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I feel bad that they aren’t alive anymore…
And some days I feel like they’re the lucky ones.
And some days I feel like they’re the lucky ones.
It isn't about that, not for me anyway.It's good for the old school fans, they get to win the dick measuring contest as to how long they've followed the sport for.
Thats the thing though...it only looks ridiculous in hindsight. At the time if you had asked most people who would win at least half and maybe more probably would have picked the boxer. And that would have included a lot of martial artists and obviously boxers.
These epiphany moments were falling like rains of gold coins at the time in terms of understanding realistic combat and we took it for granted; grappling; defense to grappling; kicking doesn't work; kicking does work if you master range, takedown defence etc etc etc.
Exactly. Like if you grew up on martial arts movies and games and one day it actually 'became real'. Then we saw generations of combat lore tested in real time.
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It isn't about that, not for me anyway.
True Mixed Martial Arts is a great sport, far more advanced now than then. The training, the nutrition, the PEDs, everything about the game has advanced in a massive way.
But back then it was still new, there was still a mystique. We still saw matches between completely different fighting styles instead of between generic "mixed martial artists". It was like real life Street Fighter, and it was fun.
We also weren't cynical and spoiled like today. The rosters were small so you not only recognized but were very familiar with almost every fighter on every card, and learning about new ones was exciting.
It was a different era, with a different feel, and I'm glad I got to enjoy the parts I experienced.
While the quality may not have been there, the excitement of discovery of what works in combat, the raw feel, the unique characters, and the fact that every event was 'an event' meant it was still way above the oversaturated content that we have today.Anyone that is real with themselves probably acknowledges that MMA pre-2000 sucked.
2003-2013 was amazing though and probably peak MMA.
I'm glad it wasn't around earlier. If it was an option when I was a kid I would have likely have a lot more places that hurt today.In some ways I’m glad I never got obsessed with it in the day