Back in the day, there was boxing. Today, we have MMA.
Evolution is forever around us. Before, we used to get around on horses and would take families weeks to travel to another state. Today, we have SUV’s, cars with DVD players and the ever-popular “electric car”. Sports, in some aspect, are the same way. I remember as a kid sometimes we would have huge thunderstorms in our city, and all the electricity would go out. Now you have to remember, this was the days before the iPod was invented, and laptops, or even computers for that matter, were a matter of pulling out a second mortgage on the house. So with nothing else to do, my older brother, my pops, and myself would sit in a room, lit with only a small candle we had left over from Halloween, and talk about Boxing.
My dad would tell my brother and I about all of the great fighters in the past. Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Lewis, just to name a few. How he would sit around his TV or radio, and be mesmerized by the talent, and skills these prize fighters had. Sometimes, he was lucky enough to go and see an actual event live. For him, there was nothing better than sitting in a stuffy arena, poorly lit, and watching two athletes slug it out for 12 rounds. As he told his personal stories about how he would watch these great match-ups, I could tell that it was something special to him. No matter what was going on in the world at that time, no matter what had happened to him at school that day, whenever he watched boxing, his worries would seem to vanish. The smells, the feelings he got inside his stomach, all of it, he could remember like it was yesterday. Though today, is a different story for boxing. Today, they lack the big name fighters they once had. The big heavyweights today, have no attitude. No charisma. No style.
Enter MMA. Today, thinking back at the stories my father used to tell, about the emotions, the drama of boxing, I feel that with MMA. I think to most people, the average watcher of UFC, MMA is just a sport. But ask a fan, a real fan, of MMA, and they will tell you it’s more than just a sport. Its emotion. Its drama. It’s getting upset because your favorite fighter just lost his big match. Or elated because, after years of following your favorite fighter, he finally won his title. It’s being a kid from a small town, with nothing but the shoes on your feet, and finding MMA as a way out of the poverty. Emotions, you never knew you had inside you. When I watch Rich Franklin, or Georges St. Pierre, it’s like a fan from Boston, watch the Red Sox face the New York Yankees.
Yesterday, there was Ali vs. Frazier, Foreman vs. Frazier. Today, you have Hughes vs. Gracie, Silva vs. Cro Cop, Couture vs. Fedor, and Shogun vs. Liddell. These are the fighters that will give us the big matches. These are the fighters, that when I have my kids, I will talk about and say, “the emotions watching those guys fight were amazing”.
Who knows how long this roller coaster of MMA will go up? Who knows if it will ever be as big as boxing? But the emotion is there. The action is there. And the same feelings my dad got when he watched boxing are there for me too
By: Anthony Esquibel