Yesterday proved to be a huge day for Irish MMA with the announcement that two of our most talented fighters are due to fight at UFC events in April.
‘Stormin’ into San Jose
We’ve been lucky at JOE that we’ve covered ‘Stormin’ Norman Parke’s rise from local ‘king of the hill’ to international superstar by winning The Ultimate Fighter last December.
Hailing from Bushmills, Co. Antrim and training at Next Generation NI under Rodney Moore, Norman heads for San Jose, California to fight on the UFC on Fox: Henderson vs. Melendez (or UFC on Fox 7) event to be held on April 20, 2013. The event will be part of a landmark deal which sees Fox Sports broadcast UFC/MMA in the US mainstream media.
Norman takes his 17-2 record into the UFC’s stacked lightweight division to take on Jon Tuck. Tuck looked very impressive in his UFC debut last November beating Zhang Tiequan in the UFC’s first foray into China.
While bouts are still being announced it’s not certain where Norman will feature in the order. He will be sharing the card with stellar names like Benson Henderson who defends the lightweight title against Gilbert Melendez, Frank Mir who welcomes Strikeforce stand-out Daniel Cormier and MMA bad boys Nate Diaz and Dan Hardy.
Double gold pays dividends for McGregor
Incredibly, on the same day that news broke of Norman’s fight it was also announced that ‘Notorious’ Conor McGregor (12-2) will also join SBGi team-mate Gunni Nelson in the ranks of the UFC.
Conor will make his debut appearance at UFC on Fuel TV 9: Gustafsson vs. Mousasi (UFC Sweden 2) against gritty featherweight Marcus Brimmage. Brimmage is a veteran of the TUF 14 series and has stopped rising stars Jimy Hettes and Maximo Blanco in his 2 UFC fights to date.
Training under John Kavanagh, Conor will step join the UFC’s featherweight roster but it’s not a given he’ll stay at this weight. Conor is Cage Warriors double world champion at featherweight and lightweight and last time we spoke he indicated he may prefer to stay up at lightweight.
Support your fighters
If you truly want to support Irish MMA, we should do now support Parke and McGregor as best we can, starting with following them on social media. You can find Parke on Twitter @norman_parke or you can like his Facebook page.
McGregor can be found on Twitter under @TheNotoriousMMA or you can check him out on Facebook too. It might not seem like much but this type of support can make a difference to a sponsor.
Shout –out to Cathal Pendred (@PendredMMA) for letting us know what a difference social media can make for fighters in getting sponsorhip.
You can also check out Fergus on Twitter under @GusRyan100
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ podcast – listen to the latest episode now!
