Ground and Pound - Fightnews

We all have crucial moments in our sports fandom that change us forever.

Our team wins a Super Bowl, a World Cup or the World Series and it changes us as fans. We sit through all the heartache and pain of the losses. We sit through the transactions, the off-the-field debris and management trying to convince us things will get better.

But when we finally embrace the moment of the greatness some of us get to witness, that thing we love being at the pinnacle of it's profession, it's an intense experience that one can hardly put into words.

I've never had the experience of watching my team win a Super Bowl, World Cup or World Series. I haven't even had the pleasure of watching a horse win a Triple Crown in horse racing. I'd never truly felt an overall sports experience of bliss before - until December 10, 2011. The night I officially fell in love with mixed martial arts.

The day began slow enough. John Cholish vs. Mitch Clarke. Not exactly the poetic prologue to a fairy tale evening. But I hacked and slashed my way through some preliminary fights, trying to devote my full attention to every fighter on the UFC 140 card.

Bantamweights Yves "Tiger" Jabouin and Walel Watson would go to war a few hours later in what I thought was looking like a "Fight of the Night" candidate. It would mark the first spark of enthusiasm for me towards the event I was watching. Jabouin and Watson would throw punches, spinning back fists and a bevy of ultra-slick looking kicks for three rounds as the jovial pair engaged in an entertaining and glorified sparring session. More fights would be on the way.

I try, as a journalist of sorts, to remain as objective as possible with all things MMA. But like most, I have some favorites that I can't help but either admire or relish every time they step in a cage. For me, Chan Sung Jung is one of the few guys I openly root for in the sport. And his fight with Mark Hominick is a perfect example of my spontaneous lack of objectivity.

I think I may have momentarily blacked out. Or maybe my mind just went nuts. All I remember typing was 'ZOMBIEEEE!" on Facebook and trying to wrap my brain around what happened. Did I really just witness the "Korean Zombie" stop Mark Hominick in six seconds? I think I did. What a moment that was. Pure shock and awe. Absolute jubilation. If there's one guy in MMA that deserves a cult following, it's Jung. He fights with a reckless pace that is both admirable and potentially debilitating. He eats punches, moves forward and eats more punches. His brain only has an off-switch following a vicious headkick. He puts on wars, delivers Twister submissions and knocks out excellent strikers in record-tying fashion. He's an inimitable assassin of the most exciting caliber.

And watching him dispatch a man who was fighting in front of his home crowd (and was a clear favorite to beat him), was bliss. What a pivotal turning point on the evening that fight would turn out to be. From there, it was absolute pandemonium.

Two fights later, I would witness one of the most amazing events I've ever seen in MMA - Frank Mir busting up the arm of the legendary Antonio Minotauro Nogueira after the Brazilian had him on the ropes with punches early on in the first round. Watching Mir write history as the only man to ever submit "Big Nog" was outstanding. Knowing that Mir was also the first to knock him out (UFC 92) made the moment even better. Mir has Nogueira's number and with his submission, he vaulted up into the pantheon of legendary heavyweight MMA fighters. My emotions couldn't have been higher. My hair stood up on end, my facial expressions vacillated between stoicism and utter disbelief. What makes a fighter great is doing things that no one has ever done before. And in one night, Frank Mir showed his greatness. Not just in beating the legendary Nogueira, but winning a brutal game of submission chess on the ground with the man thought to be the master. Mir, who I've always liked for his ability to be a straight shooter and his knowledge of his craft, not only silenced his doubters but he sent a warning to the rest of the division. And it's not a message many will ever forget. And on the fights would go.

The main event would feature light heavyweight champion Jon Jones and former champion Lyoto Machida - a fight that would only go two rounds. Machida would win the first, find himself cut open in the second and then find himself unconscious after a standing guillotine from Jones. It would be the exclamation point to a storybook year for Jones. Defeating Shogun, Rampage and Machida in a single year makes his 2011 campaign one of the best in the history of MMA.

And the night wasn't over either. 30 minutes later, Dana White would announce the introduction of the flyweight division into the UFC. Ian McCall would battle Demetrious Johnson and Joseph Benavidez would fight Yasuhiro Urushitani in a four-man tournament to decide who the first 125-pound champion in the UFC would be. The division I had been clamoring for during the last 18 months was finally happening. Four of the best fighters on the planet would be fighting in March. And this news came on the heels of one of the best fight cards I had ever seen. Was I dreaming? I couldn't really tell. But it was in that moment that I realized that UFC 140 and the events that had followed were the closest thing I had ever felt to a Super Bowl victory or World Cup triumph. Sad, maybe. But honest. The sport that I had devoted many Saturdays to for so long was giving that support back ten fold in one evening. In truth, I could hardly contain my excitement.

It was the most splendid of nights for me, as a writer and a fan, with a surprise twist in the post-fight press conference. A culmination of various events coming together. A perfect alignment of the stars. I was riding an emotional high that I'd never felt before.

As I began winding down, I went home, hugged my daughter and as I was nearly passed out, I laid in bed realizing that the way I had felt about the sport I had followed, covered and watched for the last few years, would never be the same again.