Charles McCarthy: Former UFC Contender Working to Improve MMA Journalism

Charles McCarthy, a man that contested 15 professional bouts before retiring from mixed martial arts competition a few years ago, has never been one to back down from a fight.

Since walking away from professional competition in 2008, McCarthy, who has shared the Octagon with David Loiseau and Michael Bisping, has focused much of his energy on a new challenge—the world of mixed martial arts journalism.

With mixed martial arts journalism, an industry that is run largely amateur sports-writers and big-league shills, McCarthy’s newest challenge is going to be, well, challenging.

McCarthy, who launched www.CageJunkies.com a few months ago, is both well-aware of the industry’s unfavourable conception and confident that the state of mixed martial arts journalism will only improve over time.

“I think journalism in the sport has that reputation because it’s new—it’s a new industry,” McCarthy said over the telephone from his home in Florida. “Any time you have a new industry—especially in the media—people tend to do it for free before the industry builds up to the point where they’re able to make a living. Whenever you have people doing work for free, they probably won’t have the same sense of urgency for quality that they would if their lifestyles depended on it. In MMA journalism, you have a lot of guys that are new to journalism—they’re not seasoned journalists—so you’re not seeing the same quality and consistency that you’ll see in other areas. I think it’s a temporary problem, though. Just like we’ve seen the sport and the fighters develop over the years, I think MMA journalism will evolve, as well.”

With the advent of Cage Junkies, McCarthy is hoping to speed up the industry’s evolution process.

“At Cage Junkies, we’re trying to build a viable business-model where writers can get paid so it increases the urgency for quality. At the same time, we’ve only brought on people that are very passionate about the sport. I’m the CEO of the website and I’ve fought in the UFC, we’ve got Heath Herring, who runs one of our radio programs. Instead of trying to start this from scratch, we’re trying to bring in people that are already established in the industry that have a unique perspective.”

“There’s really not a lot of that in MMA. In other sports, athletes transition really well from their playing-days to the media, because they’ve been through the sport and have a perspective that fans don’t have access to. That’s what we’re trying to do with Cage Junkies. A lot of great fighters have retired and are looking for new opportunities—those are the guys that we want. We want the guys that have been in there and know what the sport is and what to contribute based on their vantage point.”

In the future, McCarthy, who also owns Boynton MMA in Boynton Beach, Florida, has some lofty aspirations for his site.

“We’re working on putting together a TV program package that we can sell to a network. We’d like to run an insider’s TV show—like what we’re doing with Cage Junkies. We’re looking to build the Cage Junkies radio network,” McCarthy said. “There are a lot of talented radio hosts in MMA out there, but we want them all in one location so these guys can find success by working with one audience. There are a lot of talented journalists on the radio, but they’re spread out through dozens of different websites. We want to bring everyone together and say, ‘Well, if you’re into MMA talk radio, then you can come to Cage Junkies and listen to any number of the best MMA shows.’”

“I want to be the premier location for UFC and MMA news,” McCarthy said.