Hey guys Does anyone of you know how the post-fight conferences are held or organized? Are they open events, where anybody just can drop in at what time they want? I.e. Ariel Helwani didn't show up on time and asked a question that allready had been asked, and many of the fighters often show up while the conference is on i.e. Cain on the UFC 155 postfight conference. All this seems unprofessional to me, but surely it must have an explanation - hopefully one of you can enlighten me??
I think Helwani was doing some post fight interviews for FX Post fights are usually media only if I remember properly
Yeah, Ariel was doing interviews with FX. As for Cain, he was probably getting checked by the doctors and whatnot, as he'd just fought. Nothing unprofessional about it -- this type of thing is quite common.
Great, thanks for your replies. How long time after the fights end do they start the postfight conference?
Everybody has to travel there. It's not unprofessional, it just sort of is what it is. Everybody has lives, and it's not like Ariel is going to get fired or anything (I mean, he doesn't work for the UFC, and I doubt one of the foremost MMA journalists is going to get blackballed for being late to a presser.) That's one of the perks of working freelance, haha. (I'm a writer myself, though not a journalist, and this would be my best guess in terms of how it works for the media). As for fighters, you know, I'm sure Cain was busy having just gone through 25 minutes of a grueling fight, so he had medical obligations. Again, I doubt Dana is going to strip him of the belt and fire him because he wasn't there at the beginning (in fact, I doubt Dana even cares). Also, there's a ton that goes on after the fight than just the post-event press conference. It's not really unprofessional, in other words. People do what people do, you know?
As for the fighters in the main-event showing a bit later, not only one could guess the reason behind it but it doesn't bother me at all. Might be the opposite. Sometimes I feel bad for all those who barely get one question. So I find myself thinking if it would make sense if they started the post-fight conference earlier and only with the guys lower on the card. So the journalist, since they are there anyway, would be somehow forced to give them 2 minutes of attention. And then, progressively, make the other fighters come in. BTW that way they'd get one more entrance with one more cheering. I don't know if it is feasible, and I can see some flaws also in the above solution, but I couldn't help myself from giving it some thoughts.