Guest post by Mark Lajhner, founder and chief instructor of Kaizen MMA Academy in Belgrade, Serbia. He is a Judo black belt (Serbian national team member), BJJ purple belt and multiple medallist in Freesyle Wrestling. You can find Mark Lajhner’s FREE MMA course Here.

Today I’m reviewing the Cage Hunter app thatís dubbed as the Uber of MMA matchmaking. It is suppose to connect fighters, managers, and matchmakers and make their life easier. Does it really do that? Read on (or watch the video below) and find out.

Through this app, fighters are able to receive fight offers from matchmakers.

Managers also receive offers from matchmakers and can find the right fights for their team of fighters.

Matchmakers (promoters) can build their fight card more easily with the app by choosing the right fighters for their events.

Before we proceed, in the spirit of total disclosure, I want to inform you that this is a paid review, but that it will be unbiased nevertheless. So if anything sucks, Iíll let you know.

The founder

Cage Hunter was founded by a Slovakian matchmaker Pavol Neruda, after being frustrated by the matchmaking process being so complicated and outdated. He decided to simplify it and this is how the app was born. Click here to read an interesting interview with him regarding the creation of this app.

Pavol Neruda – founder of Cage Hunter app

Does it work as advertised? We’ll find out in this review.

It is available both in Google Play and App Store. Once you install it, you can either take the tour, log in or sign up if you haven’t already by entering in your email and password. Then you get to choose which one of these three are you? A fighter, manager or a matchmaker.

Here we will explore the benefits for all three categories:

A fighter has his own profile which he can connect with his manager. He is visible for MMA matchmakers, he can receive fight offers, fight all over the world and he can also connect his Sherdog profile.

A manager can manage his fighters easily, receive fight offers, build his own team, offer his fighters to the world, communicate directly with MMA promotions and get better offers for his fighters.

A matchmaker (promoter) can search fighters easily, send direct offers to fighters/managers, complete fight deals in few steps. Create an offer and get many responses. It simplifies matchmaking and saves time and money.

Setting up the app

I will choose the manager and press continue.

You then fill in your profile by entering in your first name, last name, management name and an image of yourself if you want to.

Then you are redirected to a section where you need to activate your 31-day free trial by leaving your credit card info.

That means you will not be charged anything during that period and you can cancel any time if you think the app is not valuable for you. After the free trial period, you will be charged $3.99 per month.

After you complete this section you are in the app. Access to the full menu is in the top left corner.

And then as a manager, I’m prompted to add a fighter by either creating a new profile or connecting with an existing, if the fighter already has an app installed. Let’s create a new fighter profile. Once you fill in the basic info, click save.

Using the Cage Hunter app

Now you are all set and ready to receive offers from matchmakers, either as a fighter or as a manager.

As a manager, and by using the free trial version of this app, Iím limited to having only three fighter profiles. After I upgrade to the version, I can have as many profiles as I want.

And to be able to receive offers, you must fit the criteria that the matchmakers sets. Only then will the offer appear to you.

That means that the matchmaker can set his own search filters. The filters what he can choose from are gender, weight class, amount of fights, fighters with Sherdog/without Sherdog, background, region, and nationality. A radius can also be set so a matchmaker can choose to send offers to fighters that are closer or further away. A matchmaker can basically build an entire card through this app.

The manager can search the database of fighters, but cannot send them a message. He can only view their profiles.

For example, if you’re a fighter whose profile says less than 10 fights, 185 lb pound weight class, and a matchmaker is looking for a fighter with that fits that description, you will see the offer and will be able to accept it. Then it is up to the matchmaker to see who he will choose, you or other fighters that have also accepted.

Just to clarify things, I created my own fighter profile here by connecting it with Sherdog only for testing purposes. The last time I fought was over 11 years ago, and I don’t intend to do it again.

The matchmaker cannot send a message to the manager. He can do so only if they are already communicating about some offer.

For example, as a matchmaker, you will create an offer and some of the managers will respond to it. Only after you choose and accept one of them, you can start messaging each other.

Fighters and managers cannot contact the matchmakers. This is done to prevent spamming the matchmakers.

Before I give you my final thoughts, here is what I think could be better in the app:

– There should be an option to add videos to fighter’s profiles that helps matchmakers choose. Fighters could then add their highlight videos or even better full fights to their profile. Matchmakers could, of course, Google the fighter’s names and videos, but this would make it faster.

– There is no way to add height in the fighter profile, but some profiles do show height info. Those profiles have probably synced it from Sherdog and it would be good if you could add it manually in the app.

– Adding the amateur MMA record to the stats. That way a matchmaker gets a more complete insight into the fighter that is accepting the offer. A fighter can have no pro fights, like my student Marko in this profile, but have an extensive amateur MMA background, and the matchmaker cannot know this without searching for his amateur fights online, if there are any uploaded. Background in other combat sports exists but it’s vague. There should be an option to include titles in other combat sports too, as well as in amateur MMA.

– Small bugs should be fixed. Once an error has occurred. I needed to restart the app, and once I did it quickly returned to normal.

HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE CAGE HUNTER APP:

This app is very promising for all three categories that it was made for.

As a fighter, you might be having difficulties finding fights for many reasons. One of them might be that you don’t have a manager. Even if you do, maybe your manager doesn’t know all the matchmakers you might get offers from. This way, you can skip the manager altogether and get offers personally.

To be clear, I’m not saying managers are useless and shouldn’t be dealt with. Not at all. Most of the fights will still be agreed upon by managers, but this app can help you if you don’t have one, and even if you do. This way you can get more offers and choose the right fights for you.

Managers can manage their team of fighters easier by using this app which speeds everything up. They can get multiple offers for their fighters, and streamline the whole thing using the app.

Matchmakers can build entire cards by using this app since they can issue offers tailored to their needs.

So should you use it or not?

I believe this is a type of an app that can mostly be useful if you use it for a longer duration of time. So I suggest that you test it out for a couple of months, or maybe even a year, and not just one month. As a fighter or manager, you might not get suitable offers during the first month, so it might take some time.

It is free for the first month and $3.99/month after that. So if you use it for a year, it will cost you $44 which is very little, and can help you a lot.

Maybe this app is not for fighters who already have a contract with a major MMA promotions like the UFC, Bellator or OneFC, but I would recommend it to all the others.

So whether you are a fighter, manager or a matchmaker, I would highly recommend that you give this app a try. You can find the link to it HERE.

Here is a short promo video for Cage Hunter:

What do you think about this app? Have you tested it yourself? If so, leave a comment on youtube and let me know what you like or don’t like about it.