Sage Northcutt

For those who don't know who Sage is, he is a 19 year old MMA fighter who is making his UFC debut on Saturday night. He looks like he is from NSync, and he is very talented. Looked really good in his previous fights, and he has done martial arts competitively most of his life. Here is a pic of him:



Hopefully he wins on Saturday night. I think he is a future superstar in the UFC, and he is good for MMA.

I'm... interested to see how he goes I guess. It's a little hard to take him seriously at this stage, he's only fought cans up to this point and it seems like the UFC is feeding him an easy win in his first fight too. We likely won't have any real idea of how good he actually is until he gets some fights against decent competition under his belt.

Sage won by TKO in less than 1 minute!! Trevino isn't a can, even though he isn't a top tier fighter. 12-1 going into this fight...

I'd like to see Sage face a guy like Ross Pearson, but I don't think he will face those kind of opponents too fast. He is only 19 years old!

I`ve seen some interviews, he seems a nice guy, but it feels like the UFC is trying too hard to build a fanbase out of the blue for this kid. little bit like what they did/have been doing with Conor.

there are fighters with a decent MMA record and yet they haven`t gotten the chance to fight in the UFC.

I guess Uncle Dana likes 19 yo boys who look like Guile from Street Fighter.

Hope he`s legit.

lol_donkaments said:

I`ve seen some interviews, he seems a nice guy, but it feels like the UFC is trying too hard to build a fanbase out of the blue for this kid. little bit like what they did/have been doing with Conor.

there are fighters with a decent MMA record and yet they haven`t gotten the chance to fight in the UFC.

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They obviously think he's marketable and FWIW, I think they're right about that. And that's the whole point - they're in the fight business. Those fighters who have better records but haven't been given a shot in the UFC yet obviously aren't as marketable. You can argue that's not fair, but again, this is a business. It is what it is. It's not the Olympics or anything.

Have they given Northcutt preferential treatment? Absolutely - guys on the Fight Pass portion of a card generally don't get featured at the open workouts or get their prefight interviews pushed so heavily or anything. But then he held up his end of the bargain, and delivered a highlight reel knockout. One that was short enough to get replayed multiple times throughout the rest of the broadcast to boot.

I think there's a much closer parallel to Paige VanZant than there is to Conor McGregor though. The UFC obviously realises the guy is young and doesn't have a lot of experience so they fed him a very beatable can in his first fight (Trevino's 12-1 record going in only looked good if you ignored who he actually beat in his first 12 fights) and I expect they'll probably continue to do so for his next couple of fights, same as they've done with VanZant.

I expect he'll have a full Reebok sponsorship long before he fights anyone in the top 10 😛