MMATorch is always looking for qualified volunteer writers looking to get an opportunity to get published and contribute to an established MMA journalism brand. From time to time we publish a request to hear from passionate MMA followers with writing skills and time to commit to contributing on a regular basis.
Email me at kellerwade@gmail.com and let me know a little about your background knowledge of MMA and areas of interest in terms of writing (and potentially contributing to podcasts).
Writing Slots…
-Live event coverage of UFC, Bellator, and other live events following our match results format found in editor-in-chief Jamie Penick’s UFC PPV coverage.
-Weekly editorials on hot topics in the world of MMA.
-Fight-by-fight previews and predictions on complete MMA events, providing a backstories and analysis of the fights.
-Post-Fight Coverage: Do you watch the post-fight press conferences and have interest in providing great coverage of post-fight quotes? Do you watch post-game shows on ESPN after UFC PPVs and post-fight shows on Fox Sports 1 and can write reports on what Dana White, fighters, and other analysts had to say about that night’s fights? Let us know.
-Daily Top Five Lists. You’ve seen what Jamie Penick does, including Top Five Quotes, Top Stories of the Week, Top Fights to Make, etc. Would you like to contribute a new voice and new ideas for this MMATorch-exclusive daily feature.
-Specialist Columns. Over the years, we’ve had line-ups of writers who would contribute once a week a column with a specific theme that draws from the writer’s area of expertise or interest. This can include off-beat and creative topics and themes.
-News Coverage: If you are interested in adding to your resume with published news stories, including helping with some breaking or topical news stories, let us know. Please have a knowledge of journalistic news writing formatting for this. Be able to not just cover the basics of breaking news, but also provide our signature “analysis” paragraph at the end of the story to provide perspective and a point of view to the reader.
-Transcribing Newsworthy Quotes from Podcast Interviews. If you listen to a lot of MMA podcasts and sports podcasts featuring MMA fighters and promoters and would like to transcribe key quotes and paraphrase other aspects of the interviews in a format that would help spread the word to our readers who don’t have the time to listen to many podcasts, let us know.
-Reader Polls. Do you like MMA polls? Do you have ideas on a regular basis for a daily poll that you think would interest our readers to vote on? Let us know and you can help us with poll ideas, creating polls, and even tracking and analyzing the results.
-Ask MMATorch. Do you have a combination of great knowledge of the sport of MMA and points of view on a variety of topics current and/or past, and would be willing to receive questions from MMATorch readers and regularly answer several questions in articles to be published at least once a week on the site? You can help us revive this dormant yet once popular feature on our site.
-MMATorch Roundtable Editor. Do you enjoy coming up with Roundtable Topics and editing and formatting the contributions of our staff on those topics? We’d love to publish more Roundtable features and you could help come up with ideas and put them together.
-Media Reviews. Do you like to read MMA biographies or non-fiction books and would be interested in providing detailed overviews and reviews? Do you like to review the latest MMA video games and provide updates on a regular basis on tips and tricks? Would you like to review long-form feature articles written for other publications or track, compare, and analyze how various MMA and sports news outlets cover the sport of MMA? Let us know.
-MMATorch Trivia. Would you like to revive this once popular feature by coming up with a daily clever challenging trivia question to test the knowledge of our readers, posting the question each day and then providing the answer the next day along with a new Trivia question? Trivia questions could be as simple as asking readers which of two or three listed UFC fighters has more knockout victories or providing some personal known details on the background of a popular fighter and then providing several potential fighters you are writing about, giving readers a chance to test their knowledge of fighter backgrounds.
-MMA Events Schedule. Would you like to help us create an Upcoming Live Events Schedule with simple-to-learn software that would let you create a slick informative clear look ahead at upcoming events with all of the key info on date, location, top fights, and how to watch?
-MMATorch Flashbacks. Are you interested in writing regularly scheduled flashbacks of big events and news stories in history, providing an informative look back at the impact of a big story on an anniversary date (such as “Five Years Ago This Week”) or to provide background on a retiring fighter or upcoming big fight drawing from big stories in their past? You could also simply curate our past articles dating back nearly 25 years and posting relevant and historically significant stories on their anniversary dates.
-MMATorch Rankings. If you join our team, and you are knowledgable of all weight divisions, you can participate in our monthly rankings compiled by our staff.
Do you have any other ideas? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you.
Again, you can email me if you are interested. You don’t need to have writing experience, but if you do, please provide links or samples. If you don’t, please be sure you are a strong writer and it shows in your email explaining what you are interested in contributing. Be specific about which categories above most interest you, the time you’d have to contribute, and a commitment to follow through with a set schedule of contributions if we brought you aboard.
I look forward to hearing from many of you. I will do my best to get back to you on a timely basis in the next handful of days.
kellerwade@gmail.com
Wade Keller, supervising editor/founder
MMATorch
(Wade Keller covered the earliest UFC events for the Torch Newsletter in the 1990s and even other MMA types of events that predated the launch of UFC in Japan. He has conducted many MMA-related Q&A interviews dating back to original UFC matchmaker Art Davie in the mid-1990s, Dana White, and UFC play-by-play announcer Mike Goldberg. He attended the first-ever live event in Las Vegas, Nev. in 2001 as a credentialed media member at a time when there weren’t many established full-time MMA journalists on the beat. He was a go-to source in the late 1990s for various mainstream newspaper reporters looking for objective information about the sport when UFC was facing bans in various states over belief that the sport was too violent to be regulated and approved. (Link to a 1996 article he wrote about UFC’s struggles to avoid being banned.) Last year he was inducted into the Dan Gable National Wrestling Hall of Fame Class of 2015 “Jim Melby Awards for Excellence in Writing” in the same class as UFC veteran and Olympic Silver Medalist Matt Lindland and NCAA wrestling champion, AAU champion, and 1980 Olympian Greg Wojciechowski. He is a regular guest on the “Stone Cold” Steve Austin Show at PodcastOne and talks MMA every Wednesday with renowned credentialed MMA reporter Todd Martin on “The Fix with Todd Martin” weekly Torch VIP podcast. Keller has over a dozen years of experience training in karate with Mid-America and National Karate and has dabbled in jui jitsu and judo at the North Star Martial Arts Academy in Bloomington, Minn.)
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