How I Discovered Mixed Martial Arts

Hello my friends, this is my first column. I figured I better write something since I decided not to go to sleep and to just play Starcraft and post instead. Am I an insomniac? probaby but I had to stay up late last night because I was watching ppv's, same thing the night before so my sleeps all fucked up. Anyways lets get to the point. Where should I start hmmm, Why did I start this site? Yes that is good.

Like alot of people here I started posting at Sherdog. I've known about MMA for awhile before that though. I was always curious about the martial arts. I was somewhere in the 2nd - 4th grade when it began. I remember picking up a karate magazine, opening it up and you know how in the front of magazines they have letters from readers? Well yeah I was reading those. All these angry karate guys were complaining about something called the UFC.

Apparently this guy was using something called Jujitsu to beat up all the karate and kung fu guys who entered. They were really pissed I tell yah, some of the guys were saying that it was all a big setup by the Gracies to push their brand of martial art and if it wasn't in the cage things would be much different not to mention what would you do if more than one people attacked you. At this time I didn't know jack squat about what Brazilian Jujitsu was or what these guys were talking about. All I knew was this guy named Royce Gracie was undefeated against all other martial arts styles. He was the best, he was immortal, he was THE ULTIMATE INVINCIBLE CHAMPION........hey I was a kid at the time what was I gonna think? The guy had never been beaten!!!, I wondered if his style of Jujitsu was anything like the Judo my grandparents were telling me I should take. I tried telling a few people about what I read but they had no idea what I was talking about. That was the end of it for awhile but still in the back of my mind I was thinking about Royce.

Oh yeah I bought the magazine and more after that. Apparently in these No Holds Barred competitions a move called the giottine choke was winning fights big time. Inside an issue of black belt magazine there was an article about how to escape this particular move.

Life went on and I grew bigger and stupider, my interest in Bruce Lee and Mortal Combat went away as I became interested in girls. Too bad they weren't more interested in me. PWNT.

I still picked up the occasional martial arts magazine to skim through the pages when I had to wait around. One day while skimming through another mag OMFG some japanese pro wrestler was beating the Gracies!!! WTF WTF. I was suddenly made aware of this thing called Pride where some guy names Sakuraba was beating Royces family members and he was gonna fight Royce in the biggest fight of all time. OMFG WOW!

That was the end of another encounter with MMA as I went on to not get laid even more.

Ok so I was explaining how I became interested in mma. I left off right before I witnessed my first mma event at a friends house. It wasn't an event actually but a best of ppv that was really heavy on the Tank Abbot. I admit the guy was entertaining but something about him made me think he was more of an asshole than a martial artist. My favorite part was seeing him get destroyed by Vitor Belfort and Pedro Rizzo. My friend was a big Tank fan and was wondering why I was laughing at him getting his ass kicked. I think I just liked the idea of the well trained athlete picking apart the barroom brawler with an attitude. The ppv also showcased the early stages of the Ken vs. Tito fued that would carry on till this very day, jesus christ *shakes head. Overall I was impressed, I went home believing Brazilian Jujitsu to be the best martial art of all.

Later on this persepective would change as we all know now that you gotta be well versed in boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jujitsu and now even judo.

I went to a couple Judo lessons when I was a young kid and was pretty intimidated by the intesity of the lessons. I wish I would have stuck with it because when I started wrestling in junior high, a few years prior Judo experience would have helped me alot. I wrestled until junior year when personal problems caused me to quit. I started smoking the chronic, dropped acid and tried mushrooms a few times. On my graduation night I tried E teh first time and was high as fuck.........wait a second what is this article about oh yeah anyways when I was about 22ish fuck I can't remember I was searching online trying to find information to learn how to fight when I came across a picture of Rampage slamming dah fuck outta Arona. I was like "Pride? wtf is this some pro wrestling shit?" after further reading I realized this was just like the UFC and I remembered reading about Sakuraba in Pride, the whole look and feel was just amazing with the ring and the bright colors, it was like wwf but real(I was a bit of a prowrestling fan). It was then I felt a chill shoot up my spine, like I just discovered something amazing and when everyone else seen what I seen it would be the new thing. I became very interested in the martial arts once again, doing alot of reading online and picking up magazines.

I came across Sherdog and started reading the posts. Alot of days when I was bored or waiting for downloads was spent on Sherdog learning about mma. It was different then, more knowlegable people, this was the pre tuf era, the golden age of sherdog and I had come seeking enlightenment.