You beat me to the sport by a few years.
My first PPV I saw live was UFC 52.
Absolutely STACKED card.
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I had taped the TUF I FINALE card on VHS and gave it as a gift to the dude who hosted the party for the PPV. Thru had the PPV on the big TV in the living room and the TUF finale playing on the TV in a bedroom of this LA apartment.
Great night.
But I was still in my 20s and BROKE.
Working as a musician, getting by but barely.
I watched Chuck lose his title to Rampage thru the window of Burbank Hooters, and saw several good cards there, including Hughes vs BJ 2.
When I moved back home after getting married my first recollections of buying PPVs and I think they were around $40, but that is a long time ago. Like I said above my earliest foggy, drug and age afflicted memory was about 39.99/ SD 49/HD but that was 2008 or so after I had bought my first house.
I had a rager party for BJ vs GSP 2 PPV.
My mother in law decided to randomly drop by and I was on acid and mushrooms... also had a party vs Anderson vs Vitor in that same house.
Good times.
That era of one stacked PPV a month was sweet. I look back and they hold up pretty damn well. $40/card and I felt like that was fair, but they got greedy from there and didn't raise the quality of the product or keep up with building new stars to justify the price increases, imo, and I bet others who survived that era likely agree.