Jon Anik has been with the UFC for many years now and has been a staple on just about every television broadcast, whether it be live events or post/pregame or other UFC related TV shows.
Anik was a part of the UFC 207 post-fight show, but the shocking 48 second defeat of former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey was something he wasn’t ready for.
“Having to go on the air 30 seconds literally after Amanda Nunes knocked out Ronda Rousey was sort of one of the weirdest things I’ve had to do on TV,” Anik said to MMA Junkie. “We do it all the time, we do these post-fight shows, but we knew we were going to go quickly and it was really hard to just collect my thoughts after that moment. It was just stunning the way it went down. You had 400-plus days of build-up for Ronda Rousey’s return only to see it come crashing down in a matter of seconds. And it came on the heels of a classic between Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz that went the full 25 minutes, so you thought you were settling in for a little bit of fighting, and you didn’t get it.”
One of the biggest challenges of discussing Rousey’s quick defeat was that the former champion was hidden for practically a year-plus, something the broadcast team found challenging to work with.
“We’ve got to be super careful on the broadcast, because potentially we’re calling the fights of these individuals,” Anik said. “So a lot of the noise you try to tune out. It’s interesting when it comes to this fight, because intangibly you had to look at those things for Ronda Rousey. Miesha Tate sat on the desk with us and changed her pick, from Amanda Nunes to Ronda Rousey, just based upon the physical, and fight week, and the way she thought Ronda was handling the limited things she saw her in. So that was all we were able to focus on, we weren’t able to focus on anything cause she wasn’t giving us anything. And as far as a lot of people were concerned, that was going to be something that worked on her advantage. It didn’t.”
