Just recently, UFC breakout star and regular reality show participant Paige VanZant caused a stir when she posted a provocative video on social media pushing Reebok’s ‘Black & White’ collection, showing off a decent amount of skin while doing it. Not that it even held a candle to the kind of stuff you’d see in a Carl’s Jr. ad, but it garnered enough negative reaction from fellow fighters and MMA fans that VanZant deleted the video soon after.
Of course, once something’s on the internet, it’s there forever. So the original video is still floating around and getting lots of views and attention. So much that former Olympic freestyle wrestler and ONE FC welterweight champion Ben Askren made a parody of it, and it’s pretty spot on.
Askren was one of the original folks who gave Paige heat for her enthusiastic promotion of Reebok gear, but if you can’t beat em, join em, and now Ben has his own video pushing his clothing sponsor.
We’re still not 100% sure what everyone’s problem is with VanZant’s original video. The blatant social media marketing? That Paige dared to act a little sexy? Or is she just getting a lot of pent up hatred people have for Reebok over their controversial uniform deal with the UFC … one that resulted in many fighters losing their own six and seven figure sponsorships? Don’t worry about Paige, though … she got a side deal with Reebok that pays her way more than the $5000 per fight she’d be getting otherwise.
So yeah, that may play a part in why so many of Paige’s fellow fighters got so salty about the whole thing. But as Ice-T said, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
