Anticipation.
For fight fans, it can mean endless hours of debate on Internet forums, re-watching old fights, viewing any clip related to the upcoming fight, and in general counting down the days, one at a time.
Come July 7 at UFC 148, Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen will have their rematch, and the rest of us will get to see if it lives up to the anticipation. It has all the necessary prerequisites: trash talk, bad blood, national pride, and two men who gave us one heck of a fight the last time around.
But as usual, we proceed with a healthy bit of caution. After all, we’ve been burned before.
Just because a fight is highly anticipated doesn’t mean it will be great: Ken Shamrock vs. Dan Severn II, Rashad Evans vs. Quinton Jackson and many others remind us of that fact.
Of course, when we’re counting down the days until the big scrap, we don’t think of the fights that didn’t live up to the hype, we think about the bouts that did, or at least did their best.
And in that spirit, here’s a list of 10 of the most awaited, anticipated fights in MMA history.