UFC's Sage Northcutt stays positive despite negativity, sarcasm on social media

Sage Northcutt hasn't become jaded yet. He's still only 19, four months into his UFC career, and though he's been mocked relentlessly for it, he's as happy and upbeat as ever.

It might be wise for him to walk to the cage to Bobby McFerrin's 1988 No. 1 hit, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

In passing, I mention UFC Fight Pass to him. This was a mistake.

Fight Pass is the UFC's online streaming service, and is where Northcutt appeared in his first two fights for the promotion. After a second-round finish of Cody Pfister in December, Northcutt got the microphone in the cage and raved about Fight Pass.

As many journalists seated ringside rolled their eyes, Northcutt went on and on about its virtues. Later, at the postfight news conference, he was asked about it.

Most of the veteran fighters in the company aren't eager to appear on Fight Pass, because it reaches the smallest audience, at least at this point.

Northcutt, though, was undeterred. Asked at the news conference about becoming the face of Fight Pass, Northcutt quickly took the bait.

"UFC Fight Pass is amazing," Northcutt said. "I'm happy to fight on UFC Fight Pass."

Before another question was asked, UFC president Dana White grabbed the microphone and said, jokingly, "Did you think that he was going to say something negative?"

Ever since his somewhat odd entrance into the UFC – he appeared on the pilot episode of White's web series, "Looking for a Fight," and blew the UFC president away – Northcutt has been in the spotlight.

A friend/colleague sent an email last fall noting the significant amount of web traffic he'd gotten on a story he'd written about Northcutt after "Looking for a Fight" was released.

The traffic on his story on Northcutt, my friend wrote, was "way out of proportion to his place in the MMA world."

But after two finishes in two fights, his profile has gotten even bigger.

Northcutt is fighting Bryan Barberena on Fox on Saturday, and not on Fight Pass, and the mention of this provides another opportunity for him to talk about his good fortune.

"I love Fight Pass, because it's great," he says. "My friends, my family, people on campus, they can pull it up and hook it to their TVs and they can see me fight. So it's great.

"But Fox is great, too. It appeals to a different audience, and so that's pretty awesome, too. Of course I love being on Fox."

If White hadn't come up with this idea for the web series and if it hadn't gotten so oddly popular so quickly, Northcutt would still be a largely anonymous teenager hoping to one day get a chance in the big leagues.

And now, he's become this strange sort of star. There is a huge conversation about him on social media, much of it, predictably, negative and sarcastic.

He doesn't seem real. No one could be that perfect. He's got a chiseled body and a brilliant smile and an unbeaten record and relentless optimism.

Sometimes, he seems like a salesman who will shamelessly pitch whatever product he happens to be hawking on a given day.

Could anyone, let alone an inexperienced 19-year-old thrust onto the big stage, really be this happy, this wise, this, well, perfect?

He shrugs off the haters as easily as he does his opponents in the cage. He's 7-0 overall, 2-0 in the UFC, and he's finished every fight he's taken, five of them in the first round.

Asked about his critics, Northcutt begins by saying, "Hey, thanks for giving me the chance to talk about this."

And then he shows an uncommon maturity for a guy who won't be 20 until March.

"It doesn't bother me," he says. "This is sports. There are always going to be people who are for you, and who will say positive things, and there will be some people who are against you, and say some negative things. I don't worry about the people who are trying to bring me down.

"This is the sport of MMA. People watch because they want to be entertained, and I try to put on a great show for them. People want to see a great fight, and they want to be entertained, and that's what I concentrate on. I'm not going to let myself get upset at someone's opinion, when I know the truth. I'm just going to do my thing the best I can."

He's fighting on Saturday at welterweight because of a late change in opponents. He was slated to face Andrew Holbrook in a lightweight fight, but last week, Holbrook was injured.

The UFC put Barberena against him, because Barberena was training for a fight in February and was willing to fight sooner. But there was no way he would make lightweight, so the fight was switched to welterweight.

Northcutt, predictably, spun the change as a positive.

"I was planning to fight at 155, but my opponent broke his foot and he had to pull out of the fight," Northcutt said. "And this was just recently that he got hurt and the UFC had to find me an opponent at the last minute. You can imagine on a week's notice how tough that would have been, can't you?"

So he agreed to fight Barberena at 170. He'd begun his weight cut and was already in the low 160s, he said, a week before the fight.

When he heard learned that he'd fight at 170 instead of 155, instead of being concerned about a bigger, stronger opponent, he was thrilled that he could go back to eating normally again.

"A lot of people, when they go up in weight, normally they might say they're sluggish and tired, and this and that, but for me, it's actually kind of the opposite," he said. "Instead of having to cut back my food I'd normally be eating, I'd pretty much dropped the weight, but now I can eat and I'm putting that weight back on.

"Right now, I feel like a super human. I feel strong, faster and quicker. I think I'll be super human out there fighting at 170, so it should be great."

He says he hopes he'll be able to fight again in a month or two, to continue this odd and magical journey.

"I love it," he says of his UFC rocket ride. "This has been great."

He lives in a world where we all wish we could be, where even the negatives can turn to positive and everything is bright, sunny and relentlessly optimistic.

Good for him. He's in a tough business, and if he can stay bright, happy and congenial for a long time in the fight game, then he's surely a different kind of beast.