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Personal Information
| Full Name | Ariel Helwani |
| Date of Birth | July 8, 1982 |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in |
Ariel Helwani: A Brief Biography
Ariel Helwani is an MMA journalist who has covered the sport since 2006. Helwani is the host of the MMA Hour podcast and is currently a member of BT Sport and The Ringer.
credit: Sporting News
Early Life and Career
Ariel Helwani started his career in his first semester of college when he started a show sport on WERW. He gained popularity because of the show and eventually landed a summer internship with NBC for the 2004 Summer Olympics that he had to drop out for due to an ankle injury he suffered.
Later, Ariel Helwani became a sports intern for HBO in 2003 before joining the organization full time in 2004 as a Sports Production Assistant. In HBO, Helwani worked on documentaries about the 1999 Women's World Cup final and the 1985 NCAA men's basketball finals. He eventually left HBO for a job at Paramount that he quit after a week of work.
Helwani went solo after quitting his job and created an MMA sports website to provide professional reporting of the up-and-coming sport at the time.
Ariel Helwani MMA
Ariel Halwani joined MMA Fighting in 2006, where he hosted the sport and hosted the MMA Hour podcast. He also started co-hosting Fight Club, a Sirius XM radio show. Later, Helwani also became a host for SB's(parent company of MMA Fighting) MMA Beat Show on YouTube.
During his time at MMA fighting, Helwani also became a contributor to FOX and worked as an MMA Insider for Fox's UFC Tonight Show and the pre and post-UFC event programming. He was fired from Fox in 2016 after Dana White banned Helwani from attending any UFC event.
Ariel later joined ESPN in 2018 on a 3-year contract. During his time on ESPN, Ariel co-hosted the Ariel and The Bad Guy show with Chael Sonnon and co-hosted the Helwani and DC show with Daniel Cormier. He left the company in 2021.
Helwani went back to MMA Fighting and restarted the MMA Hour podcast. He also signed a deal with Spotify and started the Ariel Helwani Show on the podcast. Ariel is currently the interim vice president of the Mixed Martial Arts Journalists Association.
credit: PodNews
