The story of my fandom is more the story of how Dragon Ball is the catalyst for my growth as a martial artist.
I'm someone who had some minor exposure to DBZ when it was in syndication (in 199X) and then got the DBZ fever during its initial run on Toonami (53 dubbed episodes & 3 dubbed movies). I had always been interested in martial arts, but DBZ really inspired me to go from, "I know enough Karate to handle myself in a fight," to, "I wanna be competitive with other skilled martial artists." That got me into practicing Taekwondo competitively as a teenager. I also got really hardcore into wanting to understand ki as it was used in martial arts like Karate and Taekwondo and how that compared to how it was depicted in Dragon Ball.
Eventually, I kind of got away from DBZ for about a year right around the time Vegeta killed himself in an attempt to kill Majin Boo. That was around the same time I came to a realization, after winning a regional TKD sparring tournament, that this particular competition format didn't really reflect effectiveness in a real fight. So, my instructor had me start focusing on Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's martial art/philosophy) as well as some really unskilled ground grappling. Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiujitsu in the small town I lived in (in 200X) just didn't exist.
I got back into DBZ again pretty hard not too long after that when the first Budokai game hit PS2 in 200X. This sort of put the spirit of growth in the martial arts back into me and the wave of Dragon Ball products that came with it kept me motivated to grow. I still trained the JKD self defense stuff, but I started experiencing other styles like Kung Fu, Hapkido, grappling, and Kali. For the next several years, I kind of had my own blend of stuff going on with and without weapons, but the pool of trained people to test myself was really tiny and I had to search out better opportunities to engage with skilled martial artists.
So, in 201X, I moved 2,000 miles away to southern California. I hopped in a car and took a literal Journey to the West. I became buddies with Castor Troy, but that's beside the point. Here, you can't throw a rock without a black belt or MMA fighter deflecting it. I tried a few different gyms, dojos, private groups, and whatnot before finally settling on Brazilian Jiujitsu as what I'll focus on honing for the rest of my days as a martial artist. The unending growth, the martial culture, the people and their attitudes, the full-contact nature of the art, and the safety that comes with BJJ that lets people train in something that's effective in street fights as well as against skilled martial artists until they're 90 years old resonates perfectly with how martial arts works in Dragon Ball and how Son Goku continues to find stronger opponents and better teachers well into his 40s (or however old he actually is when he starts training Oob).
Since then, the DBZ waves have been pretty steady with PS3 games, Kai, Kai 2.0, manga re-releases, a PS4 game, handheld titles, a mobile game, the Blu-rays, new movies (which I've gone to Red Carpet showings of in LA), and Dragon Ball Super. The original inspiration I felt as a martial arts fanatic when I first got hooked on DBZ when it was on Toonami (with the Ocean Group cast) is something that still burns deep within even if it has evolved a lot over the years. As long Dragon Ball exists in some form, I'll continue to find the inspiration I need in its themes to keep pushing my boundaries and getting stronger while also growing as a person.