Urijah Faber gets cartoonified

The folks at Fox have decided to cash in on one of the UFC's most marketable faces with a brand new animated web cast show staring former WEC featherweight champion and perennial bantamweight top contender Urijah Faber.

I'm always interested when the UFC (or really any major sports organization) moves in an unexpected direction. Especially if that involves finding a new way to get fans connected to its product. It's one of the unspoken truths of sports fandom; 9 times out of 10 sports are kind of boring. Dedicated fans live for the little moments, the pitching match-ups, defensive schemes, the pick and roll. Casual fans live for the big moments, touchdowns, strikeouts, and home runs. For those that aren't fans sports often end up being an unfathomable morass of meaningless interactions wrapped up in archaic rules.

That's where creativity comes into play. The ability to get people invested who would otherwise have no interest in the base product. In this case, perhaps they're pitching a little too close to the key UFC demographic, as they've created a cartoon about fighting in bars. But it's still a good, unexpected step from the Fox Sports team. The cartoon's not even bad.

Fight Stories with Urijah Faber is the product of Doug Bresler, who's done several other animated webcast comedy shows. I was reasonably amused both by the only passing resemblance Urijah Faber bears to his cartoon self and the story, which was conveniently macho while still being heroic. I have no idea how much doctoring of the submitted stories goes on (the premise being that these are all "viewer submissions") but I'd assume it's at least a little. Anyway, check it out. And if you like it, try submitting your own. Who knows maybe a few animated BE readers could end up talking to Urijah Faber.

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