As a journalist with more than 40 years of experience, I don't like to be the story. I want to write about and talk about the story, but at this point, the story is about me. I need to let you know my plans, and once I do, I'll get back to writing about and discussing the great athletes in combat sports.
I am starting my own site, keviniole.com, which will come with an app, and I expect it to launch in January 2024.
As you know, I was laid off along from my previous job on Dec. 1 after nearly 17 years with the company. I developed long-time friendships and loved my time there. However, I'm beyond excited to embark on this new venture and begin a new era in my career. I will put my heart and soul into making this site a daily must-stop for fight fans.
I am working with a company from my hometown of Pittsburgh called BoomPress to develop a website and a companion app for me that will be fast, efficient, readable and easy to use. The people at BoomPress are highly talented and you can see some of their work by looking at sites such as DK Pittsburgh Sports, New Orleans.football, Steeler Nation and the Boston Sports Journal.
I plan to primarily write about MMA and boxing, but I will also include coverage of bare knuckle fighting and slap fighting. I plan to write columns, features, breaking news stories and fight night stories. I'll be doing a podcast and I'll upload video interviews to the site.
A key part of the site is about building a community where fight fans can discuss fighters, bouts and issues in the fight game with me and others. I plan to do live video Q&As on at least a weekly basis, where you can ask me questions and discuss the fights and the topics in the business, and one of my goals is is to live Q&As occasionally with newsmakers.
There will be commenting below all of the stories, and I'll engage in the comments as I can. There will be forums where you can chat with other fight fans about anything involving combat sports. The only rule will be no attacks on others, no profanity and no politics.
The thing I'm most excited about is my ability to go beyond what I was able to do writing for a general interest mainstream sports site. Because this will be a site developed by a combat sports fan for combat sports fans, I'll be able to cover things I haven't been before. If I believe it is of interest to fight fans, you'll be able to find it on keviniole.com.
It's going to be a subscription site with ads. Pricing and other details will follow soon. I plan to at some point offer two different subscriptions, one with ads and one without, but that will come after the site grows a bit.
There is much to come about that.
Finally, I created this WordPress site years ago to give myself the opportunity to write about things I was interested in that weren't about work for me. Since I was laid off on Dec. 1, I have written plenty of boxing and MMA content here, and I will continue to do so until the BoomPress-created site launches. It will remain free and there will be content on it until the new site launches, so please check back often until then for more.
I'll provide more updates as the process moves along.
Thanks for your support.