[darthrob64]

very interesting original post and comments in response

[Balfe]

Originally Posted by Summoner10

This has to be one of the worst threads I've read in a long time. And full of lies; let me begin;

1) not true. This forum has always been filled with shithead opinions with no basis or reasoning. Take a gander back using internet archive databases and you'll see. Hell you'l leven find threads in 02/03 with people talking about "how this place has changed".

Pride downloads were not hard to find, not at all. First peer2peer mma tracker site i ever heard of was in 2001 and many of the smaller orgs had their own websites (paltry sites, but sites they did have) and forums. Plus file/tape trading was very common place on almost all MMA forums. If you really wanted to see an event, you just had to try alittle harder than you do now.

2) not true either. I'd bet money that the amount of researching mma fans to just idiots who stumbled on it is the same its always been. The quality of posts has not fallen, just the amount of posters has risen so much, it just seems like its worse than it was as far as percentages go.

3) not true either. People like Silverwolf or Kabuki or whoever are the extreme exception. If you recall back you'd remember all sorts of stupid halfbrained advice being tossed out by supposed people who "train" yet the stuff they say is 1 stupid 2 dangerous.

Those exact threads still exist and pop up to this very day.

wrestlers doubted on here? wtf? kickboxers being an original group drawn to MMA? Thats a complete fallacy. Wrestling took over MMA long before good kickboxers came into it. Remember the negative term "extreme wrestling" given to the UFC in particular because it was being taken over by wrestlers. It was until the early 2000's that kickboxers started to became top fighters and technical striking being incorporated more and more.

and lastly on this point, ADCC has never had a big following on any MMA forum. I dare you to take the average MMA/NHB fan of any era and sit him down for just a half hour to watch a random ADCC competition and see if he doesnt scream out in boredom/pain. It is for a very select few.

4) pro fighters did used to psot more, this is in fact 100% true. But they posted here because the sport was so much smaller and their days so much LESS filled with things. In the day, it was train eat sleep and family. No media obligations, no commercials to do and no real public appearances to make outside of the random training seminar at some camp. A lot of fighters dont have time to be bothered with us anymore, nto a bad thing, they're just legitimate stars now and have very busy schedules. Plus, its much easier to interact and respond to a few dozen people years ago than a few hundred like right now.




these two paragraphs show where your real heart is. You think because you made a few thousand posts on an internet site that you are some how owed something, when in fact you are owed nothing.

What MMA was/is to you was something that helped you feel superior. You show this by refering to people less educated as you as "bozo fans" when in fact the reason you get to see these dream fights and this "cohesiveness" is because of those bozo fans. Someone is allowed to be as much of an MMA fan as they damn well see fit. If they want dive in and become hella hardcore and know everything, awesome for them. IF they just want to sit back on a saturday night and watch a UFC PPV or watch some UFC unleashed's they taped on tivo, who are you to bemoan them? In every sport you have different degrees of fans. Its people like you who give MMA and MMA a bad name, not the new fans.

I agree with this. Well said.

[BPA00]

A little self-righteous, but well written... I personally watched the early UFC's back in the day.... but then took a LONG break... until TUF 1 sparked my interest in MMA again.... I feel fortunate to of come back in the time of youtube and wide-spread dvd sales... w/in a few months of getting back into mma, I was able to purchase/watch around 50% of PRIDE and UFC events on dvd... I get annoyed w/ newer fans who disrespect some of the sports great fighters, even though they never take the time to research/truly learn the sport....

[Invincible420]

Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

These days, calling someone out on being a new fan (a.k.a a TUF/Spike bandwagon rider) seems to be a popular flame on these boards. I've had to point out to a poster recently, whitebelts and noobies have been bemoaning their treatment on these forums for as long as whitebelts and noobs have existed. This treatment will likely continue until the last of the true vets dies, and no one remains who can recall the first exciting days of the great sport of MMA. Many of these younger fans likely resent the often condescending tones of older (and usually much more knowledgable) fans and members, and in light of many recent upsets and rising stars the credibility of the old guard seems to have come into question. While it is obvious that the sport is indeed changing, there is a history here on these forums that newer members and fans likely don't appreciate, but should. What a lot of them simply don't get is that the people who were frequenting these boards back in the day are in many ways responsible for the strength of the sport today, and in many ways "saved" MMA in its tender, fledgeling years. Here are some things worth considering when looking back at that time, which was really not so long ago at all, but seems so to many of us:

1) We had to do our homework. If you were a fan of MMA before the TUF explosion, and especially a couple years before that, you had your work cut out for you to keep up with the sport. You couldn't buy Pride and UFC DVDs at your local HMV, for the most part you couldn't even rent them. Torrents and Youtube didn't exist, downloading took nearly forever and most stuff was hard or impossible to find. Many of us relied on fans living in Asia for our Pride DLs before UFC popularity made it worthwhile for local bars to show PrideFc on PPV. I myself started out buying old VHS's from Rogers Video during the time before UFC got its PPV airings back. The sport was constantly under attack by the media when they did choose to give it exposure, and actually banned in many states and provinces of N. America.

Beyond that, small organizations were even harder to keep tabs on. An event like KOTC or the IFL would never have gotten TV broadcasting back then, let alone Canadian products like TKO. Television has undergone the same kind of blow-out that the internet has in recent years, with many competing networks like Spike and HDNet offering exclusive access to many smaller independent organizations. In my day, it was like christmas when I found an old WCC VHS in some weird trash bin at the Wallmart, or an Asian market with a VHS rental section would actually have some pirated K1 on its racks.

2) Being a fan meant more than just MMA. Back when the UFC/PrideFc rivalries were starting up, real fans payed attention to affiliate sports and competitions when choosing their favorites. If you were gonna back Arona against someone, you likely had watched his many performances in Abhu Dhabi. When Crocop came in to PrideFc, you knew what his record was like in K1 and knew that he wasn't their greatest fighter ever, as many MMA fans now seem to think. If you were excited to see BJ Penn bust on to the scene, you likely followed his wins in the Mundials, and were probably expecting a little more out of Werdum when he came around. We used to have members on here with disgustingly extensive knowledge on professional Muay Thai alone (like SilverWolf). Which brings me to my next point:

3) We (mostly) actually trained. While this is probably true of many members still today (old and new), it was a much more likely scenario earlier on. Because the media access to MMA was so small, many of the people who took the time to research it and find the fights were genuinely interested in martial arts, and not just the spectacle of a popular sport. A large portion of the arguments and threads in the earlier days had titles like "BJJ vs. Karate?" or "Does TKD work in MMA?". Believe it or not, there was a time when boxers and wrestlers were still doubted on these forums, because initially it was kickboxers and jiu-jitsu/pankration stylists who sought out MMA. Many people were drawn to MMA because it highlighted the Muay Thai or BJJ they were lucky to be able to train in.

Aside fom growth of the sport, the martial arts (especially mixed martial arts) franchise has exploded as well. I almost spat my coffee out when I read that my local community center in Poco, BC was offering BJJ classes this year. When I got into MMA I knew there was a Thai gym or two in town, but I couldn't find any BJJ. Nowdays if you live within driving distance of a decent sized city you are guaranteed to find an MMA gym, or at least a BJJ or Thai academy. The difference between now and then is that back then it was a sport appreciated and supported by martial arts enthusiasts who loved to see mixed Nhb action (hence the combined interest in things like ADCC and K1). Now its a sport supported by a huge media arsenal and an MMA fan base. This is a big difference.

4) Finally, the internet community that supported MMA was tighter, more educated, and meaner. It used to be that pro fighters would actually come on these boards and argue or talk with their fans and detractors. Vets on here had a certain credibilty because basically if they were old on the forums in say, 2002, they very often had followed the sport from the very beginning (something many people say is true of themselves but is most often a lie- it's untrue for me, I've only been following since UFC 19, before that I was too young to have seen it). People gripe thesedays about Sherdog being a mean forum full of assholes, and this blows my mind. The rules around here have been steadily building to forum a fairly cushy place for a fan base to chat. No Dana bashing regulations, thewasteland, countless bans for fighter bashing, guys coming on here everyday for the first time writing cheesy little "hellos" to the site, and receiving almost none of the usual flammage they would have gotten in the old days.

The fracturing of the forums into area-specific boards is basically as new as the TUF onslaught, and the reasoning is likely too many posters. Now the forum with the most discussion is basically a UFC hype board, with kickboxing enthusiasts and grappling afficianados being abandoned to lonely forums barely anybody frequents. Personally, I think this has lead to a decline in atmosphere. Gone are the days when MMA fandom was a multi-faceted experience that set you apart from your average Joe. Now every idiot I went to highschool with wears a UFC t-shirt to work and runs his mouth on how "badass" Keith Jardine is. Members have no perspective on greatness, barely realise how awesome something like Hendo returning to the UFC with a Pride MW belt really is, and pine over "tough questions" like whether Diego Sanchez or Josh Koscheck will ever be champions. Many new fans don't understand our frustrations when we yell at them for doubting Fedor or Nogueira, basically because they can't even imagine a time when both these men were virtual unknowns in the sport. It's getting so that I sometimes miss the occasional idiot asking whether or not Rickson really is P4P the best there is (the reason the wasteland was originally created).

In the end, growth for the sport is something we all wanted when it was struggling to get off its feet. I was genuinely excited about the creation of the show, but the sudden crazyness of TUFer domination on these forums kept me away for a long time. The effect was immediate and for many of us pretty shitty. I still feel as though Dana White did more for his own company and product than he did for MMA as a whole, but it is exciting to start to see some cohesiveness, I suppose, and we are getting the fights we always wanted, even if many of the stars from the MMA Cold War era are mere shadows of their former selves. And after years of trying to convince people around me for years that MMA was the greatest sport ever invented, only to be ignored or rebuked, it's pretty weird to go to my local and not be able to find a seat to watch the latest PPV. Bozo fans are a factor in any sport, but they used to occupy a much smaller percentage of MMA fandom.

I don't want to whine that myself or other veteran fans aren't being appreciated for their knowledge and loyalty from the beginning, but it stings when we see the boards so overflowing with opinions whose stupidity and ignorance would have been so obvious even just a few years ago. The fact that a search on Youtube for 'UFC' yields 10 plus pages of kids in tapout shorts rough-houing in their backyards gives you an idea of how disproportionate the representation for MMA really is; like the moniker K1 in Japan, modern fans see the current popularity of the UFC as the be all and end all of mixed martial arts. The history and development of this product is completely lost on the new generation, and sadly, they will never know what they've been missing.

AMEN ....This is the best thread I have ever posted in I miss the old days

[Invincible420]

Man I used to put in some serious time online gathering MMA news and videos

[Slabby]

Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

I don't know what to tell you.Your interpretations are wrong and everything you tried to coutner is bullshit. Non-UFC MMA WAS hard to find, you're totally fucking dumb on that one. Torrents have made it a million times easier to watch, this is just the history of the internet, here. Also, I already told you all there were vets when I joined, Silverwolf type guys, guys who knew their shit, were much more plentiful back then. Wrestlers were doubted as soon as Coleman started losing to guys like Smith, and most of the posters here actually trained. The bottom line on this one is I was here you weren't. You can't argue with me you don't even know. I'm especially amused at your trying to call me a post whore when you have more posts than me in one year than I do in 5. Idiot.

He honestly didn't call you anything remotely in the ball park of "post whore." What he said if you feel your post count and long time use of this forum has made you feel somewhat entitled. He also gave some counter points to some of your arguments from his opinion that matters just as much as anyone else's here.

I never found Pride or UFC fights hard to find. Pride was always sold locally at Suncoast around me, and UFC I could always rent at the local video store. Of course you always had to wait a long while to see the Pride stuff, but given it wasn't penetrating on PPV at the time, that didn't matter the fights were new to me.

Again the real issue here is Vets taking an attitude like yours rather than trying to use their experience to educate some of the new fans. You could take posts like Diego Sanchez is awesome and would beat anyone, and instead of bashing someone as a TUF noob, you could say you should check out fighter A, B, or C if you like his style.

One of the first times I bothered to post here, I got called a troll and a "white belt noob" because I dared say that in a 10 point must system there could be a difference of opinion who won certain rounds in the Bisping fight. An opinion shared by many of the level headed "vets" and a lot of MMA media. It wasn't some "trolling" opinion. It was an opinion that was dismissed because of post count and that's stupid, especially considering I'm sure I've probably followed the sport longer than a lot of people.

Long time fans can either fight against the wave of popularity which is giving us a "golden age" of MMA of which we may never see again, or they can whine and moan about how much better it was back in the day when the sport was forced into Indian Casinos and was being compared to hack jobs like FX's World Toughest Man.

[Blast D]

Great read. Im no vet fan, but i still have loved MMA for a couple years now.(like 2-3)

[MMA Saint]

just because people are new to Sherdog doesn't mean they are new to MMA

[heyheyhey]

I kind of agree with the OP. I became a fan in early 2001s cause i was living in japan during that time and started training judo and JJ. Discovered UFC after returning to the states. Found sherdog much later at around 2003, 2004. I think the problem a lot of the "vets" or whatever have is that the new fans really don't bother educating themselves about the sport. Instead of reading up and really researching about who's who. They come in here with kind of this know it all attitude and tell you that Huerta is the greatest thing since slice bread. and when you try to educate them about the sport, they tell you that they been watching it since UFC 1. lol almost every whitebelt on this board has been watching since UFC 1.

[Invincible420]

Originally Posted by heyheyhey

I kind of agree with the OP. I became a fan in early 2001s cause i was living in japan during that time and started training judo and JJ. Discovered UFC after returning to the states. Found sherdog much later at around 2003, 2004. I think the problem a lot of the "vets" or whatever have is that the new fans really don't bother educating themselves about the sport. Instead of reading up and really researching about who's who. They come in here with kind of this know it all attitude and tell you that Huerta is the greatest thing since slice bread. and when you try to educate them about the sport, they tell you that they been watching it since UFC 1. lol almost every whitebelt on this board has been watching since UFC 1.

Wise wise man