Hello, kids.
I joined a little combat site called BloodyElbow.com back in 2013-ish. I was a rabid commenter, bolstered by the fact that I had nothing else going on in my life other than paying rent and trying to find inroads into acting.
Since my work schedule was from 4:00pm to midnight and I worked Fridays and Saturday nights, I was watching MMA events live and commenting then as obsessively as I tweet now. I basically never logged off.
A while later, a bunch of moderators were needed. I gave in and tossed my hat in the ring at the urging of a few other community members. From there, I did event previews on YouTube. These later were moved to podcast form, with the videos mostly being scrubbed from YouTube.
This led to writing, and actual paid work. And I was thrilled. I literally came up from the gutter and worked along some amazing people. There’s truly something spellbinding about being some rando in a comment section arguing with other randos only to move on and have people actually give a shit what you have to say. I did a ton of work for free, and I loved it. It was worth it. Every last bit.
It mattered. Most of my work eventually leaned towards either shitposting, weird conference happenings, and bad fights both inside and outside of combat sports. But I can proudly say I did a bit of everything. From results, to post-fight analysis, to actual and honest-to-God journalism that nobody else wanted or was able to touch. Those links are probably dead by now. It is what it is.
Then there’s the oddball circus-style fights that don’t matter. The ones that make no sense on paper or in practice but make us question what is legitimate competition and whether or not spectacle is preferable to it, or vice-versa. There’s the podcasting work, which has been so much more satisfying than just writing.
Combat sports is a fucking gutter. Make no mistake about it. Former manager and matchmaker said something years ago that has stuck with me since: no other sport has as low a barrier for entry than MMA. Not at the athlete level, the administrative level, the managerial level, none. Any Tom, Dick or Harry motherfucker can swing in and just do whatever.
The people that run things are so much more vile than you can imagine, and we all did our part to shine a light on that while doing the other bullshit to keep the lights on. People would often complain when we’d cover something inane or unimportant without understanding a few basic principles.
- Some people wouldn’t get their news anywhere else
- Some people came to BE specifically because of the comments and to partake in the community
- Pageviews + comments = keeping the operation going
It’s the last part where it gets messy. You don’t want to engage in clickbait if you can avoid it, but you have to drive traffic. Chasing the ghost of the Google algorithm for views that are essential for a crew to keep their jobs is not fun. Policing a community that has become more and more actively hostile as the social and political climate have gotten more and more poisonous.
Homophobes, transphobes, racists, misogynists, and especially the people with surreal fantasies of violence are just louder than ever. And none of them feel any particular sense of shame over it. Our community wasn’t always perfect, but it sure as fuck wasn’t this. Just like MMA itself wasn’t always this:
Or this:
This is what the sport is now. And that’s because that’s who and what we are now. MMA writer Luke Thomas said it best: people are lying when they say they don’t want politics in their sport. They just want their politics in sports. And here’s something to help his case.
And that sucks. Seeing the rot within and yelling out to the four winds about it gets tiresome. But we kept doing it. Over and over. And I’d like to think that it made something of a difference. But the most evil people in the world run everything, and they succeed despite how much sunlight you shine on the infection.
The rot is institutional and may forever remain that way, full stop. That’s a fact you’re all gonna have to make peace with. Same as I did a long, long time ago. A lot of the fan behavior is awful because a lot of the people in the sport are awful. And they’re also awful because it’s a reflection of society at large and what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.
But the work was worth it. I cannot be convinced otherwise. The work we did, the friendships we forged, the bonds we share, that shit is real. And it helped us keep perspective and to dispel the myths that major media won’t challenge and most fans wholeheartedly prefer to embrace. And that now, in a way, comes to an end.
BloodyElbow has been sold. It’s some media company of some sort, I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t give a fuck who they are. They want the name and the branding, and they can fucking keep it. None of the staff are to remain, which means the main motivating engine of the place is gone. At least from there. I won’t expect any kind of hard-hitting coverage, court documents, finance reports, legal analysis, petty backstabbing, or backroom dealings, none of that.
Maybe they’ll pivot and do the same pithy song and dance bullshit other sites do. Cozying up in hopes to getting more access, as per usual. Hell, maybe that’s the only way the Bloody Elbow name can get credentialed for UFC events. But we know the name of the game, it’s not really gonna be that. The name will be there, but spirit is not.
And good for them. I’m bitter about it because we should have never been in this position to begin with. But if these guys want the brand so bad just to gut it and make the same copy/paste twee bullshit that every other site does, good for them. It’s their money. It just shows a massive misunderstanding of what made the site and the community what it was, and why any of this shit was important.
That makes things all the more confusing. This won’t make readership gravitate towards you. If you buy a strip club, shut it down, fire all the dancers, and then set up a chess club, the regular patrons are gonna show up expecting to see some anatomy. You can’t really fool them like that, and the odds of them sticking around are extra slim. To them I have only one thing to say: good luck with that shit. Gonna be real funny if it turns out to be some AI content mill.
And I’m more than a bit sad, sure. Combat sports are a horrible environment, but they can be a joy to cover. See… the lows of the sport are abysmal. The highs? Good God, they’re extraordinary. Unmatched, even.
To see people rise from nothing, grind their body and will through combat and change their fortunes for a taste at literally anything resembling generational wealth? That’s amazing. The action itself? You can’t really get that sense of chaos anywhere else. And that’s why we followed, that’s how we got here.
I went from verbal tussles with unwashed bums to covering live events in person and travelling to do so. I got to meet coaches, trainers, fighters, managers and executives that have run the spectrum from lovable and righteous to some of the scummiest fucking people possible. I love this side of the game, and will always love combat sports regardless. It just sucks that it has to be due to factors that led to someone else moving on to masquerade as something we built.
I lost a friend earlier this year, and now we lost our home. And we lost it for good. Yet I’m oddly close to being at peace. It’s on to the next move, the next hustle, the next gig. It’s like your beloved home got razed down for a strip mall to be built. The address is the same, sure. But not the actual home. Not the memories, not the growth, not the soul of what made that house a home to begin with. It might as well have been swallowed by a sinkhole.
Well, that home is gone, so now I gotta build another one myself. Or with friends. And the house can be whatever the I want, the strange sensation of freedom from the boundaries of the old one. Hey, it’s not like there were that many boundaries for me there to begin with.
The anger and sorrow I carry is subsiding. It fades fast because I need to move fast. I can’t wallow in this shit, because the world is gonna move on and we should, too.
I’m gonna miss that home, and more importantly the people I shared it with. But I don’t have time to wallow in that sadness. I’ll mourn it when I’m fucking dead. Because now, Daddy’s got work to do and bills to pay. No funeral. There’s no body for me to dispose of. The new landlords seem to be doing a fine job of that themselves already.
In the meantime, welcome to my new home. Take your shoes off at the door. I’ll put some coffee on for us.
Mightiest Daddy 
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