CagePotato.com launched in October 2007, founded by Ben Goldstein and Jonathan Small, just as mixed martial arts was beginning to break into the mainstream.
The site quickly became one of MMA’s most popular and outspoken blogs, known for its breaking news, exclusive interviews, sharp opinions and occasionally questionable sense of humour. By December 2009, CagePotato was attracting more than 850,000 unique visitors and nearly four million pageviews a month.
Over the years, CagePotato interviewed some of the sport’s biggest names, including Brock Lesnar, Jon Jones, Nick Diaz, Randy Couture, Wanderlei Silva, Lyoto Machida, Ronda Rousey and Kimbo Slice.
Its writers included Ben Goldstein, Ben Fowlkes, Mike Russell, Jared Jones, Elias Cepeda, Seth Falvo and George Shunick. Fowlkes later wrote for MMA Fighting, Sports Illustrated and The Athletic, while the site also featured guest contributions from fighters including MMA legend Don Frye, Dan Severn and Gary Goodridge.
CagePotato’s reporting reached well beyond the MMA community, with its work cited or linked to by ESPN, Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, Yahoo Sports, VICE, Deadspin and Business Insider. It even received a mention in The New Yorker, which described CagePotato as “an irreverent blog” in a 2014 feature on Ronda Rousey. A description we can live with.
The site also supported fighters directly, including sponsoring a young Rose Namajunas in 2013, before she became a two-time UFC champion. CagePotato’s early coverage included interviews with Rose during her Invicta FC career and a post celebrating its sponsorship appearing on her Invicta 5 banner.
CagePotato was relaunched in 2026, with thousands of original articles, interviews and features restored to bring an important piece of MMA history back online.
The sport has changed a lot since 2007. CagePotato’s archives are a reminder of what it was like when many of today’s legends were still making their names, and when MMA was a little less polished, a lot less corporate, and considerably more unpredictable.