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

[91 seconds]

I was 12 or 13. I remember it on my friends big satellite dish being broadcasted. My buddy and I pitched in and bought the Gracie Shamrock superfight which we found boring as hell. I still had Bloodsport pulsing through my veins at that point. Took a break from it.

Marco Ruas was actually the first UFC
fighter other than Royce choking people out and Severn suplexing guys that I started to see where this was going. He had the best all around game and that bjj just wasn't going to cut it. Then I got hooked on Pride when I was 20 in 2000 and the rest is history. Right now I'm at a low point in being a fan of the sport and there is obvious reasons for that.

 

[moogie101]

18 years old.

Was training tae kwon do and a huge prowrestling fan mainly Japanese promotions that had shoot style like uwfi and pancrase.

The guy I got the tapes off was the one who suggested ufc 1 which had just happened as he knew the other stuff I liked and I was just hooked. Stopped watching wrestling and started getting all the mma events that started up. Used to preorder tapes of upcoming events as living in the UK and no Internet no other way to watch them.

 

[lostdog000]

i was 22
i liked martial arts and wanted to know what really worked in a real fight
ufc was perfect for me

 

[BIKES!]

I was 14 and watched UFC 1 live with my older brother. All the PPV advertising got us hooked, it looked like a death match.

I occasionally watched fights here and there but it was catching Tuf 1 on TV where I became hooked as shit. Leben finishing the cardio day after partying the night before when nobody else did was insane. The Bobby Kos Leben war was hilarious. Diego was a bonkers. The show was rocking and I couldn’t wait for Chuck vs. Randy to fight at the end.

I then went to Vegas at the Hard Rock to watch the Tuf 1 finale. Made a killing on Rich Franklin over Ken Shamrock. A lot
of money was there to be made early on in mma betting. Now, not so much...

 

[Rea_ctor]

First fight I ever caught was Royce gracie vs matt Hughes, I was lying watching TV late and happened to stumble across the sport, been hooked ever since.

 

[Devout Pessimist]

I was 10 years old. I wanted Royce Gracie to lose because I thought he was boring and wanted a striker to win. I did not become a fan of the sport until I watched Sakuraba years later after watching some Pride DVDs.

 

[kiley_sean]

When UFC 1 happened, I was 16 years old. Unfortunately, I had never heard of it at the time.

A few years later, when I was in my Senior year of High School, there was a class mate that sat next to me and that worked at blockbuster (this is 1995...so blockbuster was still 'king'). Anyway, he leaned over one day and started talking about a "Fighting video" they just got in. At first, I really didn't give a shit about anymore of his karate/kung-fu movie suggestions, but he started talking about how "real" it was and stuff. I was like, "It's fake, dude." "Nah, man...it's no-holds-barred shit. Like a karate dude, a boxer, etc. Blood and everything!". Alright, so I gave in, went to blockbuster after school and rented it. BLEW MY MIND! It was real and it was real BADASS!

Strange thing to note, was that it was UFC 2 that I watched. That was my first UFC viewing. UFC 1, for some reason was not available in any video store in my area. I mean, I tried for several years to find it because it was the only UFC I never watched (you couldn't watch things like that on the internet back then).

Anyway, long story short: 18 years old, UFC 2.

 

[-Magua-]

Missed ufc 1.
16 when I rented ufc 2.

Was already wrestling and had started boxing, but wanted to learn jitz after watching immediately.

 

[FrontNakedChoke]

I was 2 years old when UFC 1 aired.

27 now. Got into it in 2008.

Happy ten years to me!

 

[wilKO]

I was 3 at UFC 1 and I remember watching it. I decided that Peter Pan and Postman Pat was too childish and decided to watch MMA.

 

[EdmundHeng]

Swimming in dad's balls

 

[bootsy]

I was 22 when it happened. I caught it by chance at a buddy’s frat house. I think I saw the first 8-10 there.
Yes, I’m old as fuck.

 

[TriangleMonkey]

Was 16 yrs old when UFC 1 came out

Immediately started training karate at that point, which transitioned to kickboxing and kickboxing matches, which transitioned to no-gi jitsu, and eventually did some ammy MMA....then I found Sherdog

Oh and I started watching UFC cause Bloodsport the movie. I was a Van Damme Fan and being a boy in the 80’s you grew up to a lot of fucking ninja movies.

 

[Sinthesized]

I would've been 4. I had seen a couple UFC fights that my step-dad watched in the late 90s, but I didn't start watching myself until Pride 23 in 2002. Fedor vs Herring was amazing to me, seeing someone like Fedor fight.

 

[Vil7]

I think UFC 1 was in 1993 so I was 12. I used to look on the old SEG website & I was surprised to see that most of the standup fighters losing & wrestlers were usually winning. The first UFC I watched was UFC 3 in 97 when I bought it from a VHS tape from a Suncoast. My cousin watched it with me & she said "poor fat guy" after Keith Hackney beat up Yarbrough (sp).

 

[TheLinguist]

Writing a paper on MMA for my return to college.

I was 12 when the UFC debuted, but didn't started watching

*Start.

Good luck on your paper and don’t look down on the service industry, chances are that is where you will be working in the very near future

 

[Toxxus]

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.

In my mid 20s already when UFC 1 came out. It lead me directly to the Gracie Jiu Jitsu school in Honolulu under Relson Gracie.

 

[ghoul]

I was 3. Started watching in...08? Maybe. Because of TUF and my bf at the time showing me best of Pride and Chuck and Rampage vids.

 

[BobbyHillComedian]

I was 7 when UFC 1 happened, then some years later when I was still a kid my friend and I rented UFC 1 and 2 from Blockbuster, which was the first time I saw MMA. Didn't watch between 95 and 2005 or so, then my first year at college was the Bonner-Griffin TUF year so that was when I got into it permanently.

 

[ClueChap]

Simple. It combines all martial arts. Creates an art form. The combat of two human bodies. The technique and thought that goes into it. It’s wonderful and if you don’t appreciate it, you don’t understand it.