Midnight Mania! Quite a few QAnon believers are MMA, Joe Rogan fans

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

QAnon, the truly bizarre conspiracy theory that posits Trump and Mueller as heroes of a secret campaign to bust pedophile rings of the rich and powerful, has a number of followers that also happen to be MMA and Joe Rogan fans.

This is the finding from Vox’s analysis of the QAnon subreddit, the thread on Reddit where much of the plot percolates. It’s the casual followers who tend to be MMA fans:

Vox

Joe Rogan featuring prominently isn’t altogether surprising. He is known for giving a platform on his podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, to a number of right-wingers such as Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as people who entertain theories outside of the normal realm of discourse, including most famously Eddie Bravo, but also figures like Graham Hancock, who push fringe theories (unrelated to QAnon) that appeal to the imagination but are, to say the least, controversial from a scientific point of view.

Perhaps Rogan is the link from QAnon to MMA, or perhaps our oddball sport just attracts minds susceptible to wild, implausible theories. At any rate, there was a stronger overlap with crypocurrency, gaming, and men’s rights activism. Of those, gaming just has a wide reach among males. Cryptocurrency happens to be an interest of several MMA fighters including Jon Fitch, Rory Macdonald and Ben Askren. As for men’s rights… safe to say it reinforces the notion that the audience for QAnon is a mostly (though far from exclusively) male audience.

Happy birthday to Joe Rogan, by the way. The man remains the greatest MMA color commentator of all time, an iconic figure in the sport.

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Insomnia

Tyron Woodley talks his break into Hollywood.

Olivier Aubin-Mercier disagrees with Alex Hernandez about why he lost a decision to the young Texan.

Just checking in on Old man Dan Henderson… yep, looks like he is living his best life, at an event called Bubba Fest in Tennessee.

Michelle Waterson doing burst conditioning

What exactly is being accomplished here

Mia St. John, female champion boxer, admitted she took steroids throughout her career with no repercussions.

No thank you, I will not be this zookeeper

I’m not saying Boss Logic’s poster is better, but the level of effort does look roughly similar.

I swear Tony Ferguson actively TRIES to injure himself.

Robert Whittaker working his elbows

Suga Sean O’Malley ought to be a hit with McGregor fans for the similarities in their fighting styles, if nothing else.

Throwback to this ridiculous comeback story told in slow motion

When you overthink everything.

This is me:

McGregor kicked up the old Malignaggi reaction train this weekend with a well-worded tweet. Out of all the stupid McGregor-Mayweather drama, I had at least hoped we would see the full sparring footage of training camp McGregor vs. a washed up former boxer.

Speaking of MMA vs. boxing, it is not clear where or how this fight would take place, and it won’t ever actually happen… there are benefits to having only one McGregor in this sport.

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Slips, Rips, and KO Clips

This knockout by Luiz Gustavo at RIZIN 12 was brutal.

I like how the body punching pays dividends at the end of this video

Goodnight, Angela Magana.

Who says you can’t kick moving backwards? (It takes a lot of skill)

Picture-perfect hook

Tricky

What a slugfest. This doesn’t seem like it ought to be able to continue as long as it did.

When you zig that time you should have zagged

See above

Good job, Heber Castillo

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Random Land

Ryan Reynolds is one of the only funny celebrities on Twitter.

This is an incredible human feat

There is something astonishingly cinematic about this goal orchestrated by Wayne Rooney. You could write an entire magazine article about it.

For every glorious moment like the one above, soccer provides one like this to even the scale

This rogue goat may have helped dozens of other farm animals escape

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