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Jon Anik Says Working a Three Man Both at UFC 208 Was Challenging
– During his appearance on The MMA Hour Jon Anik spoke about the difficulties of working a three man both at UFC 208 (he worked with Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier)…
“It was a challenging broadcast. There were a lot of wrinkles that went into it. At least from a pay-per-view standpoint, there was a lot of sponsorship inventory, so I felt like every time I wanted to say something about fighting, you know, our stage manager would hand me a card of Halo Wars 2. I hope they paid the UFC a lot of money this weekend because I felt every word out of my mouth was Halo Wars 2, but it’s an interesting navigation with the three-man booth, particularly for mixed martial arts, a sport in which the line between play-by-play guy and analyst is blurred unlike in other sports. There is a lot of real estate there, but it’s not uncommon in MMA to hear an analyst call out a left hand or a combination, so that line is blurred in MMA. I did have a sensitivity to Joe and Daniel, and I wanted to make sure, as any good play-by-play would want to do, that those two guys would shine,” Anik explained. “I said when I was going in [to UFC 208], that I was going to air on the side of not saying enough. If there was going to be any criticisms of me after this pay-per-view, it was going to be that I didn’t say enough. And I feel like in the Fight Pass prelims, I started to find my way a little bit and work my way in. But at the end of the day, dude, it’s just not about me, you know?”