New posts

A little forum update...We're planning an upgrade.

Find out more about what's planned and how you can help support the forum
Click here for the details

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenny Coyote" data-source="post: 183397" data-attributes="member: 102">First, do we have any MMA fans here?  I've followed the sport since the second UFC PPV back when a 175 pound man named Royce Gracie was beating all these huge guys who were all well over 200 pounds. Gracie was the most important man in martial arts since Bruce Lee, except Gracie wasn't making movies. He was a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner competing in tournaments where all styles of martial arts were allowed, with very few rules, no separate divisions for weight, no rounds, and no time limits. The sport wasn't even called MMA back then, it was referred to as NHB - no holds barred fighting. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was what brought about the mainstream popularity of the sport in America. In Europe there were some other promotions and one in Japan - PRIDE - actually overtook the position of the world's biggest MMA promotion for a while in the late 90s and early 2000s. Now The UFC is by far the wold's biggest MMA promotion. Since I live in The USA, it would be interesting to find out how popular MMA is in Europe compared to other sports. Here, our biggest sports are all team, as opposed to individual sports.  The biggest sports here are Football, Basketball, Baseball and Hockey. Mixed Martial Arts is still behind hockey, the smallest of "the big four" in popularity in America. Boxing, the most popular of the individual sports is still more popular than MMA here, although MMA has come a long way towards rivaling boxing for the most popular combat sport in America.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?