UFC: Then fast-forward to 2020, there’s a pandemic and we’re all quarantined, and then Joe retires. So after all those years of traveling apart, now you’re suddenly together a lot more. What has that been like?
MO: You know, we like each other so that helps [laughs]. But we also like both do our own things. He knows that I have a very demanding job and that it requires a lot of quiet time because I need to research and write and aall this stuff. So he’s really respectful of that.
With his retirement, he is figuring out regular life, like what he likes to do, which sounds funny, but he didn’t really have those years of like learning what you like, what you don’t like in internships and stuff. So he’s kind of going through that right now. But it’s fun. We come together every morning, we have coffee together and every night we watch trash TV together and that’s sort of what brings us back to one another before and after every day.
It’s cool. It’s definitely different because now, there’s a lot more time together, but now he gets to travel with me. He’ll come to fights. He just came to Madison Square Garden. He’ll come with other gigs that I do. He gets to come and sort of see the experience in a different way now as a “normie,” as he says
UFC: You mentioned the NFL, where we sometimes get to see you on the sidelines…the day after a UFC event! How do you have that much energy and what has that experience been like?
MO: The energy thing is a good question because I think maybe sometimes people don’t understand how draining it can really be to be on and to do interviews into sometimes carry emotions for people. It’s the highest highs and the lowest lows in MMA and that can be really challenging when you care about people, which we do for everybody on our roster. You come home from work and it’s not just like “Oh, I talked on TV.” It’s not like that, it is so emotionally and mentally draining.Then to be able to do it again and again, it really takes like a lot of time management and just figuring out what to do on those down moments that can sort of recenter me and make me my best for these athletes that I’m working with.
But then to do NFL…it’s just been amazing. I remember getting that last minute call from my first season–which was now four seasons ago–and I waited outside dana Dana White’s office for hours, just waiting to make sure I could talk to him first, because this is my home and without this, I can’t do those other things and without this, I wouldn’t have the opportunity; they wouldn’t see the skill set that I have developed to be able to work on NFL sidelines. I remember waiting outside his office and it was the end of the day and you know, I said, “Hey, I want to talk to you, I was presented this opportunity, but I want to make sure that this is approved by you and the execs and my producers here. It won’t come first, but it certainly could be an amazing secondary thing.” They were so supportive and it just felt really validating to have that sort of support in the building.
There have been weekends where I go from a fight to an NFL sideline at an overnight game and neither one isn’t negatively impacted because I’ve organized that and I’ve figured out how to make that work. But to have the support of this building and everyone who works here to be able to do those challenges and I like to think that it sort of helps elevate what I do on both ends. It shows that shows that I can hold the bar at a really high level.
