The year flew by, but there was plenty to read on MMA Opinion the past 366 days. We hit 342 posts, most of which were opinion articles written by John Philapavage, Josh Stein, Curtis Clontz, myself along with a slew of other contributing writers. You can view the entire archive here.

We’ve reached 81.868 page loads and 52,573 unique hits in one year. Most of our traffic, 80%, landed between November 26th, 2007 and June 2nd 2008 which brought up our average daily hit county to 392 page loads. It’s nothing amazing, but it would 0 without all of you readers coming to the site to read MMA Opinion. Our best day was on April 11th when we received 1271 unique hits and 1837 page loads due to our interviews and coverage of The Ultimate Fighter 7 and local wrestler, Matt Riddle, after his TUF debut knockout of Dan Simmler.

Our biggest sponsor, Griffon Fight Gear, is led by a very good guy and I definitely recommend taking a look at their stuff. They have supported us for almost 6 months and they deserve more recognition than I could possibly give them.

John, Josh, and Curtis all have their own personal blogs which can be found at the bottom of the right sidebar. Check out their sites if you want to read more about either MMA or Wrestling!

And always, thanks to all of you readers and a big thanks to the writers who have kept MMA Opinion alive! Please keep reading, commenting, and writing!

I apologize for the lack of site updates and maintenance, but I assure you there’s a good reason - a new and improved layout! The new site will feature 3 rotating articles with much larger images, a cleaner layout, better advertising spots, and improved SEO (that’s Search Engine Optimization for your non-tech folks) for even more search engine results from the big guys like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Here’s a low-resolution sneak peak pic of the new layout. Expect to see it rolled out in a week!

MMA Opinion would like to welcome MMA sponsor Griffon Fight Gear to the site! Now you can look good without selling out to Affliction and those $50 t-shirts! Check out Griffon Fight Gear online and forget about those shipping charges. Simply use the promo code: MMAOPINION when you check out and save yourself a few bucks just for supporting MMA Opinion. All proceeds from any advertising sponsorship will be given back directly to the writers (excluding myself, of course) of MMA Opinion.

Here’s the official press release from Griffin Fight Gear!

Griffon Fight Gear is an upstart line of MMA apparel which specializes in stylish apparel while keeping prices below the market norm. Griffon will also be adding an equipment line, featuring fight shorts, gloves, and rash guards, in the near future. Currently, Griffon features four designs of apparel with new designs on the way.

All Griffon Fight Gear apparel contains a theme that pays tribute to the world of mixed martial arts. Each piece of apparel pays homage to the history of MMA and the heart of the MMA warrior, as well as looks forward to the bright history of this combat sport.
Griffon Fight Gear is unique in the fact that it is not just an apparel company, but an actual living representation of the pride and commitment of the mixed martial artist.

“I want to bring the fans and fighters of the MMA world the best looking apparel and gear possible without charging a fortune. We love this sport and want that to show that through our line,” states Griffon F.G. founder Chris Ivey. “We want everything we produce to have an emotional impact on those who pour their heart and souls into MMA.”

Griffon F.G. can be found at their website www.GriffonFightGear.com, as well as eBay.

Back on December 6th, I wrote an article detailing Videosfight.net and their theft of online MMA blog content. I had noticed that the site was receiving trackbacks (people clicking links from other sites that pull up MMA Opinion articles) from one site in particular nearly every day. After simply opening one of the links, I saw that the site was taking works from many other MMA sites in the midst of what seemed like 20 Google Adsense advertisements. Obviously someone wanted to make some money off of our work.

The owner of the site, Jeff Hudson, was contacted via email. No response. I pleaded my case to Yahoo! after receiving word from a few other bloggers (Zach Arnold of FightOpinion and Kris of UFC Daily), but nothing happened. After talking back and forth with Kris, he mentioned contacting Google since Jeff Hudson and his site were violating the Google Adsense policy of stealing content and placing advertisements where they could be mistaken for literary content.

It looks like Google was able to do something to help us out. Although they haven’t yet contacted me in regards to the site being taken down, but Videosfight.net is no longer taking our content. If you look at one of the trackback links (the link for “Putting Fighters on a Pedastal is here) you can see that it has become another one of those bland “search” spam sites which just links MMA sites. The site was up and running last week and now it has been reduced garbage within a matter of days. Thanks Google and thanks to everyone for their support.

MMA Opinion and the MMA blogging community: 1 VideosFight.net: 0

I’m sure you have noticed that we have some new MMA Opinion writers on the site! I’d like to thank everyone who showed their interest in writing for the site because we were able to pick up a slew of writers who were interested in sharing their opinion on the sport of MMA.

We are always looking for more writers with diverse backgrounds in the world of MMA. So if you are a fighter, promoter, author, or fan and would like to write about MMA, please contact me using the Contact page. I really want to turn MMA Opinion into a successful site where aspiring MMA writers can begin blogging their thoughts and ideas in a productive environment.

Please keep checking back for more great content from all of the writers and have fun MMA-filled holidays.