Deadmau5 featuring Gerard Way – Professional Griefers

by Rodrigo · August 31, 2012

I remember hearing a month or two ago that Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance would collaborate with Canada’s Deadmau5. But I had no idea that the music video for Professional Griefers, released two days ago, would involve Ultimate Fighting Championship until now.

In the video, directed by Paul Boyd and Jeff Ranasinghe, Way and Deadmau5 engage in a futuristic UFC bout with massive CGI mau5 robots. Mike Goldberg, UFC play-by-play commentator, introduces us to UFC Fight Night before the bout takes place. Also, you can spot the little girl from MCR’s Na Na Na music video [MV] around the 1:29 mark.

Who wins? Watch the entire video and see.

It’s interesting to point out that the UFC-themed video was released a few days just before UFC 151: Jones vs. Henderson airs on PPV (Edit: UFC 151 has been cancelled). Earlier this year, Madonna’s football-themed music video for Give Me All Your Luvin’ [MV] pumped up people to watch her live performance at Super Bowl XLVI, [1, 2] which had the New York Giants defeating the Patriots in the rematch of Super Bowl XLII. However, the Deadmau5 and Gerard Way video is only the beginning of future collaborations between musicians and the UFC, according to Bryan Johnston, president of UFC Brands .

“Music is part of our live show and part of our fighters’ lives, so we decided to go with a complete and total integration, a futuristic ‘Mad Max‘ idea of Thunderdome. We could have spent $10 million and two years to come up with an idea to try to reach a 21-year-old audience, but this is much more effective way of reaching the masses. We’re just getting started on these collaborations.”

I’m okay with the Deadmau5 song — the video, not so much — and I can look forward to future collaborations between UFC and musicians. After all, it’s not like the UFC PPV intro song, Stemm’s Face The Pain, [3] will be replaced anytime soon. I can understand them wanting to reach the 21-year-old audience, because that’s the age when US citizens are officially adults and they can spend their money on UFC PPVs instead of on wrestling or boxing events. However, I believe that the video is trying to aim for an audience younger than the one the MMA company is reaching for [see: teens and people who love Deadmau5 and not UFC]. Then again, there’s a good amount of people around UFC’s age target that went to see the Transformers films (I’m guilty of this) and Battleship, yet the fight in Professional Griefers is closer to Real Steel territory.

I’d suggest that UFC stay away from certain pop acts (especially the teen pop ones) just not to alienate and anger their current audience. Can you imagine the internet rage if someone like Justin Bieber, whose father attended a few UFC shows along with him, collaborated with the sports brand? That’s unlikely to happen, but still.