The FF-Files: The Do’s and Don’ts of Fight Finder | The Do’s

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Since the FF-Files chronicles relaunched at the beginning of 2021, the Sherdog Fight Finder staff has been treated to a myriad of requests about the series itself—to say nothing of how they should submit requests to us. Our first piece reintroducing the Sherdog Fight Finder to our audience came in the form of guidelines for submission, and some people actually listened. Many others, however, turned a blind eye to our instructions and continued to pile on with information we explained we cannot use. This two-part series will explain in greater detail some of the things that submitters should do—and should not do—when sending information to the Sherdog Fight Finder team. This edition focused on what you should do to make your Fight Finder experience as pleasant as possible.

Do: Read the Official Sherdog Fight Finder Guide

We wrote this guide for a reason. It has everything a growing promotion needs. Do you want to know the e-mail address to send in fight results? Read it (fightfinder@sherdog.com). Are you wondering if you have to pay to use Fight Finder? No, you never have to pay because it’s a free service, but you should read the guide anyway. This manual tells readers exactly what the Sherdog Fight Finder team requires to update your events for you and how to register new fighter profiles, as well. We include instructions, a few samples, and even a template that you can download and write your results into (and then send them where? Read the guide). You don’t read English well? That’s fine! Sherdog Fight Finder is an international service. We translated this guide into Russian, Portuguese and Spanish, too! Glance at it, bookmark it, take it out to dinner… we won’t judge.

Do: Proofread your work

If you send in a sheet after reading the aforementioned guide, first of all, thank you. Say you do this but then it turns out that you have the information about your company or fighter’s event wrong. That’s a problem for us. We are not arbiters of whether you made a mistake or are trying to pull something. It’s not our job to determine if the issue was negligent or intentional. The moment you set off a red flag in the system—our team is excellent at what it does, and staff members communicate with one another—you are doing yourself and anyone you represent a major disservice. If you write that your fight card happened in 2018 and send in a fight poster that shows 2021, knock it off and check your work. If you claim a match happened at heavyweight but the two scrawny competitors are 130 pounds dripping wet, it forces us to stop and check out why a 5-foot-2 flyweight is eating his way up to B.J. Penn-Lyoto Machida territory. An ounce of prevention outweighs a pound of cure.

Do: Provide video of your fights

This seems like an easy one, right? It’s 2021. A site called “Bank My Cell” claims that there are 3.8 billion smartphone users in the world, accounting for over 48% of the world’s population. If you are an organization that wants to be taken seriously, invest in recording equipment so that you can share your events with the world. Getting your fights on tape is practically essential now for verification, because there is no reason or excuse not to do so at this point. Always record the full fight, not just get a clip of the match and call it good. Please avoid something like a 15-second TikTok video with awful music blasting, as that won’t help, either. We need to hear introductions, especially when a fighter does not have a photograph on his Fight Finder page. Please send in more than just a seven-second video of a guy in a ring getting his hand raised, even if you think that’s going to be enough to verify that this guy (a) actually fought on this card and (b) won by first-round knockout; and yes, before you ask, that’s the entirety of the footage that was sent in as evidence.

Do: Send in everything you have about what you want to update

The Sherdog Fight Finder team doesn’t want to play a guessing game, waiting for you send in the right paper, link or video to prove you fought on this card. There is no need to give a proverbial IV drip of information until you finally check the box that allows the staff to proceed. Five still photos of an event this year that had six fights on the card won’t suffice, Mr. Manager, especially when only one photograph shows a victor getting his hand raised. If you have an event that you want updated and you have various evidence of it, send it all in your submission request. This way, no one wastes time with a lengthy back-and-forth where we ask for something else you already have but aren’t sending in. Share it with the class, please.

Do: Have patience

The Sherdog Fight Finder team always wants to work with you to make sure our data is as accurate as possible. Sometimes, it means several exchanges to determine the veracity of your information. There can be language barriers between some of us that maintain the system, and we want to do submitters justice by making certain nothing is lost in translation. If you send in a result that needs more information, why complain about the process? All that time you took composing that whiny email saying that Fight Finder should trust you and that we are being unreasonable is time wasted for you to answer our questions. A de facto Sherdog Fight Finder motto is “Trust, but Verify,” which lends itself well to the task that our team performs day in and day out. Unless you give us reason not to, we want to trust that your information is complete and accurate. Sometimes the quest to find out the answer takes time, so remember that there are humans working on this database, and the whole situation will go smoother.

When you plan to send any and all Fight Finder-related inquiries to fightfinder@sherdog.com, do the things on this list. We will thank you for it.