- admittedly had no interest in MMA as a sport, but saw it as an opportunity to get into reporting.
Sorry, I have broken down your post to answer only this sentence.
Yeah right. You created your Sherdog account 6 years ago. 6 years before that, Ariel Helwani created JarryPark.com, a MMA site dedicate to interviews with fighters. That's 12 years ago, when there was NO MONEY at all in MMA reporting. He did it on his own, with little help and no investment that we are aware of.
Of course, you can launch yourself in a "Jew Conspiracy Theory" to explain it but you can't deny the facts: Ariel has been an active member of the Internet MMA world since the early days, when we didn't even know Sherdog existed (I didn't back in 2004). And I'm not talking about creating a forum account and calling other users "tool" for a living: I'm talking creating his own website, doing the legwork to get interviews with popular fighters and posting them for free, for all to enjoy ASAP.
He was basically establishing himself as "The Man", half a decade before you created you beloved Sherdog account. That was Ariel's goal, to be "The Man". 12 years later, he has never NOT won Journalist of the Year and he's The Man, no quotation marks required. You can blame him and say "what an opportunist, he knew back in 2004 that UFC would be sold for 4B and become an established brand all over the World". If that's being an opportunist, I want to be one too!
Encyclopedic MMA knowledge doesn't make you an expert if you just throw it around to make you feel superior and call everyone who disagrees a "tool". I don't say that's what YOU'RE doing but many, many people who criticize Ariel and call him a "tool" only do that on the Internet: throw insults, end arguments feeling as they won and discarding every opinion that goes against their own.
I don't even know why I bother to write a whole essay on this: I know Shedoggers will call me a shill, a poser, a fanboy, a Ariel-lover or a "tool", that's the motto. But at least I can write a long text without throwing insults around, something maturity teaches you at some point in life.
Most Sherdoggers never reach that point. Ariel has been mature for more than a decade on the Internet. His close colleagues are not. Let's take Luke Thomas for example: encyclopedic MMA knowledge, trains BJJ regularly, knows the intricacies of striking and can discuss technique for hours. But he's not mature: he engages in insult throwing games with haters, "burns" people who disagrees with him on the Internet and uses insult every day and some. I tried listening to him but his lack of professionalism and maturity was too much for me.
As for you Rimbrd, congrats: your long text was asinine but at least, there were no free insults and name-calling in there. There is hope for you yet and I have learned to respect that, hence the long post.
Sorry.
