Caroline Pearce: “I feel my job is to tell their story and get people invested in what they are fighting for.”

Caroline Pearce: “I feel my job is to tell their story and get people invested in what they are fighting for.”

I first interviewed Caroline Pearce around 4 years ago. it was about the time Caroline was about to embark on another chapter in her life. There have been many such moves in her life. The PFL was in its infancy, Caroline the lead presenter in the exciting new MMA project that has only gone from the strength to strength since its inception.

It was in truth, just the latest chapter in a quite incredible and diverse career. A career as an international heptathlete, a transaction to bobsleigh when injuries curtailed her promising athletics career. A stint on the TV show Gladiators which was revamped by Sky at the time. A switch to presenting followed, notably, but not exclusively on the World’s Strongest Man and Moto GP. And then out of nowhere, Caroline moved to BT Sport to front their entry into covering the UFC. A move to America to pursue further opportunities including expanding her fitness business came next. Throw in a First Class Honours Degree in Sports Science and a Master’s Degree in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University you start to get a picture of that diverse career. And I have probably missed plenty out of her expansive CV.

The time in athletics started early, very early in her life. By 11, she was at England schools level. By 15, Caroline was representing Great Britain, and she would win full senior international honours soon after. Over Zoom, Caroline told me it started in earnest when her parents decided she needed a little stiffer competition:

“I was a heptathlete. Eight events over two days. So I was a jack of all trades. My parents took me to the local athletic club because I was beating all the boys and winning sports days and it went from there. I competed for Great Britain on numerous occasions, and I was twice the National Champion. I competed in the European Cup and then transitioned to bobsleigh. The British bobsleigh team were looking for athletes that were strong and powerful and I got to do a season with the British team leading up to the World Championships in 2005. It was after that with injuries that my career came to an end.”

Training for and competing in eight different events eventually took its toll on her body. A career about to hit prime time, for Caroline it is a story, despite her obvious success, a story of what could have been:

“I basically on bone on bone in my left knee. It’s not like an injury where something goes, it’s wear and tear with doing so many disciplines over many years. It’s when the cartridge wears away and bone hits bone that you first start to get the pain. I was at the peak of my career and fitness. I was still in my twenties I had aspirations of being an Olympic Champion and I was getting better and better. I spent a good year rehabbing it and trying to come back. But after two years when I was still having problems I realised I had to move on to what was next in my life and let this go. I definitely feel I achieved some high levels in my sport but my bar was set much higher than my body allowed me to do.”

The entry into working in MMA came by chance. A routine meeting ended anything but. Caroline and her agent were there to discuss presenting in another sport, but she was asked if she wanted to cover the UFC for BT Sports. The knowledge was limited, but hours and hours of research later that changed. It wasn’t easy at first, acceptance was hard to come. Social Media did its thing and was far from kind in the beginning. But that slowly changed. That acceptance finally came. The early limited knowledge soon gave way to a love and a passion for the sport, and with her own sporting background, MMA was very much a sport Caroline could relate to she told me:

“The one thing I respected about mixed martial artists when I started out in the sport was the multi-discipline training. You can’t just be a boxer or be good on the ground, to be the best you have to be good at everything. And it was what I grew up with in my sport. If I wanted to be an Olympic Champion one day, I can’t just be a great sprinter I had to be good at every event. And while I wasn’t getting punched in the face, I could definitely relate to having to structure your training and your mindset around the different disciplines you need to succeed in to be the best. That was the similarity in my mind and I guess that’s where that respect came from as well in terms of what I could relate to and what a fighter does in the multiple disciplines that they compete.”

MMA back in 2013 was still struggling for its own identity and true mainstream acceptance. Even then, it was still viewed as a niche sport. And for Caroline, it did leave some early doubts if it was the right career move for her:

“I didn’t have any reservations and I certainly didn’t think it would kill my career. But what I did feel was, is it the right next step for my career at that stage because I didn’t have a huge amount of knowledge on it, so was that a good move for me. And you have to remember the sport wasn’t as well known in the UK as it is now. I’d tell people what I was doing and they would say what’s that, is it that fighting thing. If you explain what you do now, everyone knows what it is. I probably knew a little more than what I’ve said about my early career in the sport because an ex of mine was a fighter, not at UFC level, but he’d been a fighter, a National judo champion, so I’d been involved in what that sport looks like. But in terms of attention to detail, who’s who, and how it all works that was relatively new to me. It was just a case of whether I should do it when there were so many other sports that I had so much more knowledge on, was that the right next step. But I took a chance, it was an opportunity to get on a big show with BT Sport. I like a challenge, I like things that scare me a little. But literally, once I started watching huge amounts of tape, getting into the personal storylines, I said right I can tell stories here, I love to discover where people come from, why they do what they do, and what they fight for. And I was hooked pretty quickly.”

I spoke to Caroline a week or so after that incredible unforgettable UFC 281 at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was another busy week for Caroline, who was covering the show for BT Sports. Her work starts long before fight night:

“Work starts even before fight week begins. A lot of the time if I get the chance to do a long sit-down interview like I did recently in New York at UFC 281, that’s where I’m trying to get all the storylines. Sometimes if it’s a fighter I know well, who I have interviewed many times before, we are picking up where we left off. But if it’s someone new to the UFC or someone I haven’t interviewed before, or someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time then I like to go back and find out where they came from. I feel my job is to tell their story and get people invested in what they are fighting for and show what incredible athletes and human beings these people are.

“But then as fight week goes on I’m thinking more along the lines of how things are unfolding during the week. We’ve seen press conferences, and we’ve had face-offs, how’s that dynamic changing, how are their mindsets changing. Any inclinations of what fight strategies might come into play. But come fight night itself it’s mostly reactional, like what key events have happened during the fight. And then I think back to what they might have told me during the week. When we get to the actual fight night, myself and my team think the hard work is pretty much done, let’s enjoy it and react to it. What many people don’t realise is I miss half the fights. When we are watching backstage, we have a tiny monitor and all the other media are scattered around. For example when Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler fought in New York, I missed the first round because I was interviewing Dan Hooker about his fight. I’ve got one team member who has got one eye on the screen so he can tell me what’s happened. So you are sort of reacting to something you have only half watched, not all of the time because there are fights that I see in full, but it is a delicate balance.”

There is an unwritten rule in sports media, that you don’t have friends in the sport that you cover, because it can ruin any kind of objectivity or impartiality. But in truth, it is a difficult rule to adhere to, many don’t. Many can’t. And it is a rule I have broken many times. The more you speak or engage with a fighter, you can’t help but start caring about them and investing emotions into their life and career. The first time it got me was when Molly McCann, who was my first ever interview and who headlined my first ever show that I covered live for FightPost, lost on her UFC debut in her hometown of Liverpool. There was that gut-wrenching post-fight interview with Molly, which Caroline handled so well. It is a difficult balancing act, especially for Caroline who has conducted many live post-fight interviews when all sorts of emotions are going through her head. Molly had her three-fight winning run snapped in New York, and her post-fight interview was eerily similar to the one she had to do in Liverpool back in 2018:

“When I’ve covered the sport for as long as I have now, people say who is your favourite fighter, but it’s not really about that, it’s who you have spent the most time with, whose family you have got to know and who engage with the most. You gave the example of Molly there. I feel like I have been part of her journey since her very first UFC fight and her loss and that really hard interview I had to do. Then the highs of her spinning elbow in London and we break down in tears again because of the elation of it all. And then in Madison Square Garden the other week when we had spent time together and we had that really nice walk and talk interview around Time Square. Backstage we are nervous, and then we do that post-fight interview I feel like I am in the big sister role. I want to give her a hug, we are treading the line staying professional with our interview, but it’s also human nature and they are human beings. What I know as a competing athlete, is you win and lose or whatever, but it’s those days after when the media stops and you are just there with your own thoughts. That is something Molly spoke about in our interview, she said the next two days are going to be quite dark and I’ve been there in a different way in the past.”

There are plans being laid for evolving her role in the sport. Caroline hopes to do more interviews of the longer format. Fight week interviews are restrictive, limited time is given, and distractions are everywhere. For Caroline, it’s the obvious next step:

“I like having time with someone to talk about other things rather than the usual fight week-specific questions. I do have some plans in place for next year to work on some longer-form content with another platform that will enable me to have longer deeper conversations and do more of that experiential type of interview, where we are talking and doing things. What people don’t realise is when you are doing interviews just sitting in a chair and facing someone, what you don’t see on camera is all the people sitting around just watching you and sometimes there are loads of other media around having their own conversations it can be a little stilted less natural conversation. I like the idea of doing interviews with fighters outside of their fight week at a time when they are relaxed and doing some kind of activity. It’s like that concept of breaking bread and talking over food, you share more and talk more. That’s always been my goal to get more into that human interest kind of story, and I hope to achieve that next year.

“I want to keep growing and find more platforms for the kind of content that I want to produce and create. The next level is always to do more and continue to raise the bar and to represent women in sports and show what we can do and be a role model in that respect. And also to test myself to produce and present and do it on different platforms and different styles of content. I love all sports and one of my goals is to cover an Olympic Games so that is something I will be looking to do. I want to create content that I have more ownership of as well, YouTube and Podcast based which is definitely a direction I want to go in. I also love travelling and with my fitness business I can do it from anywhere in the world.”

The first media event I ever covered was Cage Warriors 90 in Liverpool. The media section was filled completely with men, not a single woman covered the event. And when I moved primarily over to boxing, for many years, that remained the case. But times are thankfully changing, often there is now a 50/50 mix at live events. The early days were difficult for Caroline, working in a male-dominated sport, but she too has seen that times have changed:

“Backstage at UFC 281 in New York was highly represented by women. The two lead reporters from New Zealand were women and they both did excellent jobs. There is myself, Laura Sanko, and Megan Olivi and that’s really nice. When I first started it was really hard to get that recognition as a woman to get that respect in the sport. So to see so many more women involved in the sport, that’s been really nice to be a part of.”

The career of Caroline Pearce has taken many unexpected turns, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. A flourishing fitness business that runs alongside her MMA media career, Caroline has shown her decision to leave the UK a few years ago has very much paid off. Recently engaged, a wedding in Italy being planned for 2024, a career very much on the up. Life really couldn’t be much better. Those early reservations and struggles have long since been forgotten.