Posted by a Sherdog moderator:
Since we're a pretty small crew here in Japan, and since I'm often pressed for time to do interviews within the schedules of the interviewee and our three-person team, we don't always have time to break the ice with fighters/promoters such that we can speak amicably and openly with them (which is what we want, because that's when personalities really take shape in an article of 1400 or so words).
Needless to say, we represent a Western and thus outside news entity--we not only report and publish things differently, but we ask questions that people just aren't used to here. Guardedness (and sometimes boring answers) are par for the course for us here, so it's my job to try and cut through all that.
Thus, with only one hour to interview him, and the fact that he didn't really know us personally, it was suggested by Jordan that we gamble by OPENING the interview with the Sexyama stuff to break the ice (hopefully). That's something that he'd definitely not expect, but we're foreign, so why not, right?
Jordan and I didn't know how he'd react to it, or if he had a sense of humor at all, but we were both pretty hopeful it'd break the ice just enough to get him amped up to do an interview for the English-speaking fans he likely never knew he had. We figured that so much gold came from the thread that there had to be very little chance he'd be offended by it and kick us out.
Starting the interview, I *didn't* show him examples from the thread, just yet. I just told him about it and the nickname Sexyama. It was the first he'd heard of it, and it took him by surprise. A careful smile was forming on his face at that moment, so he hadn't really developed an opinion adequate enough to really comment on it just yet, but it gave me hope that the plan was working (if, slowly). He asked me my opinion first, what it was all about, and things like that. I basically told him that of the online, hardcore MMA fanbase, there were people who thought he was great and that he had a particularly sharp sense of style that set him apart from other fighters. That's when I showed him the example posts.
The moniker, along with the example posts I'd printed out earlier that day eventually won him over, and like Daniel says, he was constantly leafing through them during the interview, muttering "Sexyama" under his breath, trying out the name and apparently liking it. When we wrapped up details with his management after the interview, he was in the management office, sitting at one of the desks, STILL looking through the example posts I'd printed.
