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Women in Broadcast Journalism: Against the Grain with Megan Olivi
Stephanie Sits Down With UFC On ESPN And NFL On FOX Sideline Reporter, Megan Olivi
What’s up fellow drop-outs? I have an amazing woman standing by me. She is one of my mentors in life. She is a person that I look to for grace, poise, how to react to drama, overcome obstacles, and work together in a relationship when you’re in a high-profile relationship where people are in your business a lot. I want to introduce you to Megan Olivi.
For those of you who don’t know, you have to know who she is. Her face is so recognizable and she’s Italian so ten points for Gryffindor. She’s a host and a reporter for UFC on ESPN. She’s a sideline reporter for NFL with Fox, and she’s been doing this for more than a decade. I watched one of your first interviews with Joseph for WEC. You’re like, “I’m here with Joseph ‘The Beefcake’ Benavidez.” I’m dying because you’re a baby. You know you’re assertive but you’re still like baby Megan and it’s cute.
You don’t work a day in your life if you follow your passion.
We hadn’t even been dating for a while at that point. The people who needed to know knew, but not the masses. I remember being so awkward. I don’t know why we thought it was important to hide it. It was weird and we met well before I was doing that for a living but I remember being like, “Okay.” We couldn’t hide it. Our smiles were so flirty. Yes, baby Megan.
She was so flirty. I was like, “He loves you.” I want to go back to the beginning. You grew up on the East Coast and then you went to college at Seton Hall, you went for your Master’s at Fordham, and you did that in two semesters.
I’m insane because basically, I lived in New York City, which is not cheap. I had a 300 square foot apartment, which is literally smaller than this hotel room. I lived on the fourth floor, with no elevator, no air conditioning. It was insane. I could barely afford it. It was so much money. I just knew that my education was going to be important to me in terms of what I wanted to do. I decided to go into broadcasting very late in my college career. I wanted to manage political campaigns, so I went for political science. I was gung-ho about that and I was always talking to whoever was around me about sports. They were like, “You should do that for a living.” “No, I’m not that vain.”
That’s for someone else.
I had this bad misconception that you must be unintelligent and it must be just based on your looks, or special friends and that kind of stuff. I felt like that wasn’t for me. As I learned about it, that preconceived notion was 100% on me. Once I learned about it, I was like, “This is that whole, you don’t work a day in your life and follow your passion.” While it was still very challenging, I was like, “There are a million people who want to do what I want to do and now they have a leg up because they have a degree and that they have years of training and that specific field they want to go into.” It was the end of my junior year. I was like, “I’m going to need to get my Master’s.” I was fortunate to get into all the schools I wanted to but Fordham was a Catholic University.
It’s a very prestigious university.
Women In Sports Broadcasting: One of the most exciting things to happen in an interview is when the person you’re talking to forgets where they are. They just spout something they are not supposed to say.
Thank you. I wanted to continue since I’ve gone to a Catholic school since I was in Nursery School, all the way through, so I was like, “We got to finish this out with the Jesuits.” I did it and they actually let me. I worked full time and they let me count my job, because it was in broadcasting, as a class. I never slept. It was crazy. I would sleep three hours a night and that’s how I was able to finish but I graduated with honors, I’m like, “What?”
“Excuse me, hair flip.” When you graduated, I know that you were offered a job and moved to Vegas, but what job was that?
It was with Heavy MMA. Essentially, my brother was a very accomplished wrestler, my grandfather was a boxer, and I was dating Joe.
Always be true to yourself and don’t take a shortcut.
Are you already dating Joe on the East Coast?
Yes, so we were kind of like long-distance dating. I wouldn’t say seriously dating on his end.
I’m sure he has your email address. It dates us a little bit.
We would skype all the time. We talk on the phone all the time. It’s challenging to live in New York when you don’t make a lot of money. The job offer in Las Vegas was for a little bit more money but for way less of a cost of living. It was closer to this guy I liked and I thought, “Give myself one year. If I don’t succeed in a year or I hate it, I can move back and go exactly back to the same position I’m in but let me try,” and I never moved back. I went to Vegas. It was with Heavy and I cut my teeth there.
Before the TV deal with the UFC, they did the official pre and post-show for pay per views got it. I was essentially hired to help co-host those pre and post-shows with a guy named Dave Farah, who I still love and adore and appreciate to this moment. That’s how I learned on the job. I was doing stuff in grad school and in internships, but it’s not the same when you’re interviewing Brock Lesnar while he’s going down a row of interviews and you’re just like, “Oh, fuck.” That’s where I cut my teeth and learned on the job. Some great moments and not great moments.
How did you meet Joe? Was it through MMA?
My two best friends and I went to Las Vegas when we graduated college and we ran into this group of guys in the lobby of Mandalay Bay. They were like, “Do you want to go to,” I want to say it was tryst or something. “Do you want to go?” We were 22 years old with no money. “Sure.” We went there because they were like, “We don’t have to pay to get in,” and whatever. We went and Joe is sober, he doesn’t drink and so we were chatting the whole night and then he was making me laugh quoting Will Ferrell. We ate hamburgers after. He’s like, “Do you want to go get food?” I’m like, “Yeah. Are you going to feed me? I’m in.” At the end of the night, he’s like, “Can I have your email?” “Sure.”
“Can I have your Aim?”
He had just gotten a computer and he said I seemed very professional.
He obviously had already been practicing MMA at that point in time. You came from a wrestling and boxing background with your family. Were you already into reporting MMA at the time?
No. He was already in the WEC. I remember him being stopped for autographs and I was like, “What?”
“Who that guy?”
He was with a few of his teammates, and one of those teammates was Urijah.
The Team Alpha Male was under at its inception, probably.
Exactly. We were like, “Maybe they’re surfers.”
It looks like it.
They were very tan. It was a weird thing. We’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening but it’s fine.” I remember him being stopped for autographs and I was like, “What are you doing?” To this moment, he’s very bashful about what he does. He’ll lie to people and be like, “I’m like a Spanish soap opera star,” or he’ll make stuff up. I was just like, “Wait, what?” It’s funny because I started going to WECs with Joe. That’s how people started to get to know me because I was doing work in broadcasting television and the internet mostly.
You only see the glimmer that people let you see on social media. Real conversations are so special andwhat really matters.
I was doing work in sports there and so people would be like, “You have experience on camera, you’re understanding this, and you’re associated with Joe. You must know what’s going on.” I got my foot in the door because I was going to these events with him. He’d be like, “There’s a WEC in Denver. Do you want to come?” He would fly me, then we would meet there and hang out and get to have great meals and, honestly, great laughs.
I remember watching Stepbrothers on a laptop because we wanted to watch it together. Just really wholesome stuff. That’s how I got introduced to the guys at Heavy and that’s how they brought me on. It was like, “We’ve seen her around. She’s young and willing to do the work. Let’s bring her in and see how it goes.”
That worked out really well for you. Talk about fate. I’ve heard how you met Joe but I didn’t know how you got to Vegas and that whole story.
Everyone just assumes we met in an interview. I’m like, “No, I already loved him when I interviewed him.”
I love it so much. I watch Megan all the time and even though we’re friends, when I see her reporting, I’m just like, “She’s my friend and she’s so good.” “That’s my friend.”
The goal is to make people proud. For me, at least in the way I was raised, it’s about wanting to make people proud and showing, like, “We did this the right way.” I’m not posting some crazy things on my Instagram or getting to stuff in a way that my dad would be like, “What are you doing?”
This is what I wanted to talk about. I’m glad you segued to that because I want to talk about this stigma of women in sports in quid pro quo. I suffered from that so much, and I have to tell you, you probably don’t know this about me, but I quit because I got bullied so relentlessly by the community here in Houston MMA. They were like, “She’s had sex with this guy, and this guy.”
Literally, Derrick Lewis walked me to my car when in downtown Houston, which is a little sketch, just walked me to my car after a weigh-in or something like that. He wasn’t fighting on the card, and the next morning, my editor called me for Legacy at the time for Legacy FC and he’s like, “Are you having sex with Derrick?” I’m like, “Excuse me?” Just out like that. He’s like, “I just want to know because I’m trying to protect you because people are talking.” I’m like, “Absolutely not. He walked me to my car because we’re in Downtown Houston,” but according to everyone else, we are sleeping together.
It’s definitely a difficult thing. I feel like I’m lucky at this point because everyone knows, especially all the fighters love and respect Joseph so much that they know that’s never the case with me. However, you still get those comments. Basically, what happens every time I interview someone, especially with a bigger fight, is that I either hate them or I must be sleeping with them. Every time I interview Conor, it’s like, “She was so much nicer to Dustin. They must have this thing going on.” It’s challenging for me and it used to be a lot more bothersome, now I’m just like, “Those are people who really don’t know.”
There’s a lot of things that could be improved upon in the MMA community. Especially behavior online. For the voices that matter, everybody’s like, “What?” It’s a challenging space and I would be lying if I didn’t say that there were days where you can let those voices with the random icon as their profile get to you, or say things where you’re like, “Why would you even think of that?” I don’t use Twitter anymore. It’s been years since I wrote a comment on a video because there’s nothing to come from that. It’s a challenging space and it’s a small community. It’s still a relatively new and young community. Unfortunately, that lends itself to not always a healthy community.
There’s a lot of fight fans but there are not very many educated fight fans. They just want to see the blood and the brawl and they don’t really know like the actual chess match that is MMA, because it is chess. Picking your moves and it’s hard because you’re not only moving your body, but you’re thinking so hard in your head. I can barely breathe and walk at the same time. How do these guys do this?
That’s why I’m proud to be a part of this broadcast because we have Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier and of course, Joe Rogan, but they have brought a new layer to what you’re watching if you’re at home and explain stuff. Especially when you have a guy who’s a two-time Olympian, a two-division world champion for the UFC in Daniel Cormier, where he can break things down in a fun way that people understand, they start to get a little bit more of that sport.
For me, storytelling end is like, “I’m not going to give the Xs and Os. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that’s not my role.” To be able to tell the human side because oftentimes, we do this in all sports, we forget athletes are human beings. There’s a meme going around because of the Olympics and it’s a guy laying on the couch covered and chips. That was so bad. They must be so embarrassed. We do that with sports. I’m even guilty of it. I’ll be watching baseball and be like, “How the hell do you strike out like that?” It’s like, “Who am I?”
That’s important to do across all avenues of sports. Not that the viewer is not smart enough to remember that but sometimes you get so involved and wrapped up in a competition, just remind the viewer that these are human beings with real stories and they still have to go home regardless of the outcome and try to put it together for the next day. We’re trying to make those strides within our sport of MMA to make sure that fans have at least that and they maybe think twice before they have a negative thought, comment, post, or whatever it may be. It’s not going to stop it but it will lend itself to a little more detail of the story.
With the Conor and Dustin fight, it was evident that Conor had injured himself really early and people are so mad and people are like, “You did this on purpose to get the pay per view money.” Nobody’s injuring themselves on purpose. That is not a thing.
For us, it’s the worst thing you can possibly see. No matter what, that’s what you don’t want to see. Even though you know it’s a fight, you just don’t. It’s weird to know that an injury of that magnitude or of a Chris Weidman magnitude or something happens. I couldn’t even watch the replay. They kept playing it and I was like, “No, guys.” There’s a clip of me backstage that’s screaming because I couldn’t watch it.
I audibly screamed too. I forgot what card it was but I was at the Weidman-Silva 1.
I want to say it’s 148 but that might be Weidman-Silva 2.
It was when Weidman dethroned him and then the very next time I saw it, I was like, “Life’s not supposed to go that way.”
That yell will haunt my dreams.
We still have people like, Erin Andrews, Rachel Nichols, Jenn brown, and stuff like that, that are doing well in their industries, and taking the lead for women in sports journalism. Why don’t we see more of that still? Is it because women are hesitant or is it because there’s some sexism still going on? What do you think?
That’s a good question. First of all, I don’t know Rachel at all, but Erin and Jenn are absolutely wonderful. They’re as talented as they are kind and generous with their time which I absolutely love. It’s getting better but it’s about how many spots there are and how many opportunities there are. How can you separate yourself? Because that is a big one. What makes you different on the sidelines of X than all these other letters of the alphabet? They’ve all done a great job of separating themselves and being the leaders of the pack in terms of talent and innovation in their fields. That’s what it is.
Women In Sports Broadcasting: Sports reporting must remind viewers that athletes are human beings with real stories. They still have to go home regardless of the outcome.
There’s an incredible generation of women in sports. I get so many messages all the time from women who are in high school and college saying, “I want to do this.” They already have YouTube channels. They have a whole Instagram devoted to it. Who was doing that when we were in high school and college? None of us. There definitely is a positive trend. It’s relatively new and not that we don’t have supportive male colleagues, because we do. I have to say, I work with some of the best in the industries between MMA and NFL, and it’s great to hear. It’s just sometimes roles are limited.
We have women calling football now on Amazon. That’s relatively new because they didn’t have the opportunity. Not that they can do it, but it’s like, “Where’s that home for them?” As the world of broadcasting and communications grows, there are a lot more roles for women and I always like to say, “I have my job not because I’m a woman but because I’m the best one for it.” I don’t normally have that braggadocious thought about myself in any other regard.
I know that’s hard for you to say.
Exactly, but it’s been brought up to me a few times in these big scrims we do before pay per views. It’s like, “I wasn’t given this job and I certainly wasn’t allowed to stay just because of my gender.” It’s because like, “She’s really the best one for the job.” Like, “She’s earned this and this is how we go forward.” I like to that’s how the UFC operates. Every person who’s in their role is the best one for it. We hope that we see that direction and every other sport.
The young ladies who slide into your DMs and they’re asking you for advice, what kind of advice do you give them?
Number one, always be true to yourself and don’t take a shortcut. That is my absolute biggest thing. I’m not saying you have to get your Master’s. That works for me and I’m a big believer in education but it may be not for everybody. You will see people get ahead quicker than you because they take a route that maybe you won’t lay down at night feeling good about. For me, it’s been a long road. It’s still a long road like when I do football, I’m the lowest man on the totem pole but I’m working for it. There will never be a time where I ever feel upset or ashamed of how I behaved or how I got somewhere. It’s easy when you’re young to be like, “I need money. I don’t want to get coffee or do this like lame internet thing,” or whatever.
Because of social media, you see this glamorous world and you think it’s right at your fingertips. You see the tip of that iceberg and not all the work that goes on under it. When you see somebody making choices that have them skip the line a bit, it can be tempting to do that as well. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve never even felt that temptation but I’ve also never made a choice that I didn’t feel good about. For young people in the industry, it can be something that’s kind of like, “Ugh.” Especially with the world of Instagram, you want to be able to get followers and likes. “I want to be able to go to that event,” or whatever it is, but it’s never worth it because I’ve seen lots of people come and go. You tell on yourself at the end of the day when you do that.
That’s very true. In terms of being shot sate and being shy in front of the camera, coming up with stuff to say on the fly, I always have lived by the fake it till you make it.
100% that’s my life motto.
I’m like, “Me too.”
If you’re super comfortable in front of the camera, to begin with, then it’s not about the person you’re interviewing. It’s about you, and that’s not the goal of somebody whose dream it is to interview an athlete or celebrity or whatever. It’s not supposed to be about me. I’m just the vessel to get the message out, I just fake it. Half the time, I am terrified. There are times when I’m doing a live hit, and maybe it’s my seventh memorized reported of the night and I forget, “I know I have to get to this destination. I want to mention this, but I forget the path I was going to take.” You just keep calm and go with it. It took a long time to perfect that art of, “Don’t panic at the moment,” but that’s what it is. Just fake it till you make it.
There have definitely been times where I blank out. My brain completely went away. I don’t know where that went.
It happens to the best of us. It’s also when you humanize it, people at home don’t think twice. “I do that all the time.” If you stutter, and you say, “Excuse me. I mean this.” Normally, it doesn’t even, it’s when you have that meltdown because you want to be perfect, that’s when people notice because there’s just no time you’re ever going to be perfect on live TV.
Practice makes perfect. I would get in front of the mirror, or if you have a camera at home.
Interview friends and families, reps, and practice intros. That was a big thing for me. I couldn’t practice a lot of interview stuff, but I could practice making sure I was introducing the person as best that I could. That’s a big thing, reps are king. If that means you do a little local YouTube show for a little while, who cares? Get the reps and get practice. Nobody is going to be like, “You can have this job ten years later because you were on YouTube to start.” I never did YouTube or whatever before I started doing MMA interviews. I just got literally thrown into it at a legacy fight one time. They’re like, “Here, interview this guy.” I’m like, “I don’t even know his name, but okay.”
You got that Italian-speaking charm. We can shake up a conversation with anybody, which is half the battle.
This is right at the beginning when I was like, “Who’s cute in the ring?” I was in my mid-20s. I didn’t know what I was doing.
Of course, you then start paying attention. You start getting into the fights, which I want to talk to you about getting into the end of the fights. I know that when Joseph fights that you go away and you say your prayers, when they interrupt you and you have to hide behind a truck. Not when Joseph’s fighting, but when your friends are fighting, when people you love are fighting, do you just stay silent and silently pray inside? You have to look at the fight, obviously. How do you handle that?
At this point, between Joseph and myself, there’s always someone I care about on the card. Whether you know them or not, for the amount of research we do, you know everyone’s story. Traditionally, to be an MMA fighter, you don’t have a perfect life. You didn’t come from this gorgeous, silver spoon situation. While there may be some who are the outlier to that rule, it’s a challenging thing. For me, I just pray all the time that nobody gets seriously injured and that whoever wins and whoever does not win, they’re still able to hold value in themselves, find confidence, and continue moving forward.
Unfortunately, it happens, obviously in team sports and in individual sports, but even more so in a fight. A lot of our athletes’ self-worth is determined by the outcome of what’s in the Octagon. For me, that’s so hard to see. They’re such wonderful human beings and you don’t want them to not feel the love, compassion, confidence, and self-worth that they should because of the outcome of a fight where 99.9% of the population will never be brave enough to do that, including myself. For me, I’m literally always praying that they’ll be okay and that whatever the outcomes, it’s God’s path that they never lose that feeling of they are loved and worthy. It’s hard when you see the way the world can treat people sometimes. It’s tough. That’s always my constant prayer.
As media, you’re not supposed to cheer. That was something that I had to I remember holding back from, if a friend of mine was fighting and he’s got a solid hook or whatever, I’d be like, “Yeah.” Do you sometimes catch yourself?
No, I’m so trained by it now. Even when I did watch Joe because I used to watch him for a long time, I’d be good about not showing emotion. I just hold my breath. Everybody knows somebody on the card and maybe feels closer towards one person than the other, but genuinely, we’re all pretty good about just wanting the best outcome for everybody. I don’t care who wins any fight except when Joe fights.
Speaking of prayer, what part do prayer and your relationship with God play not only in your work but in your personal life?
It’s everything. I am a devout Catholic. I grew up Catholic. I choose to be Catholic as an adult because I believe in the teachings of Jesus but also in the angels and the saints. I’m always praying to saints. I have prayer cards all over. I have statues all over my house. It’s Italian of me, but my relationship with God is everything.
There are days I’m mad at Him and there are days I’m thanking God for my life and everything in between that you can think of. I always feel comfort if I know we’re not in this alone. Joe and I pray together a lot. We pray together before and after he fights, and even when it doesn’t go his way, still we have something to be thankful for. I feel so blessed to have the life I do have. Even when things are good, you’re praying, grateful and like, “I know things are good. I recognize this,” and when things are bad, you’re like, “I know this isn’t forever but just help me get through it.”
I pray all day every day. I have this amazing app on my phone that I love called Hallow. This is not a plug for them. I have nothing to do with them, no sponsorship or anything but I love them. There are crazy novenas on there. You can listen to the gospel every day. It’s amazing. It’s so great, I do the rosary with them. There’s a daily prayer thing. In this modern world, it helps you ground yourself. I’ll walk my dog and listen to it. It’s important to me. I try not to ever shove it down anyone’s throat.
You never do but we’ve talked about it. You’ve sent me accounts to follow that have been helpful for me.
Leslie, she is amazing, too. That’s a great account.
I’m glad that you and I have that in common. It’s a huge factor to have in common with a friend.
It’s somewhat taboo sometimes, and you never want to make someone feel uncomfortable who maybe isn’t religious or thinks of your particular religion in a negative connotation. It is a part of who I am. I got into Columbia, which is Ivy League, but I wanted to go to Catholic. It’s a choice that I make to try and be the best version of myself.
Low key flex on Columbia. I know that you memorize a lot of what you say, which is incredible. I know you get asked a lot about acting. That’s a skill. For me, to memorize something, I remember in tenth grade when I had to memorize the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Old English. The way I remembered it, the way I could recite it was I had to lay on the floor covering my eyes, and then I could recite it because I could see the line. I would never be able to do that. I would have to be on the fly. Of course, you’ve had a lot of practice to do this, but when you do the big sit-downs with Conor and Dustin, the ones you did that’s probably most prevalent in people’s minds. Do you memorize all of your questions? Do you go in with more of a story, a flowy format for those? What do you do?
Interviews are totally different than how I do my report because everything I do is memorize. In the world of UFC, no teleprompters exist. For sit-down interviews, I do a tremendous amount of research. I would rather be like, “I didn’t use any of the eight hours of prep I did,” than be like, “I had no idea what he was talking about in reference to this.”
What I do is, as I’m doing research, I take notes on the things that I think are important or things I want to follow up on or whatever. I then make an outline of, in a perfect world, we sit down and I can ask him everything I want, this is the order of questioning I want to go in. There’s an art to it. It’s like making a road. You have to know that sometimes you might go left or right, and you’re no longer going straight, and how do you get back to those questions you have to ask?
I wouldn’t even say it’s memorizing because it’s the fact that you’ve learned all of this about the person or you want to make sure you’re giving them a platform to tell that story. I do come in with notes sometimes to make sure, especially should there be other factors in play. “Sponsorship needs this question. We need this question for countdown,” whatever. That’s a different animal. It’s about your study on the subject because if you have done the work and the research, sure, there might be a thing or two you’re not going to remember, but when they’re sitting across from you, you can just listen.
You don’t have to be worried about, “What is this referencing?” You can make sure that you know what’s going on. It’s a lot of prep work. It could be hours of prep for a ten-minute interview like it was for Dustin Poirier. I know Dustin well, but there’s still something to be learned. They’re still living their lives every day. It’s probably a whole entire day when you add up all the hours over the weeks that I did, and then we did a ten-minute interview, but it’s worth it. I didn’t feel like a second of that was wasted. It’s more about the work than memorization, but I do like to bring a notecard, especially if there are certain things I have to hit. I like to just have them so that I can go, “We forgot this,” or whatever, just to make sure we cover all of our bases.
Women In Sports Broadcasting: Being up for eight hours of a live broadcast is more draining than running miles because your body and brain don’t get a break.
I was interviewing @Compass.Couple on Instagram. It was funny because I wanted to ask them about travel tips because they literally have lived around the world. We didn’t even get there. We spoke for two hours and we didn’t even get there. After I hung up with them, I was like, “I didn’t ask them about travel tips.” We had so much else to talk about. I even had it bullet-pointed, and then for some reason, we just gabbed. When it got to the two-hour mark, they live in Bali. They’re fourteen hours ahead, but it was already 10:00 here, “We’re going to have to wrap it up.” They were so cool. You should check them out.
Look at you interviewing people in Bali. International stuff.
They are so sweet. They went to the same high school in Colorado. Same class. Same High School, never met, and then met up randomly in Amsterdam.
That’s fate. That’s like God being, “You guys missed each other.”
When they go back home, their family is two minutes away from one another. I know this because after I recorded the podcast, I was up. You get up because you have the energy. You have adrenaline going. After a night of fights, especially an exhilarating card, you’re just up. When you drive home, how do you unwind to close your eyes?
First, I get food. That’s number one.
What’s your go-to?
Usually, Roberto’s tacos. A hard shell. Joe’s either with me or I call him because he always watches the fights, but a lot of times, he’s with me. We dissect our nights because I’m all over the place. It probably only takes me an hour, I take off all my makeup and shower. Our days are so long. For instance, UFC 264, I got in the building at 10:00 AM, and I left the building at almost midnight. There are long days, and physically, they’re exhausting. You’re in heels, you’re running around an entire arena so I just get in bed and just chill. We usually watch a Netflix show or some episode of whatever we’re watching at that time, and then I’m out.
Because you get so overstimulated sometimes.
It is. It’s so much and the mental aspect for someone like me who also has to make sure I’m memorizing stuff when I’m going back and forth to interviews and other hits that we have, it’s a lot. The mental exhaustion is what’s tiring. Being up for eight hours of a live broadcast is more draining than running miles and miles because your body and brain don’t get a break.
I agree. It’s the smartest thing you ever did to get a double earpiece. You don’t hear anything.
One of our shows, it was in Australia, versus Robert Whittaker. I only had one and I missed cues because the arena was so loud. It was so crazy loud that I couldn’t hear the count. Finally, I was like, “Do you guys have a way to help this?” If you watch it back, I was late for several seconds, and not because I wasn’t paying attention. It’s because I genuinely couldn’t hear. Having doubles helps in an arena setting.
NFL games, it’s so helpful because they’re tremendously loud between the action on the field and the crowd. It does make people think I’m a bitch because they think I’m walking by without saying hi. They’re clear, so you can’t see them, but it’s the greatest thing of my life. I don’t know what I would do, I just got my wires replaced. People also don’t understand with live TV, your producers are constantly like, “We’re changing this. We’re doing this. Can you do this? What about this? Can you do that?” There’s a huge miscommunication if you can’t hear them or communicate with your talkback, that’s why I always have a mic on me. I always have my ears in because that’s like your telephone. That’s your cell phone, but it’s immediate.
Have you ever had an embarrassing moment on camera where you had something your teeth or dress was caught in your underwear?
Every time I watch, I’m like, “That’s embarrassing.” No, I can remember one time we filmed something. This was a few years ago. We filmed something by the Octagon because it was one of those weekends where we had multiple fights in a weekend. We had a weigh-in, and then a fight was starting immediately after. I filmed something from the way in that they were going to put at the beginning of the show. I don’t usually pre-tape stuff, but that was pre-taped because I needed a buffer zone to get to the fight. We filmed something and people texted me, they’re like, “For your next hit, you have lipstick on your chin.” I was like, “That was taped. Not one person told me about it.” I had bright red lipstick.
That’s one of my faults that I find that I do when I’m in front of the camera. I do this.
I’m constantly touching my hair.
I’m like, “Stop.” When I watch it, I’m like, “Stop it. Stop it.”
We all have them and I work hard to not do mine. I do touch my hair off. Before I go live, I’ll touch my head fifteen times. Is it straight?
It’s always the perfect haircut for you. You have such great fashion sense too. I watched the Mystic Hour. He did a great job interviewing you.
He’s good.
When I watched that, he was talking about your fashion and he showed some pictures of your Matador outfit. There was the Spice Girls. That was a cool segment that he did. I like that. Do you plan your outfit ahead?
Yeah, because the internet cares.
They care.
It is the most stressful part of my job, picking my outfits.
Do remember that green suit that I loved and you’re like, “Everyone hated it.”
On Arizona. They were like, “She’s sexy Gumby.” At least you’re sexy. We’ll take that take. It’s challenging. There’s also a lot of rules when you are on camera because of the way the camera picks certain things up, certain colors and patterns. There’s a lot of things that will look amazing in real life but will not translate on camera and vice versa. There are some things that look great on camera, and you’re like, “Why would you wear that in real life?”
It’s hard. It’s fun. My husband and I love fashion. He is so good. He’s the best. We’ll get a bunch of options, and then we’ll have a fashion show. That’s what I call it, like, “Time to the fashion show.” I try to always dress in a way people can buy the stuff because it’s a big thing for me. I see people on TV, and I want their outfit. When I’m like, “It’s $900 for that blazer.” No, thank you. I wore this purple suit. That’s from ASOS. It was $35 for the whole suit.
I loved it. Jared Leto then stole your look.
I saw them at the fight. I was going to show him the picture of the side by side of us, I was like, “No, he probably won’t be into that.”
He has longer hair than you. The other thing, I told you this. I don’t know how the heck you walk in those shoes all day. I have no idea. I would die.
It’s just become second nature. Everyone is taller than me. I’m only five feet tall. It becomes a thing. We are held to a standard. If people see us in the crowd, they don’t want us to be schlubs. I don’t want to misrepresent our brand in any way of like, “She’s walking around like a schlub.” I am always trying to make sure. I’m like, “What’s the most professional way I can carry myself throughout the evening?” That’s to keep my shoes on but even though I don’t want shoes sometimes.
I know you don’t like social media but you are an influencer. You are and so the things that you wear, people are going to want to know where you got it and how to get it. That’s awesome that you’re wearing things that are attainable.
The jacket I’m wearing would normally be expensive, but I got on clearance. That’s a big thing for me. I’m like, “No, I’m not paying full price for anything,” the real real. I get so much stuff there because also, the way we use fashion to be able to be good to the environment with it and stuff is great. Also, I’m not paying full price for something I’m probably going to wear one time because when I wear it again, I get called out. I’ve repeated a shirt before that I wore to interview Conor, and then I heard about it. That was literally four years ago, but okay.
Meanwhile, we’re wearing the same thing four days in a row out here in the real world. Okay.
I get weird about when I get off planes. I have to shower media at issue.
I do too. I heard you wore masks before it was cool. I didn’t say anything.
Because people are gross.
Women In Sports Broadcasting: You have to get those big interviews. You have to do them well and get something out of them that other people cannot.
People are disgusting. People will look at me crazy. Even when I worked in corporate hospitality, I remember when I was sick, I would wear a mask to work as a courtesy, and people would avoid me like the plague. That’s fine. That’s cool. Now, if you wear a mask, people want to sit next to us. You’re like, “Damn.”
I was talking to some of my colleagues. I was telling them how it used to be my Southwest trick. The reason I started wearing masks is we went and we had a show in Singapore. I landed and was deathly ill because we were on an airline that wasn’t super hygienic and germ-friendly. We saw the doctor there and she was like, “You need to wear a mask. That’s why we do this. It’s to help protect you, but it’s also to protect others should you be sick.”
That was ten years ago or so, and I always wore masks, but when I wore it on Southwest, where it’s open seating. If there was going to be an open middle seat, it was next to me because nobody wanted to sit next to the girl with a mask on. There must be something terribly wrong with her. Now, do I reverse it? Do I not wear a mask so no one will sit next to me? It used to be my little trick.
I want to ask you two MMA-related questions. One is, a lot of times people ask me, who are your favorite MMA fighters? It’s a typical question. I’m like, “That answers two folds,” because, for me, the two people that impacted MMA the most and my two favorite fighters are two different things. I always bring up Ronda and Conor. You and your interview in The Residency Podcast.
Those guys are great.
That was a great podcast, by the way.
You should check them out. They’re in Vegas. They’re the greatest.
They seem super cool.
They all have cool side gigs. One of the guys is unlocked. He’s a food account on Instagram for Vegas.
We love food. I remember you saying that your career changed with the Ronda revolution and with Conor. I specifically remember all of a sudden, my little underground MMA career and my love of MMA, all of my friends were talking about Conor McGregor like they were experts. Ronda, they hated her. They couldn’t believe she was such a bitch and all this stuff. I was like, “Do you know that she is playing her part so well that she has you thinking all these things?” It’s the same thing with Conor. I’m like, “That’s why Conor gets paid because he talks shit and he hypes up the fight.” That’s why they bring in the big bucks. I was glad to hear you say that they revolutionized MMA. Do you have any comments about those two?
My life changed when Ronda and I did an interview. I work for UFC. Sometimes there are things that I get the opportunity to do because I work for the organization. We had done a couple of interviews. I had interviewed her when she was at Tough Enough. We knew each other. I did some interviews and she enjoyed them and she told her team, “I’d like working with her.” Her agent ended up reaching out. He’s my agent. We’re a part of my team. We did all these interviews and I got to go to Saturday Night Live with her. I got to do all these things because she trusted me. There’s a lot to be said about conducting yourself in that way.
There’s a place for journalism that gets to the bottom of things and it has all that but that’s not the way I like to story tell. I like to make sure it’s in the athlete’s hands. She was good about knowing she had these massive fights in these high-profile spots and being like, “You all do the interview with Megan.” That matters. It matters especially to a young woman in the industry who, yes, was doing all the other interviews. When the superstar is willing to grant you that access, it was on me to not screw it up. I was lucky.
I saw Ronda and I had tears in my eyes. She’s cute and pregnant. I was like, “I love you.” We have this absolute admiration for one another that will never go away. The same with Conor, he did not need to always allow me access after he’s done hours and hours of work. The amount that stars like that go through every day, especially on a fight week is crazy. The amount of responsibilities and obligations is insane. He made a point to be like, “Yes, I’ll still do Megan’s interview.” It’s huge. Without those opportunities, I don’t know what my voice would look like in terms of how big or small it is.
You have to get those big interviews. You have to be able to then do them well and get something out of them that other people can’t. For Ronda and Conor to allow me to have that place in their lives is huge. It changed my life. People who don’t want to support my NFL colleagues, they don’t watch but they watch Conor, everybody said something to me. When I saw them, they were like, “We saw your interview before. We saw you during his fight.” It’s like, “I work every Saturday.” For them, they’re noticing and they’re Hall of Fame football players and they’re like, “That was cool.” It matters. I try to treat everybody equally, every person on our roster. It matters to people. It gave me opportunities and opened doors for me that maybe I wouldn’t have or wouldn’t have as soon and I owe them a lot.
I was at Ronda’s first UFC debut when she fought Liz. I made a point to be there because I love her since Strikeforce. I was like, “Dana said no women in UFC and here we are.” I had to be there because I was like, “This is a momentous occasion.” By the way, it was also Incidentally the last time I wore heels to a fight. That arena had no handrails.
I know exactly what you’re talking about.
It’s The Honda Center. It was Ronda at The Honda.
There are a ton of arenas like that. I’m always like, “I’m going to die. This is the time where I fall down the steps on air.”
Honestly, now I’m the girl who wears athleisure to a fight. I used to dress up and then I’m like, “Who’s going to see me?”
Social media allows you to see this glamorous world, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg and not all thework that goes on under it.
There are several different groupings of what people wear. One is like, “Fighters are going to see me in the crowd and would marry me.” There’s like, “I’m having a good time and I like to look cute.” There’s like, “I want to be comfortable.” There are three different layers of that.
Do you have any super memorable or vivid memories of certain fights that stand out to you? There’s a couple of fights that, to me, I’ll never forget. Do you have any moments like that?
Yes. Speaking about Conor McGregor, Conor versus José. Not even twenty seconds that it lasted. I did the world tour with them. I was a part of the lead-up. I remember we were standing in the arena and Conor knocked out José. I remember standing with some of my colleagues who worked in the PR department and then we looked at each other and they’re like, “Run.” We ran backstage because beers started flying. Everybody was stunned for 5 or 10 seconds and then there was a, “Go.” We went backstage. There are been some epic battles. I remember Shogun and Dan Henderson. That was in San Jose. I remember being like, “Holy crap.” I remember Anthony Pettis. I was cage side for the WEC Showtime Kick. I remember being like, “What did I see?”
To this day, it still is the most played highlight of all time.
Ronda’s arm-breaking. All of those things are burned into my brain. I always feel I should sit down and think about it and make a list but then I forget.
There are many times that I’ve been like, “What?” I ran around the living room by myself freaking out. There are some pretty showstopping moments. Honestly, there have been some moments where I’ve been disappointed that the fight didn’t go even to one round. I know that they don’t do it on purpose. I was in Vegas, where Derrick was fighting Roy Nelson on that card.
I remember I had a friend on the card named Mitch Clarke. Within the first fifteen seconds, something happened where his knee gave out. I don’t remember what happened. I ended up leaving the fight going with him to some crappy Vegas hospital. There was a bunch of other fighters there getting their injuries. It was such a letdown because I know he went to Jackson’s for his camp and spent so much time. After that. he was like, “I’m done.” I was like, “Don’t say that now. Wait a couple of weeks.”
It’s tough.
It’s hard.
It’s the highest highs and the lowest of the lows. Sometimes it’s out of the athlete’s control. Sometimes it’s this freak thing. You can have a bad day. We all have bad days but if you have a bad day in the Octagon, it’s there for everyone to see.
I have one more question for you. I ask everybody on this podcast this one question. If you were to be walking down the street and you see twenty-year-old Megan Olivi walking towards you and you’re like, “I’m going to go give her a big hug.” You embrace her and you look at her. What is the piece of advice or the one thing that you say to twenty-year-old Megan?
It will all work out. That’s the thing. Life is unpredictable. Work is unpredictable. Things are unpredictable. Marrying Joe and having that next to me means it will never be bad. When I was twenty, I was on and off with a high school sweetheart and things were crazy. I was feeling like a bad person for wanting to pursue this particular path. I remember thinking, “What if I’m making the wrong choice? Should I be doing this for myself? I should worry about other people.” That’s what I would tell myself, “It’s all going to be okay.”
Not that I’ve ever been cocky but I’ve always believed in myself. My parents always were like, “You can do whatever you want to do. You have to work super hard at it.” That was always there. I always felt like I owed other people instead of myself. That guilt would eat at me for a long time. It’s hard to be away from my parents and that’s a good thing I carry around a lot. In terms of when I was twenty, it was like, “It’s going to be okay. You have to do this for yourself.” A lot of times, I would make decisions based on other people’s happiness instead of my own and that wasn’t the move.
You have given us so much juicy information. I have loved having you on the podcast.
This is the best. Thanks for coming here. She came all the way to me. I’m here in some dingy hotel room.
It’s UFC 265 and it’s here in Houston. We got the opportunity to be together.
This is amazing.
It’s nice.
She came all the way down here. You’re doing what people dream of doing. You’re taking the risk and it’s scary. I know that everybody thinks they can do it or wants to do it but to do it and put it into practice is a different thing. I hope you’re proud of yourself and you know how much people can take from this because it’s not an easy thing to do and to put yourself in a vulnerable position and lay it all out there and say, “I’m going to try.” The hardest part is to make the decision to try and you’re killing it.
Thank you.
I can’t get over your podcast voice. Do you do voice-over work? You should.
Thank you so much.
I feel like you should sign up as a voice-over actor.
I might do that. Maybe I’ll do a 1-800 operator thing. I want to do something that’s going to help women our age from the 20s to 40s. I feel like there’s nobody to slip on the banana pill for you. I want to do that for other women. They don’t have to do that. They don’t have to go through those steps and they can get the information they need right from me and the source. They don’t have to go out and google and find things out for themselves.
To speak to people from all different walks of life helps because you don’t always get to interact with them. You only see the glimmer that people let you see on social media and that’s not in real life. To be able to have a real conversation and get that input is special and important.
What’s real life is we have no real light in this room. That’s why it’s a little grainy.
I haven’t washed my hair or put on makeup.
We’re going to make it work.
I’ll look glamorous you won’t know me because we have a makeup artist.
Even makeup artists, I wish I had one.
You don’t need one.
I put on makeup for Megan.
Thanks.
Thank you for reading. Megan, thank you again for being with me. I love you guys and I love you.
I love you.
We’ll see you at the next one.
Important Links:
- Megan Olivi – Instagram
- ESPN
- Heavy MMA
- Hallow
- @Compass.Couple – Instagram
- The Residency Podcast – YouTube
- http://Twitter.com/meganolivi
About Megan Olivi
Megan Olivi serves as a host and reporter for the UFC on ESPN. During the fight broadcasts, Megan can be seen reporting through the night, conducting interviews, and hosting from the desk. She also serves as a sidelines and feature reporter during football season for NFL on Fox. Olivi earned her Bachelors from Seton Hall University and her Masters from Fordham University. Raised on the east coast she now calls Las Vegas home with her husband Joseph and their dog Benny.
