Bo Nickal has received brutal fan criticism after his first UFC loss on Saturday night, but one of the sport’s most beloved fighters is leaping to his defence.
A term that has become popular in the social media lexicon surrounding MMA is ‘fraud check’, often levied at an undefeated fighter who finally loses in the UFC. Nickal has heard this term more than any after he was knocked out by Reinier De Ridder at UFC Des Moines over the weekend.
But Matt Brown, a veteran of 30 UFC bouts, believes the phrase is nonsensical and has called out fans for using it on Nickal. The wrestling legend switched over to MMA just a few years ago, and after just seven professional fights took on a two-weight ONE FC champion.
Matt Brown defends Bo Nickal against fans’ ‘fraud check’ criticisms
Bo Nickal is a brash character, whose claims about comfortably defeating the likes of Khamzat Chimaev have set him up for a fall whenever he loses. However, Matt Brown has slammed fans claiming he was ‘fraud checked’ for losing to a decorated star like De Ridder.
During the latest episode of his podcast with Damon Martin; The Fighter vs The Writer, Brown said: “It really frustrated me and almost upset me hearing all these people say ‘fraud check’. I’m sure you’ve seen this. I’m like, get the f— out of here.
“Give credit where credit is due: de Ridder looked f—ing awesome. He looked great. He looked like a two-weight world champion coming from ONE should look like. He looked like a guy that has a bright future and has a lot of big things to do.
“Bo Nickal looked like a guy fighting a two-weight world champion he was just not ready for yet. That’s the downside of a guy like Bo Nickal coming into the UFC with very little experience and being tossed to the wolves.
“He’s had some somewhat favorable matchups before, not totally favorable, but matchups that were very winnable. De Ridder, we finally found out where Bo Nickal needs to improve. He’s not a fraud at all. The motherf—er’s going to be a top five guy in the future, I can almost guarantee it.”
Bo Nickal reacts after ‘fraud check’ branding from fans
Nickal himself has opened up about his experience in the aftermath of the fight, noting that he has received abusive messages even from friends in the aftermath of his loss. He has tasted defeat before in wrestling, but this is a new and different stage.
“Yeah, everything’s so dramatized, and people in today’s day and age, there’s never a middle ground.,” Nickal said on The Ariel Helwani Show last night. “It’s either you’re amazing or you’re the worst, and so I think that really that’s just what it is.
“People want the drama, and they want the emotion to be evoked, and so for me, it’s really irrelevant. I’m on the path that I’m on, and I believe that the one loss doesn’t define me.
“Even if I lose again, I could lose two, three, four, five times, but I’m not going to quit, and I’m just going to keep getting better and keep improving. I think that there’s always going to be opinions of me, and some of them are going to be high, you know, too high.
“Some of them are going to be too low, and very few of them are going to be actually accurate, and so that doesn’t really affect me. I just want to keep getting better at fighting.”