Calvin Kattar is preparing to headline a UFC on ESPN event this weekend. Kattar is booked to face extremely talented but underpromoted British athlete, Arnold Allen. Allen defeated Dan Hooker in his last outing and has an outstanding record consisting of 18 wins and 1 loss.
Meanwhile Kattar has 23 wins and 6 losses but he’s also been at a center of a controversy recently.
Former UFC analyst Dan Hardy outed the organization for staging a clip of Dana White ‘feigning’ concern for Kattar during his outing against Max Holloway. At that point Kattar had absorbed most strikes ever in a single bout and there was a lot of reason for concern.
“No discredit to Calvin Kattar, but he didn’t earn anything by taking that fifth round beating. But what we did see was that clip coming out of Dana talking to Hunter (Campbell) and being like, ‘Hey, we need to make sure he goes straight to a doctor after that.”
“And it looks like, ‘Hey, they just caught this on camera across the arena.’ The dude was mic’d up. The receiver of the microphone was attached to the camera that was filming him from across the other side of the arena.” Hardy said.
Dana White disputed this account.
“I don’t even know what that means. We’ve never staged anything, ever.”
Regardless, Kattar’s had mixed success since. He defeated Giga Chikadze in January and lost a split decision to Emmett in June. This makes 5 consecutive five rounders for Kattar.
In an attempt to promote the bout UFC staged a unique prank and caught Kattar off guard.
This might be UFC’s attempt to honor Halloween celebrations.
Kattar seemed to be providing commentary for a UFC clash at which point the video footage had horror orc type face spliced in coupled with some CGI effects. This is reminiscent of the infamous video that was viral in the early 2000s.
The video originated in Germany and had been captioned “you’ve never been this awake” in German.
It coupled the relaxing country side scenery with a similar juxtaposition of a horror make up person popping up coupled with loud shreeking.