Fight Scout App Review by MMA Coach
Today I’m reviewing the Fight Scout app that is geared toward fighters, promoters, managers, coaches, and fans. In the words of its creators, it will revolutionize and change the way the combat sports industry works. Let’s see if there is any merit to what they’re saying.
THE FOUNDER
The founder of the app is Lubomir Guedjev, a pioneer of MMA and BJJ in Bulgaria, an ex-professional MMA fighter, a second-degree black belt in BJJ, and a long-time ADCC referee. An accomplished event manager, he has organized over 500 events so far. This includes the coordination of 7 world championships and over 80 international events for the ADCC Submission Grappling Championships.
Grant Waterman, a well-known MMA referee in the European circuit is also a part of the team.
WHY THE APP WAS CREATED
In the words of the founder, there were two core objectives.
The first one was to simplify the process for all parties. That was achieved by creating the marketplace for all combat sports, where participants can interact, connect, search and find information that is otherwise scattered across many platforms.
He also wanted the athletes to have the ability to create their own professional profiles, like a CV. Similar to Linkedin.
SETTING UP THE APP
There is no way to sign up or log in on your computer. Only in the app on your mobile device, but people nowadays are mostly using their phones so this is not a big deal.
The app is available on both Google Play Store and App Store. You have several options of registering for the app, and I chose to do it with one of my Google accounts.
You can register either as a fighter, promoter, manager, coach, or fan.
Then you are prompted to fill out your info by a chatbot which is very interesting. I’ve seen chatbots before, but not in this way. It takes you through the filling out process step-by-step by asking you questions, and it is very easy.
USING THE FIGHT SCOUT APP
AS A FIGHTER
You can search for events in your specific style to participate in. You can search by a specific time period, name of the event, city, and country. The most useful option is to search by open position, which will list all the events where the fight card has not been finalized yet and needs more competitors.
When you click on such an event, you will see what the organizer is looking for, meaning are they looking for a male or female fighter and weight class. You will also see what benefits they are offering: travel expenses, hotel stay, food, medical insurance, a fight purse, or any additional benefits.
The fight purse is not disclosed publicly, so you will have to message them to inquire. You do that by clicking on the profile of the creator of the event, and then by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of their profile.
A quick tip when creating a profile: the more videos, pictures, and info you upload, the better. Especially if you have action-packed highlights. That will make the promoters more likely to contact you.
AS A PROMOTER
You can access the database of fighters and search by age, gender, weight class, fight record, city, country, continent, nationality, promoter, manager, coach, and if the fighter is competing soon which is visible on their profile. And of course, you can search by the type of sports the athletes does. This is a very convenient way of finding competitors for your events.
You can create an event profile and list exactly what type of fighter you’re looking for, what kind of benefits you are offering, and other relevant information. Then the event will be visible to all users and searchable too.
AS A MANAGER
You can see which events are coming up and which ones are looking for fighters. Then you can contact them and see what they are offering.
While the option to see which weight class the promoter is looking for is great, there is no info on whether that weight class is missing both fighters or just one.
If it’s missing only one, I’d like to see the name of the unpaired fighter next to it, or better yet his entire profile. That way the manager will know if his fighter is a good match for the unpaired fighter. It also saves time as the manager will only contact the promoter if he determines that his fighter is a good fit for the other one.
This app is not very useful for coaches, and I will elaborate on this more in my verdict. And currently, there is no way to search for coaches, but it’s coming soon.
YOU CAN ALSO CREATE A PROFILE AS A FAN
That way you can only view other people’s profiles, and follow their links but cannot contact them. I think this category is redundant and should be removed. Fans could apply as fighters, coaches, or managers and gain the ability to contact other users if they wanted to.
While I do think that fans are important for the sport, I believe they already follow their favorite fighters on Instagram and other social media websites, and that this one would not be interesting for them.
ONLY FOR COMBAT SPORTS?
The app has many combat sports/martial arts to choose from and some of them don’t make sense. For example, what are Krav Maga and Wushu doing in this list? There are no competitions in those arts as they are not sports, so why are they listed here?
It could be that they are future-proofing the app and they plan on including coaches, organizations, and events from that kind of arts. Not necessarily competitions as they don’t have any, but some kind of events. This remains unclear and I thought this is an app solely for combat sports.
PROS AND CONS
MY VERDICT
The Fight Scout app gets my seal of approval.
While not entirely perfect, I like it a lot and can recommend it to all people dealing with MMA in a professional capacity.
When it comes to fighters, up-and-comers will benefit the most as the other more established ones that are fighting in the UFC, Bellator or One FC are already where they want to be and know good managers who can make even better deals for them.
Promoters of smaller shows can also put this app to good use as the process of finding fighters for their events is simplified and saves time.
Managers can use it to either find talented fighters and offer to represent them or find events for their athletes.
I believe this app is the least useful for coaches unless they are also managers. Yes, they can be approached by fighters who would like to change camps, or come and train with them, but that can be done outside the app equally easily.
A few years ago I reviewed a similar app called Cage Hunter, and you can read about it here.
Fight Scout has been downloaded 3,107 times so far and has 1.204 registered users right now. It has approximately 600 fighters, 70 promoters, 35 coaches, 80 managers and the rest are fans. And it’s growing. While these are not huge numbers, I see big potential for it in the future and I hope it grows quickly to the benefit of everyone.
Here is the app: https://www.fightscout.app/
What do you think about it? Have you tried it yet?
