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Shine
Feb 26, 2007

No Muscles For The Majority
As a newish MMA fan, I'm going to suggest every other new fan do what I just did and watch the very first UFC event. It looks absolutely nothing like what we watch today, and the very first match goes from the announcers saying "No rules! This is gonna loving rule!" to uncomfortable confusion after a guy gets his face kicked in and nobody seems to know if that's the end of the fight or not.

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Shine
Feb 26, 2007

No Muscles For The Majority

The Sphinxster posted:

Not to mention referees!

That was interesting to see in early UFC shows. I assume the refs sometimes had no idea that they were witnessing a very painful submission hold and it didn't register to then that a guy was tapping out for several seconds longer than it would take today. In particular, I remember one fight where a young Big John saw a guy stand up and get trapped in an armbar while standing, and it took a really long time (relative to today) for John to step in and end the match. John's body language was like "okay he's standing up... wait, is he tapping? ............ oh poo poo, his arm!" It's understandable, given how new the sport was; the first time I saw something like a triangle choke I had no idea what I was seeing, and I doubt the refs got thorough primers on jiu-jitsu holds before getting thrown into this new clusterfuck no-holds-barred combat sport.

Wasn't Shamrock's loss to Gracie at UFC 1 like that? Gracie choked him, Shamrock tapped, Gracie let go, and the ref kinda stood there like "Uh, why'd you guys stop fighting?" and they had to explain to him that Shamrock had submitted. I think it went something like that.

UFC 1 also had a tap-out by "he's not really hurting me, but I have no idea how to get out of this predicament" when a boxer faced Gracie. That's not the most noteworthy thing about that fight, though :D. It's worth getting the free trial on Fight Pass just to watch it and the rest of UFC 1.

Shine
Feb 26, 2007

No Muscles For The Majority

Josuke Higashikata posted:

The scoring talk after the Jackson/Winkeljohn time tag there should be mandatory listening for all.

Yeah, massive pro-click. John basically says "the graphics UFC shows and the stuff Joe Rogan says about judging are total horseshit," and then he explains what the judges are actually looking for.

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