Jon Anik picks harder sport to understand the rules between NFL and MMA
Jon Anik offered his localized insights on commentary methodology calling MMA versus the nuances of calling NFL.
During his recent appearance on the Believe You Me podcast, Anik was speaking to Michael Bisping and the conversation led to football, just a few days after the Super Bowl.
When asked what's the harder game to understand in terms of conveying rules to listeners between football and mixed martial arts, Anik said:
"It's a great question. I would say American football. There are just a lot of intricacies to the game. Even my almost thirteen year old daughter who spent much of last night trying to learn the game of football, there was the third down situation in the fourth quarter. She was like wait, I forget. Do they get another first down here?"
"So there's just a lot of intricacies to football. I think mixed martial arts for a guy like me as not a martial artist is going to be a constant learning curve for me. Like you could be sure when it's f****** anacondas and brabos, I'm laying out and letting the people to my right talk about what those submissions are."
Check out Jon Anik breaking down the commentary approaches below:
Jon Anik and allusions to commentating football
Jon Anik is also known to be an avid football fan as well as someone who is passionate about mixed martial arts. He even alluded to a possible future in calling football and touched on that a few weeks ago.
The 45-year-old was addressing a lot of negative feedback he had received on how he perceived the Dricus Du Plessis versus Sean Strickland middleweight title fight at UFC 297. Anik spoke on the rampant negativity among MMA fans and indicated an interest in perhaps calling professional football instead someday.
The Massachusetts native spoke to the point of being not sure on how much time he has left in this MMA space that seems to be devolving more and more into toxic, some would even say absurdist discourse seemingly week to week. Anik has since put out an apology for these statements and many were commenting on the whole scenario including UFC figurehead Dana White.