Sports

I seem unable to maintain lifelong interest in any athletic competition.

When I was a kid I followed basketball, football, and baseball.
All three began with young-me totally buying the hype about Michael Jordan, Emmett Smith, and the Atlanta Braves, and seeing them all as superheroes (a state of mind not helped by advertising).

Baseball fell off the truck first, once I realized that watching actual games isn't nearly as fun as what I played in the front yard.
Then once the Cowboys won the Superbowl I trailed off on following football.
Basketball stuck around the longest mostly due to the Dream Team and "Space Jam," but by age 13 (ironically the year I actually played school football) I was completely disinterested.

I still enjoy watching live football games (good thing, too, being in marching band), but anytime someone starts rattling off "stats" I open a book.

Sometime around my third year of college, I ran into Mixed Martial Arts.
I had never followed combat sports of any kind, even in the Olympics, but catching an interview of Randy Couture about his "return" somehow piqued my interest.
I was able to download his fight with Tim Sylvia a few days later.

...and I loved it.

Maybe because the smaller, older fighter completely dominated the younger, larger fighter for 25 minutes.

Maybe because it was a slower pace than anything I'd seen before, but even more intense.

Maybe it was the detailed commentary that allowed a novice to know exactly what was happening at all times.

Who knows. But I was hooked.
And the Internet is a great place to be hooked on MMA.
I was able to consume huge numbers of fights, interviews, training videos, etc.
I was right back into superhero-mode.

Randy Couture, Anderson Silva, Georges St.Pierre, and Lyoto Machida were the names I latched onto in those first few weeks of fandom.

Which was nice, given that three of the four were dominant champions, and the fourth won the championship unbeaten.

I was able to see every event for free the day after, and after my wife and I got married we started hosting parties in which we'd be able to see everything live on pay-per-view.

But somewhere along the way, I started to trail off again.
I stopped following everything, and only followed the UFC.
Convenient, given that the UFC at one point had bought all of the competition.

I still followed my heroes, but one by one they started to lose badly and/or retire, though it took a looooong time given Silva and GSP's respective title reigns.

I've followed the upswing in female fighters as well, and haven't seen a boring one yet, but the feeling of attachment isn't there.

Which brings me to today.

I have one "superhero" left, one fighter in whose successes and failures I am emotionally invested, and it seems like he's on the way out.

I'm fairly active in the MMA fan community, and I'll watch a fight between two to-me-unknowns if my fellow fans rave over it, but I don't anticipate fights months in advance like I used to.

I don't know if this is just the result of personal tastes changing over time, or if I just don't have the sports-oriented-male mentality.