Bo Nickal is ready to show the fans the real him in the leadup to his UFC debut.
There is a new kid in town in the UFC middleweight division. Bo Nickal is a former collegiate wrestler who is ready to make the leap to the UFC. He was signed to the promotion after just his third professional MMA bout on The Dana White Contender Series, now he is just a few weeks from making his debut. Nickal has quite a reputation as a wrestler and fans are eager to see just how his skills translate to MMA. In order to showcase this, Nickal is partnering with Jake Paul to give the fans an inside peek.
Jake Paul is part owner of a betting/media company called Betr. This platform was set to bring better sports content to the fans. Paul hosts a show on this platform and now the plan is to do the same with Nickal. Paul has been trying to carve out his own piece of the MMA industry and now with this content platform and his deal with PFL, he is doing just that.
Bo Nickal does not want to come off as the bad guy
Immediately after signing with the UFC, Nickal began to run his mouth a bit. He claimed that he was the best wrestler in the division and began to target former champion Israel Adesanya. Now looking back on it, Nickal can see how some of his comments may have come off wrong and he doesn’t want to be thought of as the bad guy. He spoke about this on The MMA Hour.
“I’ve had a ton of positive responses and so much support. So that’s something I’m super grateful for,” he said. “I don’t really want to be the bad guy that people don’t like. That’s just not really me. I’ve never been that guy that’s like the villain, you know. So I think maybe a couple of comments that had rubbed people the wrong way. I think that’s just because they don’t have any context. They don’t really know me they don’t know what type of person I am.”
The partnership with Paul will also help the fans get a glimpse into Nickal as a person. He explained that he will be filming a lifestyle show in the lead-up to his debut for Betr.
“So I basically partnered with them in a content capacity and like a media space,” he said. “So the first thing that we’ll be doing together is actually kind of a mini-embedded series on my fight week for this upcoming fight. And that’ll be available on all my channels, on all Betr’s channels. From there, I’m going to get into just more content, just freshening up the MMA content space a little bit. I think there’s a lot of people that are doing good things. And for me, I want to kind of be able to share insight into my life with the fans and with people that is maybe not typically seen from a lot of fighters.”
Nickal will be facing Jamie Pickett in his very first UFC bout. The fight will be featured on the PPV portion of the huge UFC 285 event. The card will be headlined by the return of Jon Jones against former heavyweight interim champion Ciryl Gane.
