Quote:
Originally Posted by Czechvarmander
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My Jordan Breen is Artsy
I told my friend Yousake that I was beginning a blog critiquing MMA commentary and he was pretty clear in who he thought I should write about.
"You have to write about Jordan Breen from Sherdog, he's pretentious, overwrought, and a gigantic douche."
I don't actually mind Jordan Breen, as I don't think anyone really even cares about him, but hey, topic matter is topic matter.
People who write blogs like to talk about them....nonstop, even though no one else cares about them. And that's the common complaint I hear about Sherdog columnist and radio host Jordan Breen.
He blathers about things that very few care about for long periods of time.
It's very evident from reading or listening to Jordan's work that he comes from an internet background rather than a journalistic one, for all intents and purposes
Breen is a forum nerd with about 25,000 posts between Sherdog and Bloody Knux. This came through very clearly in his early radio work.
He came off as nervous, inexperienced, he spoke way, way too quickly, and took some outlandish forum-esque opinions like: "There are no legends in MMA". He was rightly taken to task for stuff like that in those very forums. To his credit he has slowly improved in these areas. Well, other than the fact he still exhibits a motor mouth that makes him very easy to tune out, even if what he is saying is pertinent or interesting.
Which is actually most of the time, I believe that most of those who dislike Breen more dislike the subject matter than him. Most people don't care about smaller shows from all over the world as is their wont.
His articles are also relatively benign, basically all they do is save me the time from translating news directly from Japanese news sites or from getting Yousake to give me the scoop...maybe that's why he hates Breen.
Now the main problem I have with Breen is his douch factor, which is high, very high.
Everyone is familiar with guys from school who try too hard to be esoteric, try too hard to be ironic, and cute, well imagine you've reinforced that persons inflated self image by giving them a platform and that's Jordan Breen. His attempted cuteness is painfully clear in his interviews where many of the questions are off topic which is not so bad in itself. However these questions usually hurt the flow of the interviews and come off more as Jordan trying to get himself over as the smartest, most gosh darn amazing wunderkind in the entire world, ratherthan informing the listeners of the program.
In the end I think Breen's problem stems from immaturity and the residual of being exclusively a forum guy rather than an actual living breathing journalist. Two examples make that abundantly clear.
When Breen first started with the radio gig he continued to use his prior account in the Sherdog forums nothing wrong with that right? Well he used that login to post defenses of himself in the third person when anyone questioned his comments from the radio show as can be seen in at least three separate posts here.
http://www.sherdog.net/forums/search...archid=8140853
Seriously that's about the lamest thing of all time right there.
It also shows in his own thread where he pimps his video "pics" of the day to showcase upcoming fighters, but to be honest all he has done is enter the fighters names into Youtube and Dailymotion and linked to the first fights that show up, not exactly groundbreaking journalism.
It also became clear that not even he watches all the videos as Sherdog poster Czechvarmander pointed out in Breen's own thread.
The NEW Super Official Jordan Breen Show Notes Thread
If you don't take the time to watch them and make sure they even contain the right fighters why should anyone else bother with them? Seriously it would've only taken two seconds to realize that the 205 pound black circa 2001 Alvin Robinson is not the UFC fighter Alvin Robinson.
I started out being relatively indifferent to Breen but defending yourself from attacks in the third person is about as douchey as it gets.
It also takes little (alright zero) journalistic work to google fighters names for videos, or translate Japanese news.
Bottom line is that I'm still somehow hopeful that as Breen matures he'll stop being so eminently hateable and develop some of the knowledge he clearly has. But for now I'm going to stay away and rely on my good ol' Japanese pal Yousake to hook me up with Pancrase news and Cage Force vids.
