This Week in MMA

This Week in MMA - Episode 204: Daniel Kelly, UFC Middleweight

Released31 March 2016

This week we talk about Jon Jones in more strife, the rematches set for UFC 200, Cyborg finally set to enter the Octagon, and best of all we have a chat to the Aussiest Aussie in the UFC at the moment, middleweight Dan Kelly!

Twitter: @Dankellyjudo

This week we spend a while looking back at the amazing results witnessed at UFC 196, Dave takes us through his weekend on the local circuit, and much more!

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It's our 200th episode and this week we welcome UFC fighter Brad "One Punch" Pickett to talk about his career and his great win over Cisco Rivera. We also talk to Dave Garnham, promoter of Carnage in the Cage, and cash in our wolf tickets for UFC 196! Twitter: @TWiMMAdotcom Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisWeekInMMA

Our guests this week: Brad Pickett: @one_punch

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Here’s the official link to watch #CITC6 live from Mackay. http://carnageinthecage.cleeng.com/carnage-in-the-cage-6/E480414272_AU 

The fight card:

Fight Card (A-Class):

Kieran Joblin vs Jai Bradney – Carnage in the Cage lightweight title

Anthony Johns vs Chris Indich – Carnage in the Cage middleweight title

Kimo Smith vs Daniel Hill

Aden Hawke vs Kairin Moses

Keohu Smith vs Jacob Holyman

Beau Luxford vs Diego Pereira

Brandt Coghill vs William Namoa

Sean Kelly vs Mitch Godfrey

Fight Card (B-Class):

Ben Edmonstone vs Huynh Nguyen

Joel McFarlane vs Nick Kefu

Matt Daniels vs Matt Scappa

Arron Mpumba vs Peter Bird

Ella Ware vs Amy Prewett

Ben Sorrenson vs Adrian Hindley

Middleeasy.com published a good article about the practice of buying fake twitter followers for accounts tied to MMA fighters and personalities. The article was prompted by an outburst by British UFC fighter Luke Barnatt on the MMA Hour where he accused Irishman Conor McGregor of buying Twitter followers.

As the theory goes, the more followers a fighter has, the more popular they are perceived to be, and that in turn leads to increased sponsorship revenue. The transcription of the rant (courtesy of Bleacher Report) is as follows:

"Paradigm is the management company that I believe that Conor McGregor is under, they have this interesting concept that they believe that your following is depicted by how many people you have on Twitter, so your whole MMA following, if you've got followers on Twitter, then obviously you’re a big deal, and they find that easier to go out and get sponsorships and make you look important.

So they employ this thing called Tweetbot. You pay a certain amount of money, and you get these fake followers. So they’re built and they’re made by a computer, and they follow certain people. If you go through the followers, the Paradigm guys, not all of them but some of them, you’ll find these rival accounts that make up a lot of the percentage for people who is following. Yeah it makes them look like they’re a big deal, it makes them look like they’ve got lots of fans, and it makes them look important.

I’m not jealous of Conor, he’s a cool guy. I've met him a few times. But I just think if you want to be fake and you pretend like you’re a big deal by getting all of these followers then calling out people like Diego Sanchez is weak, and things like that start to irritate me. If you’re going to call somebody out, for one you call somebody out in your own weight division, and number two, you call somebody out who is coming off of a win. You don’t call somebody out who’s a loser. What’s the point in that? It don’t make much sense in my eyes."

There’s falsehood in there that’s worth mentioning. Tweetbot has nothing to do with buying followers, it’s simply an iPhone and Mac app that acts as a substitute for the official Twitter client. In fact, it’s probably the best one available, and it’s the one I use.

Barnatt then goes on to accuse Paradigm Sports Management (McGregor’s management company) of apparently pioneering the practise of buying followers and purchasing these fake followers on behalf of their clients (or at least instructing them in how do so for themselves). 

After doing some research, I believe Paradigm SM is innocent of such practices. Using twitteraudit.com I audited the accounts of their most popular fighters including current/former UFC fighters and more notable fighters from other promotions such as Bellator.

Below are screenshots of the results. The pie chart represents the “real” followers in light blue, and the “fake” ones in dark blue. Actual figures are listed to the right. The website then makes a determination based on those figures and gives a thumbs-up for accounts with a higher percentage of real followers, and a thumbs-down for accounts that have more suspect followers.

As the screenshots show, the fighters listed are all in the “thumbs up” zone and have more real followers than fake ones. These figures appear to clear Paradigm SM of any systematic wrongdoing.

As I looked at Paradigm SM’s list of clients one name stood out - Soa “The Hulk” Palelei  His follower count dwarfed that of most fighters in the UFC - before he'd even set foot in the octagon for his second run in the UFC in August this year - and rumours of buying followers have been circulating long before Luke Barnatt’s rant.

A Twitter Audit proved the rumours to be correct, with Palelei’s account (@soathehulk) returning the worst score of any fighter I tested while researching this article - 20% real followers on an account with over 150,000 followers:

Why did he do it? Who made the decision to do it - was it Soa, or someone on his team? What monetary benefits has he received from having such an artificially-inflated follower count? I’m not sure anyone can answer that other than Soa.

Using Wildfire I tracked Soa’s follower activity over the last six months, and there’s some wild variance in the figures. On April 22nd 2013 his follower count was 68,384 before it jumped massively to 244,355 by June 16. That date represents the peak number of followers he had during that period before the numbers fell off a cliff, dropping over 80,000 to 161,838 by June 18 - that’s right, the drop was over a period of only two days. 

It is fair to assume that his standard mix of sponsor plugs, retweets of support and generic inspirational quotes didn’t cause a mass unfollow to the tune of almost 30% of his followers. What is far more likely is that through a combination of user reports and Twitter’s own internal anti-bot procedures the bot accounts were suspended or deleted from Twitter.

In the interest of transparency I’m certainly prepared to hold my own account up for scrutiny. Below you will see screenshots of the audit on This Week in MMA's account (@TWiMMAdotcom).

I’d love to see a comment on this subject from Soa or his PR team, but to date anyone who asks about fake followers seems to find themselves blocked.  

Why care about fake followers? The UFC, Soa’s current employer, has rewarded fighters in the past for gaining the most followers over a certain period of time (among other things). I’ve reached out to the UFC for comment on their Twitter award criteria and whether they apply scrutiny to accounts before rewarding fighters and will update this article when they respond.

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This week we welcome Soa "The Hulk" Palelei to the show to talk about his recent signing to the UFC. We also hit some news from the last week, talk about transsexuals in MMA and wrap up UFC on Fuel TV 8!

TIPPING: Tipping has been TOTALLY reset for 2013. So (if you haven't already) please go back in there and join the "TWIMMA" public pool HERE! Don't forget to enter your tips!

This week we have a MASSIVE show! We welcome "The Count" Michael Bisping to the show to talk UFC 159, Alan Belcher, and Hector Lombard. Good friend of the show "The Aussie Gangster" Ben Alloway joins us to talk about life after TUF and his upcoming bout in Sweden, and finally UFC exec Tom Wright joins us to talk about the cage bans in WA and VIC, future events in Australia, and the next season of TUF.

TIPPING: Tipping has been TOTALLY reset for 2013. So (if you haven't already) please go back in there and join the "TWIMMA" public pool HERE! Don't forget to enter your tips!

This Week in MMA - Episode 64 This week we discuss the first ever female UFC main event at UFC 157, cover the news of the week, and recap a great weekend of local action at Brace and Fury MMA! We're also joined by Fury promoter Ryan Dunstan, and Suasday Chau, one of the big winners from Fury 5!

TIPPING: Tipping has been TOTALLY reset for 2013. So (if you haven't already) please go back in there and join the "TWIMMA" public pool HERE! Don't forget to enter your tips!