Ariel Helwani

Did You Know?

• Helwani's surname indicates a family connection to the city of Helwan in Egypt.
• On June 4, 2016, Helwani and two colleagues were escorted out of UFC 199 and banned for life from UFC events, a ban that was rescinded two days later on June 6, 2016.

Early life and education

Ariel Helwani, whose last name points to ancestral ties with the Egyptian city of Helwan, was raised in Montreal as the youngest of four children. His parents are Mizrahi Jews. His father, born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, has Syrian roots and moved to Lebanon as a teenager before relocating his family to Montreal in 1967. His mother, originally from Beirut, Lebanon, came to the same Canadian city in 1973 because conditions for Jews in Lebanon were becoming too dangerous.

Helwani is the nephew of two notable figures: David Saad, an Olympic judoka who competed in the 1976 men’s lightweight event, and Gad Saad, an evolutionary psychologist. He speaks English, French, and Hebrew fluently, and can understand Spanish and Arabic. Growing up in Montreal and Westmount, Quebec, he attended Akiva School and Herzliah High School. He graduated from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2004.

During his time there, he hosted a sports radio show on the student station WERW and secured a summer internship with NBC for the 2004 Summer Olympics, but had to drop out because of an ankle injury. Though he first encountered mixed martial arts as a preteen, it was during college that he rediscovered it and decided to build a career in the sport, aiming to become its Howard Cosell. He attributes his interviewing ability to his mother and his strong work ethic to his father.

Career

Helwani had an internship with HBO in early 2003 and became a sports production assistant there in 2004. After a month at Spike TV, he quit and founded his own website, JarryPark.com, on October 19, 2007. He built his network by messaging fighters on Myspace. He also worked for MMA Rated, Versus.com (later NBCSports.com), and AOL's FanHouse.

After AOL bought MMA Fighting in 2009, Helwani started working there and launched The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani in June 2009, a weekly show he produced and hosted, influenced by The Howard Stern Show. He also hosted The MMA Beat on YouTube and co-hosted the SiriusXM radio show Fight Club. From 2011, he served as an "MMA Insider" for Fox Sports 1's UFC Tonight and other programming. He was fired from Fox in March 2016, later revealing that his position required his paycheck to come from the UFC's parent company, Zuffa, which he called the biggest regret of his life.

On June 4, 2016, Helwani and two MMA Fighting colleagues were escorted out of UFC 199 before the main event, their credentials taken and them banned for life from UFC events by president Dana White. Earlier that day, Helwani had reported Brock Lesnar's return at UFC 200 before the UFC announced it. A UFC spokesman said professional standards require contacting the UFC before reporting a story, but that the scoop was not the sole reason for the removal.

Personal life

Ariel Helwani has been married to Jaclyn Stein, the founder and designer of Anzie Jewelry, since October 25, 2008. The couple, who have a daughter and two sons, became U.S. citizens on March 8, 2022. He observed kosher dietary laws from seventh grade into his mid-20s, stopping due to travel demands, but still puts on tefillin every day. His sports loyalties include the New York Knicks, Buffalo Bills, Toronto Blue Jays, and Montreal Canadiens. After dropping his support for Everton FC following the 2021-22 season, he now backs Nottingham Forest and is a self-described huge fan of their former forward Brennan Johnson. A darts enthusiast, Helwani has been praised by Eddie Hearn as a potential driver for the sport's growth in North America.

Honors and awards

Since 2010, Ariel Helwani has been named MMA Journalist of the Year at the World MMA Awards every year. In 2011, Fight! Magazine placed him on its “Power 20” list of influential figures in the sport. He also received the 2014 Journalist of the Year award from the Awakening WMMA Awards. Helwani has organized two Helwani Nose Awards events, held in Chicago and Las Vegas, where past and present MMA fighters compete in a UFC trivia contest for the Nose World Order belt.