What made you love MMA? Tell your story here

MMA, BJJ, & The Martial Arts
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Masato
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What made you love MMA? Tell your story here

Postby Masato » Tue Jul 03, 2012 11:19 pm

When was the moment you became HOOKED?

I watched from UFC II, but lost interest. Had a brief return of excitement when Vitor Belfort came on the scene, but when Couture beat him I lost interest again.

THEN I FOUND PRIDE GP 2000 at an indy video store, and witnessed the Sakuraba/Royce fight... and it changed my whole world. It is to this day IMO the greatest and most historic MMA match ever, and possibly still the coolest thing I have ever seen :) The Gracie/Japan legacy, Helio, the Triple-Mask Entrance, the no rounds - a living comic book fantasy, but it was all real.

I started training BJJ and have become a hopeless fan ever since.





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Postby Garrbanzzo » Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:43 pm

My earliest memories of MMA must have been around 1996 or 1997. I was 10 years old and my family had satellite TV for the first time. I remember viewing commercials featuring the old school UFC mascot (the bald dude that used to hammer fist the globe) and the Pride fist holding the lightning bolt but not much else until about 11 year later.

Being a poor young adult I had just moved to a cheap studio apartment in a complex where some other acquaintances lived. I had to choose between internet and cable TV since I couldn't afford both so naturally I choose internet. A few months later a buddy who also live in that complex suggested that I connect my TV to the cable outlet just to see I got some free channels. Sure enough I did, and among them were Spike and Versus more on that later. Later on a co-worker invited me and some others to a UFC PPV, at the time I new UFC and MMA were around and that was about it. Living on the tight budget that I did I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity for free pizza and beer and a free lesson in MMA, so I showed up. The PPV was UFC 82: Pride of a Champion with Anderson "The Spider" Silva and Dan "Hendo" Henderson as the main event to unify the Pride and UFC belts. To be honest I ate and drank way too much to remember much of the card (even the main event, I was such a n00b) but I'll never forget one specific scene. It was after Chris Leben had TKO'ed Alessio Sakara, Leben was celebrating his victory but while he was celebrating the cut under his right eye was erupting blood on to his chest. That's what made me think, "hey this MMA thing is friggin cool" so from then on I tried to watch as much MMA as I could find on the internet and my quasi-free/possibly illegal cable channels.

Then WEC 35 happend. It was on Versus during the "red, white, black, and blue summer" programming, and I happend to have stumbled upon it live. I don't know during which fight I started watching (the main card featured 3 title fights), but I know when my memory kicked in to overdrive. It was the last fight of the night, Carlos "The Natural Born Killer" Condit was defending his welterweight strap against Hiromitsu "The Last Samurai" Miura, and it was a barnburner. Condit would land some striking combos on the standing then Miura would get and insane judo throw. This exchange would happen multiple times throughout the fight in to the 4th round, when finally with only 15 seconds left Condit gets the TKO. From that point forward I was HOOKED!! I started reading MMA news/blogs sites, watching live fights (mostly free WEC), and digging through video sites to learn as much as possible.

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Postby jakedog » Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:41 pm

Johnny come lately here... Watched some that an old flatmate hired in 03 or 04 maybe. at the time i was watching K1 so two hairy dudes rolling on the floor in a mesh cage just looked lame. then a a few years later my mate had every ufc on his harddrive and some pride etc.. so i played catchup with ken, tank, chuck, tito, and the rest then was hooked. I know more about NZ fighters than the World top fighters these days. I dont train in bjj or do Kickboxing but maybe later who knows.

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Postby Masato » Sat Jul 07, 2012 12:10 am

What is the fight scene like in NZ?

Should we expect to see more fighters coming from there? what is the most popular style?

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Postby jakedog » Sat Jul 07, 2012 5:25 am

This is a humble opinion only from what ive seen in the last few years. Im sure there's differing views.
For a nation of 4million its pretty solid, and only going to get bigger. In Auckland it would be a stretch to go 2 weeks without a fightnight somewhere and there's 3 Auckland MMA Promotions which between them put on about 8 or 9 decent shows each year.
Alot of the fights are ammateur with a tonne of young dudes giving it a go but its shifting more to pro. Supremacy is an all pro rules card.
Every NZ promoter runs a Gym it seems so you'll see alot of thier fighters on thier cards and because NZ is a small place and everybody knows everybody.
Some fighters to look out for short term would be Dan Hooker at lightweight, the dudes elbows are nasty with his 2 last fights being doctor stoppage, one in Hong Kong and the last one in Aussie for the AFC Lightweight Title, both nasty gash's. Rod MacSwain has long been our top at welterweight, he's still never been stopped but has gone down to a few decisions, he held the first Legends FC welterweight title. And Brandon Ropati at LHW, He's undefeated here and needs some world class competition to see where he stands. And Dan Digby at Middleweight is a mean as one of the more experienced kiwis with 19 fights to his name. Luke Jumeau, Jacques Marsters and Gareth Ealey are all doing more fighting overseas at the moment too all savage dudes who can bang with anyone.
Other kiwis on the up are Ev Ting, Kai Kara-France, Anton Milnes (16years), Keiran Joblin to name a few...

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Postby Masato » Mon Jul 09, 2012 2:32 pm

Wicked! thanks for the insights

I am really looking forward to watching the international scene grow. in 10 years we will be seeing superstars from all sorts of countries not currently associated with MMA. I just hope that UFC is not afraid to even the ratio of american vs foreign fighters as the talent goes more worldwide.

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Postby glenrod » Fri Jul 13, 2012 8:36 pm

I dont want to sound too cliche but the first event i saw was UFC 1....not in 93 though, about 98/99. i used to rent the tapes from a video shop beneath my flat. they only had UFC 1-4 and thats all i had for about a year. in the second hand shops i found superbrawl 2 and 3, along with IVC 2, IAFC, WVC 4,5,6 and a video called "world combat championships" on VHS. after that i tried hunting down the other UFC VHS tapes. i paid £18 ($30) for UFC 3 from a newly opened "hmv" store and the tape was heavily edited, harold howards KO of roland payne was completely cut and the beating that hackney layed on murderbus had about 80% of the blows hackney landed removed. the VHS version that i had rented previously didnt suffer from any cuts of the footage.

I remember when i first ordered UFC 5 from the same superstore and it took about a week to arrive, and when i first looked at it i was shocked that the cover had royce gracie with a huge mouse under his eye. i was expecting royce to still be in the tournament format, and by the cover of the video, to me it looked like he got whooped. i remember being dissapointed with the fight and the fact that royce wasnt in the tournament, but pleased that ken got the draw as i was a ken shamrock fan at the time. the final VHS i was able to order from the store was UFC 6 clash of the titans and that still remains one of my favourite MMA events of all time.

With the introduction of tank and the general brutallity on the card, it was a winner for our then adolescent minds. strangely i or we, didnt enjoy the vale tudo cards as much as we should have for the time, the hideous roof and the darkness of the events, lack of good commentary and the general "UFC style" made it less appealing, sure it was more brutal and skilled (p4p vale tudo promotions had a larger number of better fighters at the time..imo) but nevertheless, not as appealing. the WCC card and then later in the same year "extreme fighting" were equally as precious as my UFC videos. maybe its the cage, the lighting, american style presentation that attracted me more than the vale tudo cards?by the time i had amassed a decent collection of VHS tapes, DVD was just starting to see some MMA releases so i picked up 2 boxsets.....king of the cage and gladiator challenge.

Here is where i got a huge influx of information that sent my head spinning: i had started a PC technician course at the city college and went on S.E.G.com/sports and learned of the changes to the sport and was introduced to a few names that i had yet to properly discover: don frye and mark coleman. i regret looking up all about the UFC because i learned of the rulechanges, the abolishing of my beloved tournament format and stupidly..the winners of the tournaments that i was yet to see :roll: . my then girlfriend made it her mission to get me the rest of the events and i was lucky enough to get UFC's 7-15, 17-20.


The thing that was so memorable about these VHS tapes was the fact that they were in a sleeve as opposed to a case, and they were incorrectly numbered. for example, UFC 7 was UFC 7, UFC 8 was labelled as UFC 9, UFC 10 was labelled as 11 and 11 as 13??? :shock: . i figured out that the comapany that had named the tapes had gone purely in numererological order. so they had labelled the UU95 and UU96 events (that i didnt have) as the basic order of events. the screenshots on the tape sleeves portrayed the correct events though...????


After soaking up all the UFC and valetudo events that i had and going through a dryspell... a friend of mine had a DVD that he got free with a magazine called the best of PRIDE 1-5 which had highlights of the first few events and with the lump on ralph whites head, the open weight joy of takase vs yarborough and the brutal KO of oleg taktarov at the hands of big daddy, i found a new collectable series of events to hunt down.

I managed to get PRIDE 1 on DVD and felt slightly underwhelmed by the card as i had exausted all of the best bits previously from the highlight DVD. my girlfriend bought me the best of 1-5 boxset not long after and i liked it, particularly the familar names and legends that i knew from the glory days of S.E.G. it would be a while before i got any more events beyond that, but in the meantime discovered IFC, BVF,UVF and expanded on my superbrawl collection.

Fastforward to about 2002 and i had my first child and got a decent place to live and an internet connection. that is the point where i just getting hooked so bad on reading info and obtaining the rest of the (at that time) events. i suppose that the glory years of PRIDE 2002-2005 will always be remembered as the best time of my MMA life because of the positive changes in my life at the time. watching PRIDE events fresh was always a household event for me, i would get the friends round, my brother, and we would make a night of it.

At that particular time my interest for the UFC had faded dramatically, i was still watching the old school golden era events having seen them a million times, few matchups caught my interest and because of my love for open weight matches and grounded knee's, soccer kicks, and tournaments...the UFC bored me to tears...to the point where i wouldnt buy the newer events. the older events had more of a sense of permanence and seemed more epic to me


When PRIDE was sold i had hopes that it would stay open. i felt shitty because my favourite org had died, but i followed my favourite fighters over to the UFC and because there wasnt many other good options i had a resurge in the love for the UFC, a kind of bittersweet love really. i was happy to watch most of my favourite fighters fight, but the general feel of the PRIDE event was gone, with the time i spent almost avoiding watching the UFC i had grown attached to the way those events were, it had become the norm for me


After a long withdrawal from PRIDE i soaked up every single modern event and have watched every single card within reason since about 2008. what made me love MMA originally has pretty much vanished, but insome ways changed for the better as there is a wide community of people online and the proffessionalism factor has been ramped up a lot over the years and the hype videos, the drama, all make it constantly interesting. that is pretty much my MMA life story right there, longest post i have ever made by a mile.

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Postby jakedog » Sun Jul 15, 2012 1:20 am

I helped film a show lastnight, YOUNGBLOOD 6 in Auckland NZ .. 11 Muay Thai, 1 UFC rules and 4 KIWIPRIDE Rules fights. It was amazing. some stomps went down and also an epic match up at catchweight between a heavyweight and an NZ lightweight Champ witch ended with a soccer kick and Mad respect shown between all the scappers. Still fizzzing now, ill try get some footage in the next couple weeks.

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Postby glenrod » Sun Jul 15, 2012 4:22 pm

jakedog wrote:I helped film a show lastnight, YOUNGBLOOD 6 in Auckland NZ .. 11 Muay Thai, 1 UFC rules and 4 KIWIPRIDE Rules fights. It was amazing. some stomps went down and also an epic match up at catchweight between a heavyweight and an NZ lightweight Champ witch ended with a soccer kick and Mad respect shown between all the scappers. Still fizzzing now, ill try get some footage in the next couple weeks.

that sounds awesome, if you get a link to the whole event, please share

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Postby jakedog » Mon Jul 16, 2012 1:37 am

glenrod wrote:
jakedog wrote:I helped film a show lastnight, YOUNGBLOOD 6 in Auckland NZ .. 11 Muay Thai, 1 UFC rules and 4 KIWIPRIDE Rules fights. It was amazing. some stomps went down and also an epic match up at catchweight between a heavyweight and an NZ lightweight Champ witch ended with a soccer kick and Mad respect shown between all the scappers. Still fizzzing now, ill try get some footage in the next couple weeks.

that sounds awesome, if you get a link to the whole event, please share


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sorry this probably the wrong thread to post photos just i had to do it!


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