Mention PRIDE or EliteXC to any long-time MMA fan and, good, bad, or ugly, you’re virtually guaranteed to get an emotional response. Mention an amateur show and you surely won’t get the same response, but there’s a good chance that same fan has been to a local theater, gym, or hell, a badminton club where the sport’s future talent gets locked into a smaller cage to develop their skills.
Amateur shows aren’t as glamorous, but they’re absolutely critical to the sport’s future *cough, CM Punk, cough, cough*. They give fighters the opportunity to – as Big John McCarthy puts it – learn what it’s like to be a fighter: what it’s like in the back, how to walkout and listen to the referee and their coaches, to see what worked and what didn’t from training, to evaluate their mistakes, and to see if they might have what it takes to go far in the sport.