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Agreed. Without beating my own chest I've also strapped on the gloves once or twice because my step-dad was a boxing coach. My path to becoming an MMA fan is this: UFC 1 and 2 kind of changed my perception a little bit but I still held on to the idea that "in a real fight" if someone grabbed me I would just touch them and they'd fall asleep plus the production made it seem like WWE stuff so who knew how legit it really was? So UFC wasn't really what did it for me.
What sold me was when an out of town friend came back to visit and started bragging about this "muay thai/kickboxing" stuff. I'd watched every Van Damme movie so I sort of knew what it was but I also knew of the karate guys in town that would regularly pick fights with boxers and get KOed stiff within seconds so again thought of it more as joke than anything else. My friend then proceeded to demonstrate his acquired skills by banging his shin bone into a street sign with scary power. A short debate later I'd talked myself into letting him leg kick me and spent the rest of the week with a limp and a new understanding of competitive (keyword) martial arts.
Got stuck on K1 after that until I saw Cyril Abidi and later Hoost get merked by Sapp. Later found out Sapp had a fight in something called PRIDE against some dude called Antonio Nogueira. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen because unlike the UFC stuff this time around I knew how legit Abidi and Hoost were and how human Sapp made them look in all his 300+ lbs glory. And this Nogueira guy tamed the Beast with pure skills. It's difficult to put into the words the hype that was behind a fully ultra roided Sapp at the time but Hoost was a LEGEND and on an incredible run when Sapp beat him. Easily the biggest name in combat sports outside boxing. Mr Perfect. He was a fucking superhero.
Then Semmy fought Fedor and Fedor fought Nog and that's all she wrote. I knew there were levels to this stuff and that all competitive combat sports weren't created equal. And no man had ever been created equal to Fedor. Been an MMA fan ever since.
It's funny to me now in hindsight listening to all these boxing heads and the utter ignorance they display towards the sport of MMA. It brings me back to when I was in their position and talked about things I really didn't have any clue about but did it anyway with the confidence of a runty little teenager lecturing a grown ass man about life. It's pure cringe. It almost makes me feel sad for them because they're so clueless and stuck in their ways.
And to now hear younger MMA fans go the opposite direction I did many a years ago and gravitate towards boxing? Life is funny is sometimes. Bizarre but funny.
What sold me was when an out of town friend came back to visit and started bragging about this "muay thai/kickboxing" stuff. I'd watched every Van Damme movie so I sort of knew what it was but I also knew of the karate guys in town that would regularly pick fights with boxers and get KOed stiff within seconds so again thought of it more as joke than anything else. My friend then proceeded to demonstrate his acquired skills by banging his shin bone into a street sign with scary power. A short debate later I'd talked myself into letting him leg kick me and spent the rest of the week with a limp and a new understanding of competitive (keyword) martial arts.
Got stuck on K1 after that until I saw Cyril Abidi and later Hoost get merked by Sapp. Later found out Sapp had a fight in something called PRIDE against some dude called Antonio Nogueira. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen because unlike the UFC stuff this time around I knew how legit Abidi and Hoost were and how human Sapp made them look in all his 300+ lbs glory. And this Nogueira guy tamed the Beast with pure skills. It's difficult to put into the words the hype that was behind a fully ultra roided Sapp at the time but Hoost was a LEGEND and on an incredible run when Sapp beat him. Easily the biggest name in combat sports outside boxing. Mr Perfect. He was a fucking superhero.
Then Semmy fought Fedor and Fedor fought Nog and that's all she wrote. I knew there were levels to this stuff and that all competitive combat sports weren't created equal. And no man had ever been created equal to Fedor. Been an MMA fan ever since.
It's funny to me now in hindsight listening to all these boxing heads and the utter ignorance they display towards the sport of MMA. It brings me back to when I was in their position and talked about things I really didn't have any clue about but did it anyway with the confidence of a runty little teenager lecturing a grown ass man about life. It's pure cringe. It almost makes me feel sad for them because they're so clueless and stuck in their ways.
And to now hear younger MMA fans go the opposite direction I did many a years ago and gravitate towards boxing? Life is funny is sometimes. Bizarre but funny.