When the UFC rolled out their new MMA scouting show, Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, they were looking to add something new to the viewing experience. A little extra flare for fans hanging out on a Tuesday night, watching relatively unknown talent battle it out for a chance at a UFC contract.
The solution? Bringing on gangsta rap icon Snoop Dogg as part of the play-by-play commentary team. Each event, fans got their choice of voices calling the action: Brendan Fitzgerald and a rotating Paul Felder/Yves Edward team, or Snoop Dogg and Urijah Faber on the ‘SnoopCast’ audio feed. And while Fitzgerald/Felder/Edwards had a typical UFC play-by-play style, Snoop and Faber took things in a much less polished, unfiltered direction. A direction that got some heat from fans and fighters.
“Really wish they’d replace @SnoopDogg on contender series. Guy has no respect or knowledge of the sport or fighters. Constant mockery,” wrote Al Iaquinta on Twitter, in response to Snoop saying Jon Jones made Daniel Cormier cry ‘like a little b-tch.’”
“I hope this idiot gets fired let’s get #firesnoop trending he don’t need to be involved in our sport at all,” UFC welterweight Matt Brown wrote on Instagram, after Snoop posted a video mocking Conor McGregor for his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr.
But, while some may not have liked what they were hearing from the rapper in the booth, co-host Urijah Faber stands in full support of the SnoopCast and Snoop’s work calling fights.
“Man, I thought he did amazing,” Faber told Submission Radio, during a recent interview. “The funny thing is, you know, what you get with Snoop is just a guy that’s being extremely real and passionate. It was cool. It was just a different type of eyeball on the fights. He’s a guy that’s just saying exactly what he sees. If a guy is laying on his back, he’s not thinking, ‘Oh, is he going to go for a knee bar?’ he’s thinking, ‘Why is the guy laying on his back?’
“So he has a good knowledge of the sport from a spectator level, but it was fun to kind of teach him and just realize that like, this is just purely watching a fight with Snoop Dogg, not him having to be biased, not him having to do this – even I made a joke that he was gonna be banned from the first fight after the Conor McGregor fight because I think he was probably drunk and had said some stuff that pissed a bunch of people off. But, I mean, the guy’s just real, so I can appreciate that and I had a lot of fun. The way he treated me and other people was pretty great, he was a gentleman and as real as it gets.”
Faber also talked about Paige VanZant’s upcoming move to 125, and her last weight cut before making the jump up a division. He even got back into the ongoing feud with T.J. Dillashaw and Dillashaw’s upcoming bout with Cody Garbrandt, so check the whole thing out.
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