortly — was a collaborative deal with the rest of the UFC digital team, and not a “Just Spencer” venture.
But this week and the stuff that came out underscored why I love my job and have such a passion for the things I do in a bunch of great ways.
The best of them, without question, was my guy Sean Denny jokingly responding to a tweet encouraging people to listen to One Question and 10 Things so they know what’s on tap this week, and then having to admit he’d genuinely missed the impending debut of Ivana Petrovic, the Ares FC flyweight champ who makes the walk to the Octagon for the first time today:
https://twitter.com/DennyRants/status/1674546075267395586?s=20
My mission is to speak about these athletes each and every week, giving them airtime that may not come elsewhere, so that stuff like this can happen.
This will never be about me in an “I want to be famous and popular” sense; it will always be about me doing the best work I can, spotlighting these competitors, telling their stories, getting people interested in the fighters and fights.
And I did that this week.
I did a bunch of that.
UFC Half-Year Awards
So I’m segmenting this out because I think it’s better to keep them all together than spaced out in the day-to-day deliver section of this piece because they all go together.
Because I’m a super-nerd, I have a spreadsheet that I update after each event that outlines the categories we vote on here, so that when the call for awards submissions goes out, I have all the prep work done.
If you want to know my ballots specifically — we all submitted a Top 5 for each category — I’ll tell you, but here’s how voting turned out at the midway point of 2023:
Fighters (Updated)
UFC Jacksonville Recaps: I know I say it pretty frequently — and I know it’s something Sean Podcast (aka Sean Sheehan) advocates for when folks ask him about getting into the business, but there is something challenging and fulfilling about recapping every single fight, every single week.
And I recapped the entire first half of the 2023 slate.
UFC Jacksonville: About Saturday’s Action: in addition to detailing what happened in each fight, I shared my initial reactions and impressions here as well, which has a way of creating a little pull-tab in my brain for just about every fight and the ramifications it carried.
I know that sounds implausible to some or like a colossal waste of brain space, but it’s so vital to me when it comes to putting together stuff like Fight-By-Fight that I honestly wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The Next Day Takeaways, Episode 35: I think the newer format is better and I want keep tightening things up when it comes to focusing in on a couple core topics from the previous day’s event, but all-in-all, I still love this concept of taking a beat, having a think, and then going a little deeper than I did on fight night the next day.
TUF 31, Episode 5 Recap: Conor McGregor got meme’ed up a little this week for his movements and singing walking Carlos Vera to the cage, and he once again moaned about the fights not going three rounds, which continues to delight Michael Chandler.
We’re getting the blow up this week following the bout between Lee Hammond and Kurt Holobaugh, which I can only assume ends with Hammond losing, which prompts Conor to lose his shit a little, and I’m all the way here for it.
I genuinely want to see Team Chandler go 8-0 and have all their guys fighting one another in the semis and finals.
UFC Vegas 76 Fight-By-Fight Preview: the funny thing to me about the “I don’t know these fighters; UFC needs to do a better job telling us who they are” set is that the answers they seek are quite literally up on the UFC website each and every week.
Whether it’s this series, the features that get done with just about every fighter on the card, or other materials that get put out, everything you could possibly want to know about the men and women stepping into the Octagon on Saturday, every Saturday, is right there — you just have to go and read it.
And few do, for various reasons, which is why I will never accept their position.
UFC Vegas 76 Fighters on the Rise: even if you don’t want to familiarize yourself with every fighter on the slate each week, this is another easy way to get up to speed on three competitors that have either [a] been having some success in the Octagon, [b] are early in their UFC careers and show promise, or [c] are coming back from a long hiatus and are really good.
One day I might go through the full archives for FOTR and list out everyone that was profiled in this space because we were shouting out a ton of future champs and standout talents well in advance.
Max Griffin Feature: Griffin is one of those fighters I’ve been fortunate to interview a number of times, and therefore we have a great rapport and relationship, which means there is no sugar-coating things. I ask questions, he gives me honest answers, and it makes for a great feature.
He’s got a tough fight ahead of him today against Michael Morales, and I’m eager to see if things play out the way he forecasted.
Damir Ismagulov Feature: I think Ismagulov is one of those fighters where people don’t really know just how good he is because he’s had some longer layoffs, he’s not a big name, and there isn’t any real media buzz about him.
But he’s 24-2 overall and fixing to halt Grant Dawson’s rise up the lightweight ranks in the co-main event, and I can’t wait to see how that fight shakes out.
Abus Magomedov Feature: between bonding over not being big “birthday party” guys and sharing a little chuckle when we talked about folks not believing he’s earned this opportunity, I really enjoyed my conversation with Abus Magomedov this week, and hope Saturday’s main event shows that he very much merits being in these kinds of positions.
No Time to Waste Column: my offering from OSDB Sports this week looked at not only Magomedov and the sound logic behind hustling him into a main event matchup this weekend, but also the double standard that you see from fans and media when it comes to this kind of stuff, and a few others that should get a chance to prove themselves further in the very near future.
It will never make sense to me why folks that claim they want to see entertaining fights, competitive fights, meaningful fights also want to see 30-fight veterans like Magomedov have to go through the middle of the pack at middleweight before getting a chance to face someone like Sean Strickland, who is someone they largely malign.
Enjoy the fights. Enjoy the weekend.
You all mean the world to me.
ESK