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Sports that you've learned to love later in life

ripper868

ripper868

International Coach
Ice Hockey for me. Always enjoyed the video games, but attended some NHL playoff matches during various trips to the states and found it has everything I love in a sport. Speed, skill, individual brilliance, individual brilliance countered by teamwork, countered by individually brilliant goaltenders...plus the odd fight here and there. Only crap thi g is it's not great on TV as it's hard to follow the puck, live though it's up there as the best live events I've been to.

I'd say my fandom for it even surpasses my rugby fans dom, which is no mean feat given I'm a rugby kid from 6 yearsish old.

Rugby and ice hockey aside, I enjoy pretty much every sport, and of it's on, I'll watch it.
 
Uppercut

Uppercut

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OverratedSanity said:
This is hardly just an MMA thing.
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I don't think there's really an equivalent scenario in non-combat sports. Plenty of referees get despicable abuse, but not for stepping in to prevent serious injury or death to a participant.

But yeah, sure. It's hardly the only terrible fanbase in the world and I never said it was.
 
OverratedSanity

OverratedSanity

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Just saying death threats against officials is a thing in other sports as well, certainly seems to happen in football enough. I find the sport itself (all combat sports, really) too problematic to get annoyed by the dumb fans too much. The brutality of the whole thing, the roids, the cringe worthy promotional tactics, just can't stand any of it.

There's quite a bit of overlap between pro wrestling and mma fanbases but I've never been able to enjoy actual combat sports even though the issues I have with it are mostly present in pro wrestling as well. The key difference for me atleast is that the point of wrestling is to make it look like you're beating the **** out of each other instead of actually doing it. You still have people getting hurt of course, but I find some comfort in the knowledge that the participants are trying to keep each other safe.
 
thierry henry

thierry henry

International Coach
Yeah MMA fans are dickheads

What bothers me is that it's essentially still a very new sport with limited depth and limited history, but it has attracted a huge number of new fans to combat sports generally who then have no perspective or ability to contextualise what they are seeing.

For the record I am a big boxing fan and yes I am speaking from a position of bias. MMA fans tend to be very disrespectful towards boxing and have no comprehension of the extent of boxing's history or the depth of talent in the sport. There are just so many MMA fans who have a massively inflated sense of the relative quality and importance of their sport.
 
thierry henry

thierry henry

International Coach
Also to add to that, MMA seems to attract a lot of fans who aren't even fans of SPORT apart from MMA. Like people from sort of geek/gaming/pro-wrestling cultures etc who just flat out don't understand sport.

Just a really weird fanbase to interact with as a sports fan in general.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Stuff like competitive Street Fighter, or just fighting video games generally, are better than actual combat sports imo.
 
jimmy101

jimmy101

Cricketer Of The Year
Whilst it pales in comparison to the real thing, I have an appreciation of "pro-FIFA" players & find it good for an occasional watch.
 
andmark

andmark

International Captain
jimmy101 said:
Whilst it pales in comparison to the real thing, I have an appreciation of "pro-FIFA" players & find it good for an occasional watch.
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I don't usually enjoy watching them but watch anyway. I find a lot of the time they solve a positional problem with an overblown skill move. Not my cup of tea.
 
hendrix

hendrix

Hall of Fame Member
thierry henry said:
Yeah MMA fans are dickheads

What bothers me is that it's essentially still a very new sport with limited depth and limited history, but it has attracted a huge number of new fans to combat sports generally who then have no perspective or ability to contextualise what they are seeing.

For the record I am a big boxing fan and yes I am speaking from a position of bias. MMA fans tend to be very disrespectful towards boxing and have no comprehension of the extent of boxing's history or the depth of talent in the sport. There are just so many MMA fans who have a massively inflated sense of the relative quality and importance of their sport.
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Pretty much, and I think that is extremely inexplicable in regards to the veneration of the UFC. These guys are simply not that good. What you're seeing is whoever Dana White decides is going to be marketable for him.

Of course, there's a massive marketing component to boxing too, but that's backed up by a solid base of amateur competition and pedigree including the world champs and the Olympics.

We all know that ABCDEFG belting organisations are a joke, but we also know that when Naoya Inoue fights Nonito Donaire, or Josh Taylor fights Regis Prograis, or Canelo Alvarez fight Gennady Golovkin, those are legitimately two of the best guys in the world at the respected weight divisions. I just can't say the same for the likes of Nate Diaz or Conor McGregor or whoever. I think you could pick a fair few guys out of gyms in Thailand or Brazil or wherever who would beat them on any given day but haven't had the same level of exposure in order to get a UFC contract. I also think it's insane how little the UFC guys are getting paid compared with how popular the sport has become.
 
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hendrix said:
Pretty much, and I think that is extremely inexplicable in regards to the veneration of the UFC. These guys are simply not that good. What you're seeing is whoever Dana White decides is going to be marketable for him.

Of course, there's a massive marketing component to boxing too, but that's backed up by a solid base of amateur competition and pedigree including the world champs and the Olympics.

We all know that ABCDEFG belting organisations are a joke, but we also know that when Naoya Inoue fights Nonito Donaire, or Josh Taylor fights Regis Prograis, or Canelo Alvarez fight Gennady Golovkin, those are legitimately two of the best guys in the world at the respected weight divisions. I just can't say the same for the likes of Nate Diaz or Conor McGregor or whoever. I think you could pick a fair few guys out of gyms in Thailand or Brazil or wherever who would beat them on any given day but haven't had the same level of exposure in order to get a UFC contract. I also think it's insane how little the UFC guys are getting paid compared with how popular the sport has become.
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TBH most of these criticisms just aren't true. I've derailed the thread ranting about the dire state of MMA's competitive structures, but even I think it has better match-making than boxing, which has the worst competitive structures of any sport I know. It has all of MMA's problems, but it's also much easier for boxers to dodge fights they think they might lose.

I'd suggest that if you can't tell whether the fighters you're watching are at the pinnacle of the sport or not, that's not because of the sport itself, it's because you're not that interested in it and don't understand it very well.
 
cnerd123

cnerd123

likes this
Also the best professional MMA fighters in the world are by and large in the UFC. Bellator, ONE Championship, RIZIN, and various organisations do have legit talent. But overall the UFC talent pool is the best.

The random Brazillians and Thais training in gyms everywhere who might be better don't count because training is not the same as competing, and not everyone who trains martial arts wants to fight MMA.

Taking a look at the UFC champions right now, there is also no doubt that these men and women are amongst the best of their weightclasses in the world. You're not going to find some non-UFC fighter who will beat Jon Jones, Valentina Schevchenko, Israel Adesanya, or Khabib.

They definitely get underpaid tho
 
Flem274*

Flem274*

123/5
yea mma fans are cringe but the fighters have largely been the best of the best muay thai and bjj fighters around before entering ufc.
 
cnerd123

cnerd123

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Less so Muay Thai. Recently we've seen more Kickboxing cross-over, but the two dominant arts in the UFC are still Wrestling and BJJ. The top strikers don't cross over into MMA much.

Lots of really good Muay Thai fighters fighting MMA over at ONE Championship. But the cream of the crop are sticking to Muay Thai.
 
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