When Live is Really Live

There should be another poll option that says “Fuck Yes”. I’ve spent over 50% of the past 3 years outside the US, either in places where I couldn’t read the language on my channel changer, or places where the live broadcast would start at 3 AM. When I read the play-by-play or try to find an illegal stream order the fight from the super-cool UFC Vault the next day, it drives me crazy to know that the outcomes have already been determined. The higher the stakes, the more it eats at me. I would be watching a title fight over a bowl of cereal with sunlight pouring through the window and it absolutely killed me to know that one of those guys already kept or nabbed the belt; both of them could have checked in and out of the hospital already for all I knew. Gotta watch it live, homies!

Part of living is living in the now. In situations where i’m not able to see an event live, I’ve never even attempted to avoid the news. There’s something about knowing something happened exactly when it happened. For me, it’s a futile exercise to avoid results because a large part of my sports-watching experience revolves around finding out and analyzing the results. I don’t just watch sports to see the athleticism and technique, i watch to see who wins, and i want to know who wins when they win it. If i can’t see something live, I’d rather hear about the results and be told of any amazing things that happened, so that i can go seek out those specific videos at a later time.

Live, live, live, live, live. we live in the information age. We want information NOW. everything else is secondary to knowing things immediately. Tape delayed sports should be considered an international crime against humanity.

I feel like this could be a good discussion, but all you did was pose a question and drop a bunch of MMA platitudes.

Personally, I’ve done this quite a few times. My “schedule” is pretty random, and by random I mean I impulsively do (sometimes dumb) shit that takes hours out of my life. I’ll agree, it takes something out of the experience, but I actually don’t mind so much.

A huge part of MMA’s appeal, for me, is watching things unfold. I HATE reading play-by-plays or results of great fights and watching the fight later. I can’t get into either Santiago/Misaki fights because of this. Seriously, I know they’re great fights, but they both feel flat to me.

So, yes, live is preferable, but if not, I avoid spoilers like the plague until I can pirate buy the event.

No PPV here, so i have to download, but no it’s not the same as watching something live.

They air PPV’s at midnight (central time right here) immediately following the live air. When my friends and I can’t get together for the 9 oclock broadcast, we often watch buy the midnight taping. Even a mere 3 hours late takes some of the fun out of it.

And side note, not a chance I can stay away from this site for an entire week.

Usually starts at 3am over here but its well worth staying up to 6am to watch it!!

For me, it doesn’t make a huge difference when I don’t know the results. The problem though is, especially for shows I’m not 100 % stoked for, I tend to check the sites to see whether the card was good. Then I try to avoid reading anything and just try to look through the live play-by-play searching for words like “great”, “fantastic” or “boring” or something like that, trying to find out if the fights are actually worth watching.
And then I spoil myself, and hate myself for it.
Just recently I accidently read that Strikeforce had 4 K.O.s in a row. Yeah, I was stoked when I then saw them, but the element of surprise was completely gone.
 
So, what I’m saying is: If I managed to stay away from newssites before watching the events it wouldn’t make a huge difference (did that for WEC 53, and it was amazing), but more often than not, I’m not able to stay away.

I’m all about atmosphere, so when i have to wait to watch smething it feels dull and old.

I’ve downloaded events for years (since Pride), I had no idea there were streams and even legal ones and I have no access to PPVs. Sometimes I’m just too tired to stay up late (4AM in my timezone). So I avoid BE (sherdog back then) until it’s available online (usually sunday in the afternoon). Really there is the same tension if you don’t know the result.