"UFC at my house!" that's how it all started. Or maybe it was "You guys gotta see this."
I remember when I watched my first UFC on a VHS tape from Blockbuster, I was hooked. I went back and rented every single tape from every kind of NHB/MMA show possible.
I saw Renzo Gracie walk on the back of a guy's neck. I saw Eric Paulson get dragged by his pony tail around the ring. I saw Tank Abbott nelmark Steven Nelmark (Ed. note: I used "nelmark" both as a verb and subject). I saw Kimo carry the wooden cross to the ring.
For the longest time, I was that kooky guy that liked that gay wrestling/fighting thing where one man enters…blah, blah, blah.
The Ultimate Fighter show gets a lot of credit for starting the MMA/UFC revolution, but I think a lot of it came from the fans themselves with their pre-event war cries of "UFC at my house!" or "You guys gotta see this."
Dana White gets a lot of credit for TUF, but it wasn't because the show was the greatest or the most innovative. The sport was just now...more accessible. Accessibility is Dana's only claim to fame.
The credit for keeping MMA alive and thriving are the people who tuned in. These were the same people who shelled $45 every couple of months to watch the fights, buy all the tapes, cruise all the forums and would invite their friends over to get them interested.
TUF definitely made our jobs easier as evangelists for the sport.
This Fourth of July weekend is my turn to have the UFC at my house, and I will look around at all my friends watching Forrest vs. Rampage. I will know that I helped in bringing MMA to the masses.
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3 months ago
Dana made the changes that were acceptable to the Nevada State Athletic Commision. Then he was able to get more recognition, because it was recognized as a sport then. I am in the same boat you are, but trying to find the VHS tapes, or DVD's for that matter before Dana took over was getting harder and harder every time. They weren't a big draw amongst the masses, and it was in danger of being completely shut down in the United States. So he does get credit for that, and up to the showing of TUF most people had the same view of the fights they had seen earlier...Poor quality lighting, fighters that most of the time didn't have a clue, and a Brazillian revolution that turned pretty much every match into a long drawn out rolling on the ground instead of excitement. They didn't know about fighters becoming well rounded so once a fight went to the ground everyone would be like aww man this sh*t sucks fast forward.
3 months ago
Excellent article. I too have an extensive dvd library. I have driven my husband, a NASCAR fan, insane by re-watching the same disc a zillion times.
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