DBZ Underground Fight Club II – Yahoo! Clubs (2001)

Log written: July 6, 2026

In the year 2001, I was around 10 years old and a huge Dragon Ball Z fan. I still am, but it was all very new to me back then. The internet was also new to me, and I’d usually spend my time playing Yahoo! Pool, Yahoo! Chess or making websites (I even made my own DBZ website which I restored, prepare to cringe). Other than that, it was very much browsing GeoCities and messaging random people on Yahoo! Messenger. I was very much in the Yahoo! ecosystem before Google took over the internet.

The infamous Yahoo! Messenger online and offline emoticons.

One area of Yahoo! that doesn’t get a lot of attention is Yahoo! Clubs, later rebranded as Yahoo! Groups. Looking back, this was as close to a social media platform as you could get at the time. It had a message board which resembled a modern day “feed”, member pages, a chat room, links to other sites, a member page, contact page, statistics, news, calendar events and a photos page. If that doesn’t sound like a Facebook Page, I don’t know what to tell you.

What was really nice about these clubs was that you could see who was online, how many were online recently over the past few days and get an overall idea of how popular the club was before joining.

I loved these clubs, I think I joined a bunch of random Pokémon, DBZ and Nintendo ones before finally finding something I had never come across before… roleplay. I had actually never really heard about roleplaying before, but I believe it was explained to me that it was basically like playing with your toys but written in text instead. I looked at some examples and it seemed really fun, so I browsed around trying to find a small niche club that I could make an impact in.

The only image I could find relating to the club.

Eventually, I found DBZ Underground Fight Club II. Even though it was quite a small club compared to the others out there, it seemed extremely well organised. The founder of the club was called vegeta_super_jin who was much older than me, I think he was in his late teens or early 20s. He was really cool and took the time to explain everything to me over Yahoo! Messenger.

Basically, you had to treat the roleplaying world that their story was set in as an alternate dimension where the DBZ characters lived, but you could change most things (As long as it fit within the universe that vegeta_super_jin was creating. For example, if you wanted, you could pick the Trunks character and make him secretly the Legendary Super Saiyan, however, if vegeta_super_jin’s overarching story contradicted this, you could not choose that path.

So, I picked my favourite character at the time, Gohan. I shed the username simondbz2000 and adopted a new Yahoo account called gohan_ultimate_ssj2. Back then, swapping names on Yahoo! meant that you had to basically move to an entirely new account. Yahoo! made this incredibly easy, so you’d usually ask your friends to add your new username and move on.

A look at the club directory as it was in 2001.

One of the super cool things that DBZ Underground Fight Club II had over other clubs that I found at the time was its own GeoCities (Or Tripod? I can’t recall) page. This page had all of our progress logged on it including our name, bio, age, planet/location, attacks and the real dopamine hit, our Power Level (PL) which the page was arranged by. Trust me when I say, seeing my actions raise my PL turned into a complete obsession. I’d become the most active member by far, shooting to the top of the rankings. I spent all my time on my computer trying to increase my PL, even on holiday in New Zealand.

I love how all the old GeoCities images of TV shows were clearly taken from VHS tapes.

Heck, I still even remember the Yahoo! Club URL off by heart, I used to type it manually each time I wanted to visit it for some reason (I guess I never figured out Favourites in Internet Explorer?)

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/dbzundergroundfightclubii

vegeta_super_jin really liked my enthusiasm, because it encouraged a lot of activity in the club, but I was focused on being the best which began to grind the other members including him. He’d lay out scenarios and we’d respond with what we’d do in the comments underneath. I’d basically make my character unbeatable in any situation which is absolutely NOT how roleplay should be.

Another member called perfectcells joined, which actually turned into my main rival. He really disliked me and you could tell he was a bit older than me or even vegeta_super_jin. He would always call me out for bullshit, and he was totally right to do so, but 10 year old me thought he was a jealous schmuck that just had to “get good”. vegeta_super_jin made a story putting me and him against each other, which made perfect sense since Gohan and Cell were rivals in the real universe too. The problem was, I grinded way too many levels and literally became unbeatable in the universe. vegeta_super_jin made the controversial decision to reset the Power Levels of everyone which didn’t go down well, causing a mass exodus. In the end, vegeta_super_jin ended up shutting the entire club down and deleted the page.

Yep, I helped ruin things for sure 🪦

Regardless of the nonsense, I thoroughly enjoyed this time in my life a lot. It helped a lot with my typing skills, gave me something to focus on and helped me expand my imagination a bit.

For a bit of fun, I recreated the GeoCities website here in 2024. It’s entirely from memory, the real page is long gone and despite my best efforts I could not find it at all even after going through the multiple GeoCities archives.

I hope this page finds someone else who was part of that club, especially as there’s absolutely no mention of it on the modern internet anymore. Considering its been a quarter of a century though? I highly doubt it.

However, IF anyone from that club ever does reads this, thank you so much for making that place so cool. It was amazing.

gohan_ultimate_ssj2, now much older, signing off for the last time.