Your Age At UFC 1, When & Why You Started Watching MMA

bubbleboyjones said:
I had almost same story as you except I attempted to watch UFC 1 as a kid live sort of like how i tried to watch the Spice channel back in the day. I gave up and found out a skinny jujitsu guy won the thing. I then got a hold of UFC 1 and then watch the next few live via a friends pirate box. I stopped watching during the dark days of the late 90s when it got banned and then got a Japanese bootleg tape of Pride Grand Prix in 2000 so I could watch Gracie vs Sakuraba(I got the tape because I heard Gracie lost a fight and had to see it). That was my intro to Pride and then I started back into MMA.
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Ah, the memories.

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UFC 1 I would have been 9 and a month away from my 10th birthday

UFC 70 got me started … cause it was a FREE EVENT whoo hooooo

My friend at the time convinced me to watch it with him and I was hooked.

Gonzega kicked Crocop's head off. Thought Gonzega was awesome and unstoppable … boy did he let me down.

Werdum vs Arlovski was so bad that the main event saved me from losing interest in the sport.
 
I was a high school senior 17 years old, and I watched because I wrestled and wanted to see the styles play out. Gracie blew everyone away ! It was awesome
 
UFC 1 was on my birthday (November 12th.) I turned 6 that day.

I started watching MMA/UFC in late 2015/early 2016 because I became a fan of boxing earlier that year and figured it was only a matter of time before I started watching MMA, too.
 
About 10. Me and my cousin rented UFC 1-4 on VHS at a Hollywood video. Couldn't/didn't really follow it close for a while because the internet wasn't what it is now and I couldn't get ppvs as a little kid. I'd always rent the new vhs when it came out though. Oddly enough, I really got back into it right BEFORE TUF. Been all in ever since
 
I was 16. My parents had just bought one of those illegal blackboxes to watch free pay per view. My first evening with the machine and ufc1 was on. I got to see real life bloodsport. Coolest shit ever.
 
I was 15 for UFC 1. I didn't start watching until maybe 2006. A buddy of mine used to record all of the PPVs and loaned them to me. I would watch the latest event within a few days and watch older events in between. Been hooked ever since (even WMMA).
 
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I was nearly 3 years old when ufc 1 took place. I'm not sure when I started watching. Maybe tuf 2 or 3. I've been hooked since then.
 
CorpseApathy said:
Writing a paper on MMA for my return to college, any feedback is appreciated, and might make it into the final draft.

I was 12 when the UFC debuted, but didn't started watching until I was maybe 14-15 years old. I used to ride my bicycle to the local, "16, 000 Movies" store to rent the events on VHS, a franchise that was eventually purchased by Blockbuster.

I had taken Shotokan Karate, and was taking Tae Kwon Do when I started watching. Like most fans back then, I had never seen any real NHB or Vale Tudo style competitions, but a lot of boxing and other TMAs.

It was more than just watching a bloodsport, (although that was definitely part of it) but I was also interested in seeing how all these martial arts and their practitioners would stack against each other. Watching Gracie tie up all these larger, tough fighters showed me how easy it could be to neutralize years of training, rendering all that work basically useless.

Watching the sport evolve from it's infancy has helped tremendously in understanding the sport as it exists today.
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I wasn't even born.Watching mma since 2010
 
I was 11, I never saw UFC 1 at the time, but my first time seeing it was UFC 5 when Dan Severn cleaned house and won the tournament. My dad had it on TV with his friend and I saw some of it.
 
9 years old in 1994.
started watching MMA in 2012; I come from a country with zero MMA tradition. So I saw this Anderson Silva guy on Youtube knocking the shit out some dudes with any of his limbs. That got me in.
 
4 years old, UFC 65, Randy vs Tim Sylvia got me hooked.
 
I was 14 when I watched UFC 1 on PPV. My father had one of those black box cable descramblers in the early 90's and I became fascinated with kickboxing and martial art event PPV's in particular. I don't remember how I heard about the first UFC, perhaps I had caught promos for it. All I remember is being excited enough about UFC that I didn't accidentally stumble upon it channel surfing. I was ready for it and loved the mixing of fight styles; my teenage mind thought this was mindblowing. Similar combat PPVs popped up now and then to stoke my interest between events. During the entire time I was into UFC as a teen I never missed a PPV even though no one in my social circle at High School knew anything about UFC it was something I watched alone (fat nerd in HS) or with my Moms BF (he was just as into UFC as I was and we became psyched up fanboys the second I walked in the door with the latest recorded PPV).

I continued watching and recording those PPVs until I started to lose interest in the fighters. All my favorites came and went and I felt the fights devolved into Tank Abbot style brawls rather than martial arts. I bailed before it went to Brazil. I recall this specifically because when I saw the cover of UFC Brazil at the video store I was somehow turned off by it. Sometime in 2005 an online gaming friend got me interested in Pride FC and I downloaded a few events. It blew my mind that things had changed so much. I got hooked on all the new stars and recognized a few older UFC fighters from when I was a teen. The difference in skill and star power drove home the impression that this was something different than the UFC I knew. It was both spectacle and skill which got me hooked. Like many, my interest in MMA has waned with the rise and fall of my fav fighters (Fedor being my all time fav, Taktarov being my first fav) but I still watch Live streams or go to a bar for the huge events. Most of my social circle lost interest in MMA a few years ago but a big enough fight could pull us all together for pizza and fights.
 
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12 or so when UFC 1 happened, didnt take any interest until UFC 52 - I wasnt a TUF Noob but from the same vintage
 
54. I made my family watch it. The thrill and the agony of this sport touched our hearts. We all still love it.
 
I would have been 38 when the first UFC 1 aired. And i never followed wrestling, but i heard Brock was going to UFC so then thats when i first started watching UFC
 
I was 22 during UFC 1 and never watched the beginning UFC’s, because there was a fake, choreographed, martial arts competition on ppv at the same time and I didn’t initially realize it was real.

The first one I ever ordered was UFC 4 and haven’t looked back since.
 
Thank you again everyone for your replies, this not only helps me, but it's a great read too!
 
I was three years old when UFC 1 happened.

What got me into the UFC and made me a lifelong fanatic? UFC 47 Ortiz vs. Liddell
 
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