Happy 20th UFC!! (post your oldschool stories/memories)

[Masato]

I started watching at UFC 2. A kid at work was telling me about UFC 1 and I couldn't believe him. He invited me for UFC 2 and my world was never the same.

[Edge Guerrero]

- The first UFC i ever saw was in 99, they showed Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrrock, the first fight between them, Marco Ruas vs Paul Varelans, and a Sakuraba match in Pride
This was the first time i ever saw MMA or NHB back in the time. Vale-tudo for us)

It's as a aleatory selection of matches, but got me hooked because showed kicks, and submissions. (Things people back in the time used to say that din't work on real fights)







I used to follow the sports by buying magazines, it's was very hard to follow the sport back in the day, they used to show reruns of the same matchs all the time, and sometimes diferents matches of other events, but if i wanted to know whats was really happening, i needed to buy magazines

I like the UFC more, the level of grappling and kicking keeeps going up, the only thing i miss back of the old days are the guys like Marco Ruas, Royce, Ken, Taktarov, Severn, Coleman.

I remember watching this fight in 2002 in think:



Looked like a movie, it's good to see that the UFC still around. ( All the previsions of the sport going down failed), and others MMA orgs surging around the world.

That little event back in 1993 gave the kick to what became a global phenomenon.

[Masato]

nice writing, Edge

MMA history/nostalgia is a whole world of amazing stories for me. I feel so privileged to have witnessed the birth and growth of the sport... so fascniating to watch the evolution in real-time

[Edge Guerrero]

nice writing, Edge

MMA history/nostalgia is a whole world of amazing stories for me. I feel so privileged to have witnessed the birth and growth of the sport... so fascniating to watch the evolution in real-time

- Yes, it's like a character in a video-game( Nerd mode ON)
The sport keeps growing, new techniques showing.
Martial arts that used to be discredited getting credit ( Like Taekwondo or karate)


I think the thing with mma, is we start seeing those guys like a friend more than some guy fighting on a screen.

Now we wait to see what the next 20 years reserve to us.













The sad part is see the legends falling or retiring.
But they gave us great memories

[Enock]

Growing up I was a huge fan of Bruce Lee, watched his movies religiously and would go slow-mo on the vcr during Bruce's fight scenes, I'd try to emulate all his movements and tried to be just like him, this was basically my foundation to MMA.


During the early 90's ....there wasn't much for fighting entertainment, besides watching movies like Bloodsport you really couldn't get much....so I started watching the WWF for my fighting entertainment , ordering every event my parents would let me, I believe it was after 92' SummerSlam or Survivor Series PPV a promo vid came up for a no holds barred anything goes fight tournament known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship, right away I knew I had to watch that! and so was my step-father, so we ordered UFC 1 and both sat in amazement watching little Royce Gracie go......

Vaguely remember an event where Royce was locking up a choke and I believe it was Jim Brown saying ...."You see, here...Royce has nothing here.." 2 seconds later ...tap-out.


I watched UFC 1 through 9 .....but after watching Severn vs. Shamrock I had enough....it bored me to death....(I would watch on and off) but didn't really start watching religiously again until Royce came back against Hughes. ( I wasn't really caught up with the evolution of MMA at the time so I was bragging to all my friends that Royce was going to destroy Hughes...lol....)

I didn't get into Pride until The Pride Open Weight Tourny, which was epic! and I'm still kicking myself on missing out on much of Pride's early years......


Big fan of MMA....

[Luigi]

Unfortunately I didn't get into MMA until my friend ordered Shamrock vs Ortiz in the early 2000s. He invited everyone over to watch it. I just remember it was so brutal how this Tito guy would violently destoy a guy. The other thing that really caught my attention was Rogan using fancy names for every single ground position. At the time, it just looked like rolling around on the ground to me. I'm the kind of guy who gets annoyed when I feel ignorant about a topic so I wanted to understand it all.