Be interested to hear what got all you fellow unarmed combatives guys into it. Did you come to it from the firearms hobby or did you come to the firearms hobby from your interest in martial arts?
Personally, I've always been doing the shooting thing. But martial arts...or at least a real enjoyment of them...didn't begin until I was probably 24 or 25. I had done the karate classes at the YMCA and such and kinda figured I was tough enough compared to these other nerds and I'd be a real badass in a fight. That adrenaline would give me superior reflexes and power and I would just knee a dude in the head if he tried to take me down so that solves that...yeah I was that guy.
Anyways, I decided after watching a video of a nurse getting the shit kicked out of them, that maybe I might want to learn something that wasn't a middle block followed by a chambered front snap kick. It just didn't seem like the correct response to an amped up tweaker throwing haymaker after haymaker, and I'd never really done any full contact training. So I went to a place where I could find some full contact training. The local MMA gym. As I started sparring I quickly realized I didn't know the slightest thing about how to fight. My martial arts training up until that point was completely ineffective for almost everything related to trying to not get knocked out. And when I got taken down...well I realized that it was actually not that easy to defend a takedown. So I tried studying how to beat takedowns,wrestling, and BJJ. As it turns out that's...uh...a long process and involves several ass whoopings. My ego was bruised and once I submitted some random guy by just barely taking his back and applying a rear naked choke, I thought "OK, I'm probably better than most guys now and I can stop." and I stopped training. Other things, like nursing school clinicals also sort of got in the way and I was tired of continuously getting my ass beat.
Yes, I have been struggling with being that guy for a while. Eventually...I don't know if it was wisdom or age or what...but I realized that the reason I kept getting beat wasn't because the other guys were better (they were) but it was because they trained more. They kept showing up, they kept learning, they kept sparring. Something clicked in my mind and while I still can't say I make every class and seminar all the time, I definitely train more now than I did then. Add to that a friend who trains at the same gym offering to let me come to his home and train with him in his basement and I can quite comfortably say that I've become an enthusiast of BJJ and to a lesser extent, MMA.
Sorry, long post. Tl;Dr I did not always enjoy martial arts, until something clicked and now I do.