The King of cringe Henry Cejudo took to the streets of Twitter last night to call out Jose Aldo, in what can only be described as one of the worst call-outs in recent cage-fighting history. See below.
Ya hate to see it as fighters are now being forced to film these horrific cringey videos just because they know that us MMA media folk will pump it out to earn Ad Revenue. Hell I’m doing it right now. (Click those Ads damn it!). But Cejudo is not the first to do this, and certainly won’t be the last as Colby Covington too created a plethora of cringey WWE style videos during the build up to UFC 245.
Pumping these videos out is a win-win for the fighters, as the hatred they’ll get will make people more emotionally invested and the hatred and cringe generated online will force media to write about it, which will in turn create more attention and drama on the inter-web, which means more media will cover the videos.
Meanwhile Henry Cejudo gets to see his fame and follower count rise up just for filming a trash video. It’s sad to see fighters and media produce this type of low-effort content, but it’s all that can be done right now as main-stream interest in MMA stays relatively low. The media are given an article quota, and they’ll produce whatever brings in traffic in this boring sport. It’s not like they can just take investigate deep dives or go off writing whatever they want, they financially can’t do it, so we’re left with these stupid articles about social media drama.
But for now, we have to just get used to these stupid Twitter videos and the ensuing cringe. The UFC kinda sucks at promoting athletes right now too, TUF is all but dead and the contender series is just glorified UFC C-roll fight footage. What else is there bar embedded and post-fight interviews? The only real way to get people emotionally invested and interested is to be a dumbass online. And that’s why I’m worried about the future of MMA promotion.
stipetapped.com 