MMA: Why Now Is the Best Time to Be an MMA Fan

There is not a better time to be watching mixed martial arts. 

No, seriously! Now is the best time to be a fan of the world's fastest growing sport. 

Despite having to deal with fans who constantly sport Affliction and think the sport is called "UFC," there are many reasons why current fans are truly blessed to be watching in this day and age. 

What are these reasons? Read and find out!

We Got to See Legends in Great Form

Anderson Silva and Georges St.Pierre will go down as legends in the history of MMA. Fans of modern MMA are therefore lucky that we got to see them in their primes, when they were tearing through hapless British strikers or front-kicking dangerous Brazilian phenoms into unconsciousness.

But Anderson Silva and Georges St.Pierre aren't the only ones we should be lucky to see. 

Older fighters such as Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, and Dan Henderson have also provided us with great fights that we can tell MMA's future fans—our children and grandchildren—we had the pleasure of seeing live.

Thus, whenever we see any truly great fighter who is beginning to get up there in years enter the cage, we should consider it a blessing.

We're Seeing the Next Generation of Legends Develop Before Our Eyes

Jon Jones is a champion and he's only 24. He'll be fighting for many more years and he hasn't even reached his prime yet!

We're fortunate enough that we'll see Jones—a legend and perhaps the eventual GOAT—mature as a person and an athlete. 

Fans can also watch welterweight superstar Rory Macdonald, another fighter who is practically guaranteed to be a future champion, climb to the top of his division and become a star. 

There are also the yet-to-be-discovered fighters that will enter the UFC that will become tomorrow's legends!

We're Watching the Sport Evolve

MMA in the early 1990's was basically grapplers humiliating strikers.

In the mid-1990's the strikers caught up and learned to avoid the takedown. Eventually, all fighters began to cross-train in different disciplines until the athletes knew everything. Nevertheless, many fighters had a primary discipline—being a master of one area of fighting and being only proficient at the others was enough to be a top level fighter for quite some time. 

Then, the sport underwent its first great change. 

Men like Matt Hughes—a wrestler with good submissions and barely passable striking—gave way to men like Georges St.Pierre who excelled at all schools of fighting. 

Soon, the men like St.Pierre will ultimately fall by the wayside, eclipsed by fighters like Jon Jones who are blessed with phenomenal athleticism that most people can only dream of.

As the fighters evolve, so too will the techniques we see. A Karateka pulling off a crane kick against a seasoned wrestler would've been thought impossible after karate had seemingly been disproved, yet we saw just that when Lyoto Machida met Randy Couture. The move was able to happen because the sport had evolved; Machida knew far more than just karate. 

Can you imagine the things that we'll see in the future, when kids who have the athleticism of Jon Jones start training purely in MMA at the ages of four and five?

We're Seeing History in the Making

All three of these previous reasons meld together and form another reason why it's so great to be an MMA fan in this day and age: We're watching the history of the sport be made before our very eyes.

MMA is a fast growing sport and it will have a magnificent future. Modern day fans are fortunate enough to say that they saw the first event on FOX, the epic duel between Chael Sonnen and Anderson Silva, the brash, never-say-die style of Nick Diaz, and many other great events in MMA.

There Is More Free MMA Than Ever Before

The UFC holds regular free cards on three channels—FOX, FX, and FUEL—whereas many years ago there were hardly any free events. 

Even outside the UFC there's tons of free MMA at the finger tips of any fan willing to look for it. From Bellator, to the recently launched Invicta FC, to whatever promotion HDNet happens to be showcasing one week, there's rarely a weekend when a fan can't watch a fight.

Follow @MattSaccaro