Come on in, the water’s just fine.
For those of you returning from nights out, hurriedly silencing 5am alarm calls or powering through the entire fight card in the early hours of Sunday morning, you may have noticed that your social media feeds were pretty well fed with posts relating to UFC 189.
‘I never knew he/she was a fight fan,’ many thought as #WhatAScrap came filtering through when the hype train finally began pulling into the final station, the main event.
I’m not the doorman for mixed martial arts (far from it) but, having been a fan for almost 15 years, I feel that I ought to welcome some of the newer fans to the sport.
I’m not going to call you bandwagon jumpers and I’m not going to pretend that I’m more of a fan than you just because I’ve seen more fights. I just want to say “welcome” to the most infectious sport that you’re ever likely to cast your eyes on.
Live-blogging the event, I saw first-hand how the snowball continued to gather mass over the six hours between Cody Pfister’s muted walk to the octagon and Sinead O’Connor taking centre-stage.
I’ve never seen anything like it and it’s a testament to Conor McGregor that he was able to single-handedly generate such unprecedented levels of interest in an event that everybody knew would last 25 minutes at a maximum.
But this welcome comes with some helpful advice (I’m sound like that) because the sport of mixed martial arts is simply too magnificent for you to nail your colours to the mast of one fighter and let him dictate how often you tune in.
I have an awful feeling that, as blindingly brilliant as the last 48 hours have been in terms of Irish MMA support, that a drop-off is inevitable.
It’s impossible to ignore the sense that a lot of fans who felt that buzz, the unfamiliar adrenaline boost that comes with watching two supremely trained fighters leave it all in a 750 square foot octagon, will lose a little bit of interest before Conor McGregor’s next fight.
For those of you to whom that applies, I would implore you not to do so. There are so many amazing fights available to watch on an almost weekly basis that it would be a bawling shame if the 500+ other fighters on the UFC roster, and the thousands more competing in Bellator, World Series of Fighting, Invicta, One FC, Titan and on the regional scene in Ireland were to be ignored.
Educate yourself. Explore the history of the sport and I promise you that the viewing experience will only grow in terms of enjoyment.
The first time that I watched MMA came in 2001 when I found an old video tape of a PRIDE show among some WWF videos in Xtravision. I was hooked immediately but we didn’t live in the haven of content that we have in 2015 so it was probably over six months before I was able to get my hands on another VHS from the Japanese promotion.
But I continued to obsess with the spectacle and it was around the time of season one of The Ultimate Fighter that I began looking back at old UFC fights but it was a bit of an ordeal to try to find the footage.
Now we have UFC Fight Pass which ought to be applauded as one of the biggest landmarks in the history of MMA because you can now watch pretty much every UFC fight from the last 20 years for just a few euro a month.
For those of you who witnessed the full main card on Saturday night and saw legendary battle after legendary battle, I’d like to let you know that it’s not always like that.
You might have to wake up in the middle of the night to sit through some awfully shitty card that features 12 boring decision victories.
But how will you know that it’s not going to be a spectacular card unless you shake yourself from your Saturday slumber every week to tune in?
You’re not going to get a Lawler v MacDonald or Stephens v Bermudez every week, be warned. But you never know when the next ‘greatest fight ever’ is around the corner and it sometimes happens when you least expect it.
Similarly, you never know when the next superstar is coming along so why not watch as much MMA as possible so you can get in on the ground floor, like so many did when they saw McGregor’s UFC debut against Marcus Brimage two years ago.
I can understand that Conor McGregor is the guy right now and he’s deserving of everything he’s earned but I promise you that you will get a much more enriching satisfaction from the sport if you broaden your tastes to other fighters and other fights.
If you’ve found yourself fascinated with Conor McGregor and his ability to hype fights, get under opponents skin and then back it up on fight night then look at Michael Bisping, Tito Ortiz and Nick Diaz who were doing just that before McGregor had first wrapped his hands.
If you happen to be one of the McGregor haters who are irritated by his braggadocio and are dying to see him humbled by a more gentlemanly martial artist then look at Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva and the Nogueira brothers who are some of the most softly spoken, yet talented, fighters in history.
McGregor might be raking in more money for the UFC than any fighter in the promotion’s history but he is just a microcosm of something much bigger.
When McGregor finally broke into the mainstream, I had a little bit of that feeling that is felt when your favourite indie band finally hits.
“I liked them before they were big.”
But I realised that it’s so silly to try to protect something you love from becoming popular. First of all, it’s impossible to slow the wave of something so big but also … the more, the merrier.
I love the sport of mixed martial arts and I want to see it get to the level that I know it can reach and that’s only going to happen with swells of support like that of Saturday night.
If UFC 189 was one of your first experiences of MMA then you’re currently treading water.
You ought to break the surface, dive in and check out legendary fighters like BJ Penn, Chuck Liddell and Fedor Emelianenko. Watch classic fights like Griffin v Bonnar, Henderson v Rua and Hunt v Bigfoot. Immerse yourself in the sport if you found unexpected enjoyment on Saturday.
Conor McGregor may be the conductor and a world title might be the destination, but it’s worth looking at the people who built the tracks, designed the carriages and the inspectors who spent years checking tickets for no money and little acclaim.
So as the hype train’s route starts up again, I say “welcome aboard”.
