Does Ariel Helwani even train UFC bro? (2024)

I always assumed Ariel Helwani trained, at least grappled. But does anyone know anything about his martial arts credentials? Is he a blue belt in the Gracie online training program, or a tiger belt in Ameridote? Does anyone know?

Rener Gracie seemed to just assume Ariel never trained a day in his life, which struck me as odd.

EDIT: To the trolls out there, I'm not accusing Ariel of doing a bad job, so you don't need to defend his honour on Sherdog and say that he's a good journalist despite any lack of training. I get it. I just want to know what his credentials are, in the same way I want to know if a political commentator working for a newspaper has a relevant education. Doesn't mean that I think only people with a Ph.D. in political science should be talking about politics)

LOL. ariel said it hurts on the nose. HAHAHAHA i've never felt my nose hurt from a choke wtf. his nose is hugeeeee.

and based on the things he was saying, i dont think he's trained bjj. perhaps some other aspect, but from the sounds of it he's not accustomed to being put in a choke.

Lethal_Striker said:

He seems to be in fairly decent shape so he might go to the gym to work out but that doesn't mean he trains BJJ or any martial arts. He could just be going to the gym and doing cardio type workouts or stuff like that.

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Sorry for the generalization, but only in the US is being skinny considered "decent shape".

I'm fairly sure he addressed this in one of the last two MMA hours. The answer was something along the lines of him wanting to do some BJJ/MMA training - but between MMA reporting and his family life he can't muster up the time/energy to do it.

Doesn't answer if he has trained in the past tho'.

i dont think he knows anything about sports in general honestly.

i remember him asking dana if chris weidman was now the #1p4p because he beat anderson. the whole room kinda chuckled at how serious he was. later a guy said how in college football if the 2oth ranked team beats the number 1 team they arent now number 1. rankings are subjective and also thats just not how the game works ya know.

just leads me to believe that hes maybe a prowrestling fan who became a fan of mma at some time when it was just crossing over. maybe around the tuf era griffin bonnar fight. who knows... ive been plenty wrong before

maarten84 said:

where can you train ufc?

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http://www.ufcgym.com/ duh

maarten84 said:

where can you train ufc?

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YoungScholar said:

Sorry for the generalization, but only in the US is being skinny considered "decent shape".

I'm fairly sure he addressed this in one of the last two MMA hours. The answer was something along the lines of him wanting to do some BJJ/MMA training - but between MMA reporting and his family life he can't muster up the time/energy to do it.

Doesn't answer if he has trained in the past tho'.

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In an interview with Faber, Helwani once said that he wouldn't ever take off his shirt in public because he didn't want people to see his muffin top. Could be a joke, maybe not, but he doesn't seem like he's in great shape to me.

He was a sports journalism major in college. The job market seemed saturated, so besides small town jobs, he decided to go for broke with MMA reporting. He worked out of a basement somewhere and gave it everything he had. And he made it.
It's inspiring and all, but I actually don't think he's a very good reporter at all. I think most of his success was due to being a troll and falling into Dana's favor.

maarten84 said:

where can you train ufc?

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One of the oldest lines in the book went over this guys head. Do you even train UFC, Bro?