My Week in Words: May 13-May 19, 2023
A less busy week in terms of content, but a banner week on social media
So this was one of those odd weeks were because of a fight cancellation — Pennington vs. Aldana, which was originally slated to headline this weekend — I ended up only delivering one interview feature to the UFC website, which means my overall output for the week was down a tick.
On the flip side, social media engagement was all the way up, as I really started to make a serious effort this week to get into posting clips of my videos on Instagram, and one of those clips took off.
Early in the week, I sat down with Laura Sanko for the Kimura debut of A Conversation With, a long-form discussion show I kicked off over on Severe and will continue here. The first clip from that sit-down has generated of 20,000 views and counting, with a second clip about Michael Johnson’s strength of schedule doing another 2,000.
Once again, I was a late adopter of this stuff, but I’m seeing the value and enjoying the process, and appreciate everyone that has been checking out the content.
Here’s what I delivered this past week.
UFC Charlotte Recaps: while the event dragged at times, it wrapped with a dominant performance from Jailton Almeida and kicked off at 9:00am out here, so all in all, it was a lovely way to spend a Saturday.
About Saturday’s Action: where the UFC recaps are a “just the facts, ma’am” situation, ASA is a place to spin the results forward and dissect what happened in the fights and during the broadcast, and how it will all impact things going forward. There is something about immediately looking ahead that I find engaging and helps me stay locked in on each and every fight.
The Next Day Takeaways, Episode 30: if ASA is about immediacy, TNDT have always been about what comes to mind after a good sleep and some time to reflect; it’s a chance to build on those initial thoughts with actual matchup suggestions, refined analysis, and a calmer head for those instances where emotions might get the best of me if I were to react right away.
A Conversation With Laura Sanko: I always loved the idea of sitting down with a person for 30 minutes or more to just roam through a few different subjects, with the intention of allow the audience to learn a little more about the person I’m speaking with. This series has been my way of doing that, and it was great to finally sit down with Sanko and have this chat.
It means the world to me that I can reach out to these people and they’re willing to share not only their time, but their lives, their stories with me. This is so much bigger than grabbing an interview and some quotes for a story — it’s sitting down with people I admire, who inspire me, who push me, and getting into subjects and conversations that don’t always take place in the light of day.
Being able to do that genuinely has an incalculable impact on me, and I hope you like every instalment of this series as much as I know I will.
UFC Vegas 73 Fight-By-Fight Preview: I know I said it in a previous week, but writing FBF really does serve as a primer for me for all of my own content that I create during fight week. It puts the upcoming matchups in my head, gets me thinking about those pairings, how they may play out, and makes everything I do during the week itself easier as a result.
UFC Vegas 73 Fighters on the Rise: I don’t often try to build themes into FOTR, but this week felt like an opportunity to spotlight three females competing this weekend as both initially and now, there are ranked females headlining the show. Of the three fighters mentioned, Natalia Silva is the real standout — I think she can be a Top 10 talent before the year is out, and a contender in the not too distant future.
Joaquin Buckley Feature Interview: I smiled as soon as I got this assignment because having spoken with Buckley in the past, I knew I was going to get plenty to work with when we connected for this one. Buckley is one of those rare competitors that has zero filter and doesn’t really couch things, even when it comes to himself, and it made writing about him, his current situation, and his fight this weekend easy work.
Dana White’s Contender Series Column: used my Friday space at OSDB Sports to discuss the Contender Series, which, to me, is unfairly maligned. The show has graduated a ton of quality talent to the UFC roster, and it felt like a good time to remind folks of that fact.