Old school fans: how did you follow the sport back in the day?

Great days indeed. We were a very small community so if you found someone who liked UFC or Pride it was rare.
We ran Directv with the box that had the cards. They’d zap the cards if you didn’t pay.
When the dark times came, you had to go to the events or get clips here on sherdog. Blockbuster, Limewire, etc were other ways to watch fights.
We’re pretty spoiled with the convenience of watching mma today. It’s pretty cool to have been able to watch it from the very beginning. New fans will never know.
 
philweed said:
Great days indeed. We were a very small community so if you found someone who liked UFC or Pride it was rare.
We ran Directv with the box that had the cards. They’d zap the cards if you didn’t pay.
When the dark times came, you had to go to the events or get clips here on sherdog. Blockbuster, Limewire, etc were other ways to watch fights.
We’re pretty spoiled with the convenience of watching mma today. It’s pretty cool to have been able to watch it from the very beginning. New fans will never know.
Click to expand...

We really did have to put in some effort. It's pretty cool to see how much has changed over the last 30 years. I still have tons of VHS and burned HL video compilations.

I always felt obligated to explain shit to people I was introducing the sport to, who didn't know wtf they were watching.
 
I was like 12 when the old UFCs were out on tape, remember them being in the faces of death section. Had to wait until the video store had it.

When they got on tape it was already months after the event had aired. Finally got dialup internet at my house, there was a site called fightingtalk or something and found out i was behind, i was on UFC 10 when UFC 12 was coming up next. Eventually was able to watch all the events n catch up.

my brother finally got a job and we got direct tv. I remember the first event we ordered was UFC 22, frank shamrock beat tito ortiz in a crazy fight. Never looked back.
 
philweed said:
Great days indeed. We were a very small community so if you found someone who liked UFC or Pride it was rare.
We ran Directv with the box that had the cards. They’d zap the cards if you didn’t pay.
When the dark times came, you had to go to the events or get clips here on sherdog. Blockbuster, Limewire, etc were other ways to watch fights.
We’re pretty spoiled with the convenience of watching mma today. It’s pretty cool to have been able to watch it from the very beginning. New fans will never know.
Click to expand...
Lol ah yes i remember the direct tv programmed cards. We’d pay the installer like 10 bucks and he’d program us to have everything. It’d get zapped and u lost ur fav movie channels and ppv.
 
First UFCs were pretty widely available if you or a friend had access to a descrambler. The true dark ages wasn't until UFC 20 or so. I can distinctly remember in the early days of Zuffa that the only TV coverage at all was this show called Full Contact Fighter that they'd only show at like 2am.

I remember getting the first Pride tapes from my All Japan wresting connection. Was super seedy. The way MMA was meant to be.
 
I lived in Peru and was in high school. I would download events through Emule. It would take 2-3 days sometimes.
 
Pride/K1 was on tape delayed ppv, and @oyo did an amazing job with live play by plays during events.

In terms of multimedia content, Sherdog made some great highlights back in the day, and fan based content was pretty popular on Kazaa/Limewire. The best MMA video I have ever seen is still Robby Parks highlight set to Staind's so far away.
 
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Not sure the order but Spike, UFC.com, Sherdog, which got me into PRIDE

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torrents when I was in the US. I was in Korea & Japan often in the 2000's so I usually caught Pride shows live
 
Bearknuckle said:
Lol ah yes i remember the direct tv programmed cards. We’d pay the installer like 10 bucks and he’d program us to have everything. It’d get zapped and u lost ur fav movie channels and ppv.
Click to expand...

How about getting zapped during the event? LOL. That sucked.
 
Brampton_Boy said:
Pride/K1 was on tape delayed ppv, and @oyo did an amazing job with live play by plays during events.

In terms of multimedia content, Sherdog made some great highlights back in the day, and fan based content was pretty popular on Kazaa/Limewire. The best MMA video I have ever seen is still Robby Parks highlight set to Staind's so far away.
Click to expand...
Yeah that was a good one. The sherdog ones of Rampage and Goodridge were amazing too
 
First couple of events UFC 1-5 maybe I say way later than they aired on VHS, there wasn't really anywhere to rent them in Sweden at the time so they were spread by copying of the VHS tapes by people who were doing martial arts themselves. It was all easier when downloading stuff started to become a real thing with Kazaa, direct connect and torrents.
 
TankAbbott4Eva said:
I made a comment in the Shogun and Fedor thread about how hard it must have been to follow the sport back in the day, probably especially in the "dark ages" when the UFC didn't have PPVs available on cable (I believe this happened pre-Zuffa?)

I started following late 2000s so by then torrents were available, then they started showing a lot more free content on cable and there were lots of "other" ways to watch events so i've been spoiled.

Anyway tell us your war stories. One dude whose name escapes me was saying he got a Pride event ruined by a commentator at a UFC event, though there was a 1 year (!) propagation delay in the event and him getting to watch it!
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Internt (late 90s early 2000s ) and Direct TV (when we could still get in Canada).

Was not that hard.

My favourite thing was NYE - pre-Zuffa - when the UFC would have all their fights starting on NYE day show them all day and evening.
 
all the pride cards were on direct tv ppv... old ufc events were shown a bar locally - i live in hamilton ontario at the time and there was a couple places that showed the ufc events - i'm not sure how they were aired but it was pretty crazy to see....

i'll never forget shamrock vs gracie....

then started watching pride and was a huge nog fan - i remember sitting there telling my friend how nog was going to sub fedor.... lol
 
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