#1: Welcome to my blog

This is it!  This is the first of what will hopefully be a weekly blog regarding my thoughts and opinions about Mixed Martial Arts.  I will talk about things in the sport that I enjoy, upcoming matchups, things I don't enjoy so much, as well as a multitude of other MMA related things.

I'm hoping to get a some feedback (read: not trolling) from you, the readers, about what you think of my opinions in addition to ideas you may have which may improve my blog for you to better enjoy it.

That being said, let me introduce myself.  My name is Andy and I'm in my mid-thirties and a yellow belt in a martial art known as Kajukenbo.  I've spent a good majority of my time since 2005 following this sport, nay, immersing myself and obsessing over the sport since I first began watching The Ultimate Fighter season 1 on SpikeTV.  I soon met up with some real good friends and together we've pretty much bought and watched every single UFC pay-per-view event as well as all of The Ultimate Fighter seasons.

Soon after Pride Fighting Championships was bought by Zuffa, I realized that there was another organization in Japan that had apparently been doing huge things over there for MMA.  Being late to the party, I never had a chance to witness or enjoy a PrideFC card until after the parent company for Pride had folded.

I've since spent a lot of time going back through old Pride tapes and watching some of the epic battles that took place that I never got a chance to witness live.  I learned all about the great fighters and their names that fought in the early Millenium in Japan with a bit of a heavy heart that I never got into the sport earlier.

From that point on, I realized that I needed to look into what other organizations were out there to make sure I wasn't missing any other great MMA fights.  I soon ran into World Victory Road's Sengoku, Bellator, King of the Cage, BAMMA, Maximum Fighting Championships, and many other organizations.

A real good buddy of mine also got me into watching FEG's K-1 tournaments and I immediately got into learning the major names of K-1 fighters as well.

So here I am.  Trying to educate myself on epic fights of the past while continuing to enjoy the epic fights of the future.  I've gotten into this sport more than any other sport I've ever watched before.  Not football, basketball, or baseball has been able to capture my attention and unleash my raw fanaticism like MMA has.

Since people might ask, let me list a few of my favorite fighters. 

In no particular order:

Wanderlei Silva
Chuck Liddell
Randy Couture
Rashad Evans
Jon Jones
Buakaw Por.Pramuk
Peter Aerts
Fedor Emelianenko
Alistair Overeem
Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva
Cain Velasquez
Junior dos Santos
George Sotiropoulos
Meisha Tate
Megumi Fujii
Nick Diaz
Georges St. Pierre
Remy Bonjasky
Mike Zambidis
Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos
Mirko Filipovic
Pat Barry
Jason "Mayhem" Miller
Kazushi Sakuraba
Don Frye
Pretty much every Gracie

I like a lot more fighters, but I'm simply not going to list them all.  I also have a few fighters I really hate but you'll get the gist of whom as I write more in this blog.

Anyway, that's it for now.  I hope you guys enjoy what I have to say, be sure to comment and leave feedback as to what you like, don't like, agree, or don't agree with.  I haven't decided on wether or not I'll be taking any topic requests, but for now, I have plenty to write about.  See you next week.

--Andy