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Hashtag Files: Clay Guida is MMA’s most laid back intense dude – and pretty handy with a fishing rod

If you’re going to be a professional MMA fighter these days, you’ve got to stake out your territory on social media. The bizarre online world is where fighters interact with fans, attempt to arrange future fights, and sometimes just fall down strange rabbit holes.

But what can we learn about people by wasting our time scouring their social media for clues as to their true selves? That, friends, is a pointless and utterly unserious job for the The Blue Corner.

These are the Hashtag Files.

Clay Guida, UFC lightweight

Twitter handle: @ClayGuida
Instagram: @ClayGuida
Twitter followers: 143,000
Instagram followers: 123,000

One thing I must respect about Clay Guida’s social media strategy is that he has a very clear idea of what he wants out of each platform. And while those things might be slightly unconventional, they never seem to be in doubt for Guida.

Take his Instagram, for starters. A lot of fighters see it as a repository for all their gym photos and fight clips, posting an endless series of shots with teammates and protein shakes. But Guida? For him, the Gram is mostly about one thing: fishing.

View this post on Instagram

Warming up for VICTORY 🏆🇺🇸 Photo by 📸 @louievuitton88

A post shared by Clay Guida (@clayguida) on

Yes, friends, “The Carpenter” loves to fish. You almost get the sense that his fight with B.J. Penn at UFC 237 on Saturday night is mostly just an excuse to get down to Rio and see what kind of monsters one can pull out of the water in the immediate vicinity.

But don’t think for a second that Guida will be content to simply post still images of the fish he’s caught. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he will definitely do that. Over and over again, in fact. But he will also totally make his own fishing trip highlight videos and set them to his favorite classic rock tunes. His other use for those video editing skills? Making videos for his mom, of course.

His other primary uses for Instagram appear to be flogging a series of workout supplements, which he typically displays in exactly the same fashion as he does the fish he’s caught. Then there are his two other loves: live music, and coaching youth wrestling.

Interestingly, the thing you see Guida doing least is training or fighting. Which is not to say he’s not committed to either, but it doesn’t seem like anything he cares to document with quite such frequency. Fighting another man in a cage for money? Yeah, that’s cool. Not as cool as snagging some sweet bass, though. Or whatever the hell this is.

Head on over to Twitter, however, and you’ll see a very different Guida with very different goals. For one thing, as of this writing he hasn’t tweeted in a little over a year. Prior to that, he seems to have gone a couple years in between tweets.

So what finally got him back, however briefly? He seemed to view Twitter as a vehicle for one thing and one thing only: calling out Nate Diaz.

Seriously, Guida disappeared from Twitter in September of 2016 after a series of tweets promoting supplements and the maker of those supplements. Then he returned in March of 2018 and posted, retweeted, or replied to a total of six tweets. Every single one of them was dedicated to trying to get a second fight with Diaz.

My favorite of the bunch, obviously, is this selfie video shot while bike riding.

It’s a strange move, not only because it was a long shot matchup to begin with, but also because Guida won the first fight. Who goes around looking for rematches with opponents they already beat?

The answer, it seems, is a guy looking to up his profile. Guida’s activity in the cage has slowed down a lot in recent times. He’s still a frantic ball of energy when he does fight, but he’s also 37, and there’s so much fishing to get to and concerts to see. A fight with the post-McGregor era Diaz might have been a big spotlight for him. Instead he settled for a fight with Charles Oliveira in his homeland of Chicago, and lost via first-round submission.

Now Guida is returning to take on Penn in Brazil. Is he excited about it? Eh, sure. He’s excited about everything he does. But as far as what he feels like sharing with the world, the fight with Penn is nowhere near as important as the ongoing fight with the fish of the world.

This probably shouldn’t surprise us. For as long as the MMA world has known him, Guida has always been a guy who likes to have fun. Intense in the cage, yes, but outside of it? Man, that tough guy stuff is too much stress. Who needs that? Not a laid back guy like Guida. He’s MMA’s answer to The Dude, after all. Just ask his bowling buddies.

The Blue Corner is MMA Junkie’s blog space. We don’t take it overly seriously, and neither should you. If you come complaining to us that something you read here is not hard-hitting news, expect to have the previous sentence repeated in ALL CAPS.

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