Hot And Cold In The Eye Of The Storm
This week I went from balmy to freezing in 24 hours, but managed to set fire to the media world for one particular sport....
The Weather
Farewell, Fight Island.
Sometimes I wonder if people do it deliberately when they book flights, picking the one where I have to get up just before I’d normally go to bed to make it to the airport on time.
Fight Island in Abu Dhabi was no different - up at 0340 for a car to the airport a 0400 and a 0715 flight to Paris after a long weekend of work. I have nothing to complain about - travelling is tiring, but it’s not like you do much.
I found myself in the airport watching the Boston Celtics on my laptop as I had breakfast. The restaurant was, ironically, part of a Swedish-owned chain of Boston-themed sports bars called O’Learys.
But even though I was watching the Cs in a sports bar, I wasn’t quite done with Abu Dhabi and the UFC yet.
I had been writing an article since the previous afternoon, trying to make sense of what I saw, and what was coming out wasn’t exactly complimentary. I was struck by the lack of freedom - to think or to speak or to act - in Abu Dhabi.
The whole place is like a concept you have to buy into, accepting that lack of freedom while marvelling at the tremendous structures built in the desert and the miles and miles of smooth blacktop roads connecting it all. The twisting, curling Formula One track and the verdant green golf courses, the glittering hotels and malls.
Freedom is surely a small price to pay for such luxury, especially when that price is only paid by the little people tasked with keeping the whole place running.
The UFC is not dissimilar, a huge organisation that promotes undeniably compelling sport, but one which does not do much for those at the bottom of the food chain. A former champion once told me that his life changed the moment he won the title in his weight class and all of a sudden he was being ferried around first class in limos and planes. His life change right back again the moment he lost it.
I wrote a piece for the Irish Independent newspaper and filed it from 36,000 feet over Turkey. Being one of the few pieces critical of either the UFC or Abu Dhabi, and indeed of our journalistic response to it, it set the world of MMA journalism on fire.
Landing sleep-deprived in sub-zero Stockholm, a good 30 degrees colder than Abu Dhabi, I went straight home and five minutes after I came in the door I was recording The Bash, and MMA podcast hosted by Petesy Carroll and Niall McGrath.
The two lads are a good bit younger than me but they have become great friends over the years I have spent covering MMA. Niall calls me "Gandalf”; he reckons it’s because I’m nearly as old as the Lord Of the Rings character, but I like to think that I’m capable of some wise wizardry as I go along.
That resulted in me fanning the MMA flames even more. It’s a sport and a culture that doesn’t have a great history of journalism, and it’s a conversation that needs to be had. Luckily I am not dependent on any one sport to make a living, so I can sometimes say things that other people can’t or won’t or are afraid to.
There are no simple answers to complex problems, but a good start might be for us all to learn the difference between journalism and PR.
The Next Generation
There was very little time to recover. I went straight back into covering soccer matches and writing articles about every conceivable subject under the sun, and then there was a presentation I had promised to do for students for Rathmines College.
I have always loved talking about journalism, and encouraging people to learn what it is and how to do it and to produce work that makes them proud. I spoke to them about stress and time management and working in hostile environments for two hours and it was as exhilarating as it always is.
I have no patience and I reckon I’d be a useless teacher, but stepping in like that for a few hours is an absolute joy and I’m always happy to do it.
The Payoff
A few years ago I high-tailed it to Drammen, just outside Oslo, for an interview with a teenager who was lighting up the domestic league there despite being still in school. At the time he was being chased by some of the biggest clubs in Europe, and over about two weeks he went form being semi-well-known in Norway to the name on everyone’s lips.
The club made a last-minute decision not to make him available for the interview - however famous he was getting, he was still only a child, and I returned home empty-handed. Days later he signed for Real Madrid, and this week Martin Ødegaard arrived at Arsenal on loan.
Seems like years ago that I was running around that stadium, vainly hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but he’s still only 22 and it’s going to be fascinating to see what he can do in the Premier League.
I still think he has the capacity to be a top-class player.
The Future
The $64,000 question right now is - will there be an Olympics/Euros/insert your favourite sport here in 2021? Well, the answer is … I don’t know.
There might be, but it’s going to take an awful lot to stage huge international events like these, even at the tail-end of a pandemic, and the world has other priorities right now.
I hope there will be, purely from a selfish point of view. I was headed to Tokyo and to the Euros, and I’d happily go there if asked, but if it doesn’t happen then it’s for the best. And all the DIY I’ve been putting off since we moved into this house in 2011 may finally get done*.
*Who am I kidding? There’s no way it will.
The Podcast
It returned this week and ended up being about Abu Dhabi and the things I’d seen there. I’ve been moving away form talking about media and journalism lately in favour of doing straightforward interviews with interesting people, but sometimes I have to do it. Plus, it’s one of the things people seem to enjoy, so why not?
You can listen to it on Spotify here.
This week also marked the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. As you may know, I was there a couple of years ago to talk about how we can keep telling the story of what happened there, even though there will soon be no survivors left among us.
While there I made a podcast on the subject. I didn’t have the same visceral reaction that many have to visiting there, perhaps because it’s a subject I’ve been reading about for years, but that is not to say that it didn’t have a profound effect on me. It remains one of those things that I think of every single day.
The Call To Action
I’ve been writing some stuff for a company lately, and often the briefs contain a line about the “call to action” - marketing speak for what you want people to do when they’ve read it.
So here’s one for you - if you enjoy reading this newsletter, could you perhaps recommend it to a few other people? The more people that enjoy it every week, the easier it is for me to keep it going.
The Week Ahead
I might be filming a story to do with vaccines on Sunday. It’s been a while since I’ve done a story about Covid in Sweden so it will be interesting to see where it’s at. I saw the head of the Public Health Agency, Johan Carlsson, getting a kicking in the media because he went on a bus without a mask a few days ago.
At the time of writing there have been 11,591 deaths in Sweden due to the pandemic.
The Sign-Off
I noticed today that there was still a bit of light in the sky after four in the afternoon, which is always a welcome sign. I’m not wishing my life away, but winter will soon be over, and so will this pandemic (even if it takes another year).
Be good to yourself.