Author: Jonathan Snowden

Ken Shamrock Exclusive: On UFC, Legacy and His Controversial Kimbo Slice Fight

There will be thousands of televised mixed martial arts fights this year. Between the UFC’s ever-expanding schedule, Bellator’s ascendance on Spike TV and the rotating collection of promotions featured on AXS TV, barely a week goes by without the cage …

There will be thousands of televised mixed martial arts fights this year. Between the UFC’s ever-expanding schedule, Bellator‘s ascendance on Spike TV and the rotating collection of promotions featured on AXS TV, barely a week goes by without the cage door closing on two men looking to do each other grave physical harm.

It’s a blessing and a curse for fans. There’s more action that ever—but the bouts are all too often indistinguishable from one another, random and homogenous fighters colliding without a hint of fanfare, each quickly forgotten.

That was not the case for Bellator 138.

In one corner was Kimbo Slice, the street-fighting legend born Kevin Ferguson, his iconic beard and snarl doing nothing to belay his reputation as a fierce individual. In the other, Ken Shamrock. Legend. Hall of Famer. Grandfather.

Almost three million people tuned into Spike TV to see Slice escape a choke attempt and knock Shamrock out with a powerful right hand. It will end up being one of the most watched and most discussed fights on cable television this year, a record-setting fight for Bellator and part of a new strategy to ride the coattails of MMA legends while establishing a new generation of fighters.

For Ken Shamrock it was another day at the office—setting box-office and viewership records is just what he does. From literally the very first televised MMA card in America right up to 2015, Shamrock has set the standard, carrying the sport on his back promotionally for decades.

And he’d like a little credit if you don’t mind.

“Even now, after this fight with Kimbo, the first thing I saw in the media was about how Kimbo was still a big draw,” Shamrock told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview. “I thought to myself ‘why are people trying deliberately not to give any credit to me?’ I realize I wasn’t the only one in the ring and that Kimbo is a popular fighter. I know that. But I had a huge part in making that happen. I just don’t understand it.

“I was able to, during my time and even now at this point, break records nearly every time I walked into the ring. I think a lot of people miss what I’ve done in the MMA world. How I was able to market and control the industry so that people wanted to watch my fights. If you look at the fights I’ve been involved in—in the SEG UFC, in Japan, for Zuffa and today, they have been fights that have turned companies around. Promoters do bigger numbers when Ken Shamrock’s name is on the card.”

At UFC 1 back in 1993, Shamrock turned heads helping change the world’s perception of what a fight looked like. He became the first fighter to ever win a televised bout with a submission hold, forcing the proud kickboxer Pat Smith to squeal out in pain and frantically tap the mat with a heel hook. Though he lost to Royce Gracie in the semifinals, it was clear Shamrock was someone worth watching from the very beginning.

“The Gracies didn’t want me to come back,” Shamrock said. “They wanted to move on and push me aside. But Bob Meyrowitz (head of pay-per-view giant Semaphore Entertainment Group, which would eventually own the UFC) made it very clear that Royce was going to have to fight me again. He saw value after seeing the fans really buy into me. People seemed to be drawn to me. So he made the decision that they were going to bring me back.”

The result was a Super Fight, a paradigm shift that upended the UFC model that had depended on eight-man tournaments to build drama and stars. Meyrowitz saw early on that the UFC’s future was in clashes between compelling athletes, not between different styles of martial arts. The concept could sell a couple of times—but the ultimate goal was a sport driven by people.

“Meyrowitz saw that this was what the fans wanted,” Shamrock said. “He said ‘forget the tournament. For the first time ever we’re going to do a Super Fight.’ We’re just going to match them up and let them go at it. I think he kept the sport alive by moving in that direction. If he doesn’t do that, I’m not sure we’d have the UFC today. It might have just died off.”

A series of astounding successes on pay-per-view helped. Shamrock and Gracie fought to a draw in their rematch, a new time limit and a lack of judges preventing a decisive result. But the shiner on Gracie’s eye told the story—and Ken Shamrock became the sport’s top star while Gracie faded from the MMA scene for years.

More superfights followed, each starring Shamrock against former tournament winners or established stars. The public appetite remained insatiable. But politicians and cable companies were circling, looking for a victim to sacrifice in the culture wars of the era. The UFC, without any established television partner or corporate conglomeration backing it, simply couldn’t afford to keep fighting the good fight.

“Every time they would go into a town they would have to go to court,” Shamrock said. “They were spending a lot of money just fighting the system. Bob got to the point where he couldn’t pay me what I needed. As long as I could support my family and do what I loved, I was going to do it. But he had to cut my pay and I told him ‘Listen, I just can’t do it. I can’t support my family with what’s coming in.’ And he understood. We had a great conversation. I had to make a move.”

A stint in the WWE sharpened Shamrock’s already top-notch skills as a performer and expanded his profile dramatically. When he returned to mixed martial arts three years later, he was ready, once again, to lead the floundering sport into a brighter tomorrow.

“I was a different kind of popular,” he said. “Before I was popular in karate magazines and what parts of the MMA industry existed at the time. But when I got on Monday Night Raw, I was popular in the mainstream. People who didn’t even follow sports knew who I was. It was another level of being famous. … When I made the move back to the MMA world, I was the first guy to bring pro-wrestling fans back with me.”

After an initial foray into the Japanese scene, helping Pride Fighting Championship launch in America on pay-per-view, Shamrock was once again asked to carry the UFC on his broad shoulders. The promotion struggled mightily under a new ownership group. Though it’d managed to fix MMA’s regulatory and cable television problems, the new UFC hadn’t been able to successfully capture lightning in a bottle the way Shamrock had in the sport’s early days.

“Dana White came to me and he was begging me to come fight for them,” Shamrock said. “Because they were dying. They were doing 30,000 buys on pay-per-view and he told me ‘we just want to break 100,000.’ I said ‘I can get that for you easy.’

“He goes ‘a lot of people say that, but they haven’t been able to do it.’ I told him ‘I can do it.’ They couldn’t afford what I was asking, so I made a bet on myself and would get paid based on hitting those numbers. We went forward and did 140-150,000 buys. That’s a huge increase.”

His fight with that era’s standard-bearer, Tito Ortiz, showed Zuffa and the UFC what was possible with the right promotion. Instead of closing up shop, they pushed forward, eventually landing a deal on Spike TV that launched the MMA business to new heights. With record-setting numbers as a coach on the third season of The Ultimate Fighter and a record performance on pay-per-view against Ortiz at UFC 61, Shamrock was again helping to blaze new trails.

“It took the UFC over the top,” Shamrock said. “There was history there, going back to the early days with (Shamrock’s fight team) the Lion’s Den. There was a story there. It gave people something to care about. The big fights that I’ve had all had stories to tell.

“You can’t do it alone. There has to be a guy across from you who’s just as popular. And there has to be something there for the people to buy into.  The opponents helped—I was definitely in the right place at the right times.”

The Shamrock who returned to the UFC, however, was not the same fighter who had left it. Age and injuries accumulated on the road with the WWE had hampered him physically, and he was no longer competitive against the kind of elite competitors his stature almost demanded he fight. When he retired in 2010, he had amassed just a 5-11 record since his second act started in 2000.

That, just as much as his age, led many to doubt the former champion going into his comeback fight with Slice. He shocked many by securing an early advantage on the ground and very nearly finishing the fight with a rear-naked choke. It’s a position few escape from, causing many, including UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, to question the bout’s legitimacy.

“When I first announced I was going to fight, people said I shouldn’t be in the ring,” Shamrock said. “They said ‘He can’t win that fight. He’s 51. He’s been out of the sport for years. There’s no way.’ The press was saying I was going to lose. The odds were saying I was going to lose. Now, after the fight, the same people are saying there’s no way I should have lost. It had to be a work? I’m confused. Prior to the fight they were saying I couldn’t win. Now they’re saying I shouldn’t have lost.”

So what happened against Slice, where he went from glorious victory to horrendous defeat in a matter of seconds?

“I was a rookie. It was like my first fight. I got into a position to win and I didn’t take my time. I forced it,” Shamrock said. “I was stronger than him, I manhandled him and I felt in complete control of that fight. But, when I got his back, instead of trying to use my technique and slide the choke in, I tried to choke him to death. I tried to use all my strength and power to muscle it in. Because I felt so much stronger and so much more dominant than him. And I overdid it, man. That’s the bottom line. It was a rookie move. I had him dead to rights and I screwed up. I tried to force it instead of just letting it work.  It got to a point I was squeezing it so hard that I turned it over and ended up sliding off his back.

“In training, I didn’t work on finishing at all, other than some leg locks one day. I mostly worked on conditioning, movement on the ground and positioning,” he continued. “I thought it was like riding a bike. When you do it you just do it. I worked on getting the position, on taking the back. But never on finishing, on applying the move until the guy tapped out. I just worked until I had it and then let go. And I think that’s where the mistake was made. In training I never actually made anybody tap out. It was all catch and release.”

For Shamrock, the loss isn’t a warning sign or an indication that his body can no longer handle the rigors of the cage. Instead, he believes it shows quite clearly that he’s ready to continue his martial arts journey, hopefully with a bout against Royce Gracie later this year.

“I came back at 51, I gave up 30 pounds and I hadn’t been in the ring in years,” Shamrock said. “And yet, I missed winning because of a mistake. A simple mistake that was due to me having ring rust. Now that I’ve knocked the rust off, I’m going to get better. 

“My timing, everything I do in the ring, is going to get better. Not worse. So why would I stop after a performance like I just had? I wasn’t dominated. I dominated him. There’s no way I’m stopping on that man. I’ve got more. I’ve got a lot more to give.”

 

Jonathan Snowden covers Combat Sports for Bleacher Report.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Ken Shamrock Exclusive: On UFC, Legacy and His Controversial Kimbo Slice Fight

There will be thousands of televised mixed martial arts fights this year. Between the UFC’s ever-expanding schedule, Bellator’s ascendance on Spike TV and the rotating collection of promotions featured on AXS TV, barely a week goes by without the cage …

There will be thousands of televised mixed martial arts fights this year. Between the UFC’s ever-expanding schedule, Bellator‘s ascendance on Spike TV and the rotating collection of promotions featured on AXS TV, barely a week goes by without the cage door closing on two men looking to do each other grave physical harm.

It’s a blessing and a curse for fans. There’s more action that ever—but the bouts are all too often indistinguishable from one another, random and homogenous fighters colliding without a hint of fanfare, each quickly forgotten.

That was not the case for Bellator 138.

In one corner was Kimbo Slice, the street-fighting legend born Kevin Ferguson, his iconic beard and snarl doing nothing to belay his reputation as a fierce individual. In the other, Ken Shamrock. Legend. Hall of Famer. Grandfather.

Almost three million people tuned into Spike TV to see Slice escape a choke attempt and knock Shamrock out with a powerful right hand. It will end up being one of the most watched and most discussed fights on cable television this year, a record-setting fight for Bellator and part of a new strategy to ride the coattails of MMA legends while establishing a new generation of fighters.

For Ken Shamrock it was another day at the office—setting box-office and viewership records is just what he does. From literally the very first televised MMA card in America right up to 2015, Shamrock has set the standard, carrying the sport on his back promotionally for decades.

And he’d like a little credit if you don’t mind.

“Even now, after this fight with Kimbo, the first thing I saw in the media was about how Kimbo was still a big draw,” Shamrock told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview. “I thought to myself ‘why are people trying deliberately not to give any credit to me?’ I realize I wasn’t the only one in the ring and that Kimbo is a popular fighter. I know that. But I had a huge part in making that happen. I just don’t understand it.

“I was able to, during my time and even now at this point, break records nearly every time I walked into the ring. I think a lot of people miss what I’ve done in the MMA world. How I was able to market and control the industry so that people wanted to watch my fights. If you look at the fights I’ve been involved in—in the SEG UFC, in Japan, for Zuffa and today, they have been fights that have turned companies around. Promoters do bigger numbers when Ken Shamrock’s name is on the card.”

At UFC 1 back in 1993, Shamrock turned heads helping change the world’s perception of what a fight looked like. He became the first fighter to ever win a televised bout with a submission hold, forcing the proud kickboxer Pat Smith to squeal out in pain and frantically tap the mat with a heel hook. Though he lost to Royce Gracie in the semifinals, it was clear Shamrock was someone worth watching from the very beginning.

“The Gracies didn’t want me to come back,” Shamrock said. “They wanted to move on and push me aside. But Bob Meyrowitz (head of pay-per-view giant Semaphore Entertainment Group, which would eventually own the UFC) made it very clear that Royce was going to have to fight me again. He saw value after seeing the fans really buy into me. People seemed to be drawn to me. So he made the decision that they were going to bring me back.”

The result was a Super Fight, a paradigm shift that upended the UFC model that had depended on eight-man tournaments to build drama and stars. Meyrowitz saw early on that the UFC’s future was in clashes between compelling athletes, not between different styles of martial arts. The concept could sell a couple of times—but the ultimate goal was a sport driven by people.

“Meyrowitz saw that this was what the fans wanted,” Shamrock said. “He said ‘forget the tournament. For the first time ever we’re going to do a Super Fight.’ We’re just going to match them up and let them go at it. I think he kept the sport alive by moving in that direction. If he doesn’t do that, I’m not sure we’d have the UFC today. It might have just died off.”

A series of astounding successes on pay-per-view helped. Shamrock and Gracie fought to a draw in their rematch, a new time limit and a lack of judges preventing a decisive result. But the shiner on Gracie’s eye told the story—and Ken Shamrock became the sport’s top star while Gracie faded from the MMA scene for years.

More superfights followed, each starring Shamrock against former tournament winners or established stars. The public appetite remained insatiable. But politicians and cable companies were circling, looking for a victim to sacrifice in the culture wars of the era. The UFC, without any established television partner or corporate conglomeration backing it, simply couldn’t afford to keep fighting the good fight.

“Every time they would go into a town they would have to go to court,” Shamrock said. “They were spending a lot of money just fighting the system. Bob got to the point where he couldn’t pay me what I needed. As long as I could support my family and do what I loved, I was going to do it. But he had to cut my pay and I told him ‘Listen, I just can’t do it. I can’t support my family with what’s coming in.’ And he understood. We had a great conversation. I had to make a move.”

A stint in the WWE sharpened Shamrock’s already top-notch skills as a performer and expanded his profile dramatically. When he returned to mixed martial arts three years later, he was ready, once again, to lead the floundering sport into a brighter tomorrow.

“I was a different kind of popular,” he said. “Before I was popular in karate magazines and what parts of the MMA industry existed at the time. But when I got on Monday Night Raw, I was popular in the mainstream. People who didn’t even follow sports knew who I was. It was another level of being famous. … When I made the move back to the MMA world, I was the first guy to bring pro-wrestling fans back with me.”

After an initial foray into the Japanese scene, helping Pride Fighting Championship launch in America on pay-per-view, Shamrock was once again asked to carry the UFC on his broad shoulders. The promotion struggled mightily under a new ownership group. Though it’d managed to fix MMA’s regulatory and cable television problems, the new UFC hadn’t been able to successfully capture lightning in a bottle the way Shamrock had in the sport’s early days.

“Dana White came to me and he was begging me to come fight for them,” Shamrock said. “Because they were dying. They were doing 30,000 buys on pay-per-view and he told me ‘we just want to break 100,000.’ I said ‘I can get that for you easy.’

“He goes ‘a lot of people say that, but they haven’t been able to do it.’ I told him ‘I can do it.’ They couldn’t afford what I was asking, so I made a bet on myself and would get paid based on hitting those numbers. We went forward and did 140-150,000 buys. That’s a huge increase.”

His fight with that era’s standard-bearer, Tito Ortiz, showed Zuffa and the UFC what was possible with the right promotion. Instead of closing up shop, they pushed forward, eventually landing a deal on Spike TV that launched the MMA business to new heights. With record-setting numbers as a coach on the third season of The Ultimate Fighter and a record performance on pay-per-view against Ortiz at UFC 61, Shamrock was again helping to blaze new trails.

“It took the UFC over the top,” Shamrock said. “There was history there, going back to the early days with (Shamrock’s fight team) the Lion’s Den. There was a story there. It gave people something to care about. The big fights that I’ve had all had stories to tell.

“You can’t do it alone. There has to be a guy across from you who’s just as popular. And there has to be something there for the people to buy into.  The opponents helped—I was definitely in the right place at the right times.”

The Shamrock who returned to the UFC, however, was not the same fighter who had left it. Age and injuries accumulated on the road with the WWE had hampered him physically, and he was no longer competitive against the kind of elite competitors his stature almost demanded he fight. When he retired in 2010, he had amassed just a 5-11 record since his second act started in 2000.

That, just as much as his age, led many to doubt the former champion going into his comeback fight with Slice. He shocked many by securing an early advantage on the ground and very nearly finishing the fight with a rear-naked choke. It’s a position few escape from, causing many, including UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, to question the bout’s legitimacy.

“When I first announced I was going to fight, people said I shouldn’t be in the ring,” Shamrock said. “They said ‘He can’t win that fight. He’s 51. He’s been out of the sport for years. There’s no way.’ The press was saying I was going to lose. The odds were saying I was going to lose. Now, after the fight, the same people are saying there’s no way I should have lost. It had to be a work? I’m confused. Prior to the fight they were saying I couldn’t win. Now they’re saying I shouldn’t have lost.”

So what happened against Slice, where he went from glorious victory to horrendous defeat in a matter of seconds?

“I was a rookie. It was like my first fight. I got into a position to win and I didn’t take my time. I forced it,” Shamrock said. “I was stronger than him, I manhandled him and I felt in complete control of that fight. But, when I got his back, instead of trying to use my technique and slide the choke in, I tried to choke him to death. I tried to use all my strength and power to muscle it in. Because I felt so much stronger and so much more dominant than him. And I overdid it, man. That’s the bottom line. It was a rookie move. I had him dead to rights and I screwed up. I tried to force it instead of just letting it work.  It got to a point I was squeezing it so hard that I turned it over and ended up sliding off his back.

“In training, I didn’t work on finishing at all, other than some leg locks one day. I mostly worked on conditioning, movement on the ground and positioning,” he continued. “I thought it was like riding a bike. When you do it you just do it. I worked on getting the position, on taking the back. But never on finishing, on applying the move until the guy tapped out. I just worked until I had it and then let go. And I think that’s where the mistake was made. In training I never actually made anybody tap out. It was all catch and release.”

For Shamrock, the loss isn’t a warning sign or an indication that his body can no longer handle the rigors of the cage. Instead, he believes it shows quite clearly that he’s ready to continue his martial arts journey, hopefully with a bout against Royce Gracie later this year.

“I came back at 51, I gave up 30 pounds and I hadn’t been in the ring in years,” Shamrock said. “And yet, I missed winning because of a mistake. A simple mistake that was due to me having ring rust. Now that I’ve knocked the rust off, I’m going to get better. 

“My timing, everything I do in the ring, is going to get better. Not worse. So why would I stop after a performance like I just had? I wasn’t dominated. I dominated him. There’s no way I’m stopping on that man. I’ve got more. I’ve got a lot more to give.”

 

Jonathan Snowden covers Combat Sports for Bleacher Report.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

‘Soldier of God’ Yoel Romero Takes Out Lyoto Machida and ‘Gay Jesus’ in 1 Night

The stories coming out of Yoel Romero’s destruction of Lyoto Machida should revolve around his ascendance to the top of the middleweight class. After a slow dance that took most of two rounds, Romero exploded early in the third round to crush Machida’s…

The stories coming out of Yoel Romero’s destruction of Lyoto Machida should revolve around his ascendance to the top of the middleweight class. After a slow dance that took most of two rounds, Romero exploded early in the third round to crush Machida‘s future title aspirations with five perfectly placed elbows to the head.

On a card without much else going for it, this was a victory that was bound to drive the MMA discourse for several days. Machida, after all, is a former champion. Though he’s in his declining years, he’s not not yet at a stage where a win over him is meaningless. This win mattered. For Romero, it was the highlight of his short career.

Then someone stuck a live microphone in the Soldier of God’s face.

“Hey. Hey, USA. Hey, Miami. Hey, Florida. Listen people. Listen. Listen. Listen,” Romero said in broken English. “What happened to you, USA? What happened to you? What’s going on you? Forget for the best of the best in the world. The name is Jesus Christ. What happened to you? Wake up USA. Go, go back for you. Go. Go for Jesus.”

And then the bombshell.

“No for Gay Jesus people.”

Did he or didn’t he? It’s the question that raged on Twitter after the fight. One day after the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout the land, the seemingly bizarre criticism of a homosexual deity might make a modicum of sense in that context.

Some are convinced he did indeed bring up the possibility of a gay Jesus. Scamps on Wikipedia quickly changed his nickname to “Gay Jesus.” Others believe he actually said, “No forget Jesus people.”  I’ve listened to it half a hundred times. What he actually said in the cage may never be known.

Later, at the post-fight press conference after prompting by a UFC official, Romero explained he wasn’t attempting to reference gay marriage but rather the American experience.

“What I was trying to say—the United States, thank you,” Romero, now speaking Spanish and using a translator said. “Thank you for giving me the American Dream. There is no better country than this one. Because it was blessed by God.”

It’s rare to hear a “thank you” begin by asking, angrily, “What happened to you?” But, due to a language barrier and post-fight adrenaline, maybe Romero deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Either way, the strange interview completely overshadowed all the other wacky stuff Romero did, including what appeared to be an Anthony Pettis-style cage-assisted punch that the former Olympic silver medalist turned into a takedown attempt to close the second round.

It was a sequence of events that underscored something that’s getting harder and harder to deny—the man can do things in the cage no one else can even imagine.

“This is the kind of power and athleticism this man possesses. You are never safe when you’re in the Octagon with him,” Fox Sports commentator Brian Stann said after the show. “When you feel the kind of power Romero possesses you don’t want to mess around too much.”

The win pushes the 38-year-old fighter’s UFC record to a perfect 6-0. All but one of those wins came by way of knockout. With another victory, particularly another finish over a top opponent, Romero could very well catapult himself right into title contention.

It turns out he’s pretty good at the fighting part of his job. The public relations part? That could use a little work.

The UFC encourages fighters, even those just learning the language, to address the crowd in English. Perhaps, however, those messages should be shorter and more to the point—to prevent any unfortunate “misunderstandings.”

 

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Conor McGregor Is No Longer Fighting the Real Jose Aldo—And That’s a Shame

All looked lost earlier this week when it appeared UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo would be forced to withdraw from his highly anticipated bout with the “Notorious” Conor McGregor at UFC 189 on July 11 in Las Vegas.
Curses were…

All looked lost earlier this week when it appeared UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo would be forced to withdraw from his highly anticipated bout with the “Notorious” Conor McGregor at UFC 189 on July 11 in Las Vegas.

Curses were uttered at the futility of it all, and many tears were shed—particularly by Irish fans who were afraid they had purchased expensive plane tickets for naught. 

After months of anticipation, a worldwide media tour and the most expensive television commercial in UFC history, losing what looked like it might well be a fight for the ages would have been a crushing blow. UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier spoke for us all on Twitter with a plaintive “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!”  

Aldo was said to be just as distraught as the rest of us.

“He cried. He wants this fight bad, everybody invested a lot in this,” his coach Andre Pederneiras told Combate (translation by MMAFighting.com). “I was with him the whole afternoon. He’s heartbroken.”

On Wednesday, however, the MMA community collectively issued a huge sigh of relief when the UFC, after several cryptic messages, finally issued a statement. Aldo’s injured ribs, it turned out, were bruised but not broken. The fight, assuming Aldo gets the Nevada Athletic Commission to rubber-stamp his own doctor’s findings, is back on. 

That’s a reason to celebrate. 

And, yet, despite the many reasons to cheer, I can’t help but think the fight we all wanted disappeared at the first mention of a potential training-camp injury. Suddenly, a bout that pitted the brash newcomer against the unique style of the most dominant featherweight in MMA history is gone.

Left in its place is something that looks similar at first glance—but is actually quite different.

What was once a win-win scenario—either the crowning of a charismatic new star or an affirmation of one of the sport’s long-standing elites—has been cheated of its gravity by an overzealous training partner. Now, should McGregor win, he’s just the guy who beat an injured champion. It’s an accomplishment that, consciously or not, every fan will have to downgrade. 

Would McGregor have won without the injury? Is he really the best featherweight in the world? 

Those questions would help a rematch immensely but nonetheless make UFC 189 seem like something less than the perfect storm. Sure, McGregor would be the proud owner of a UFC title. But it would be tarnished gold—a win only the hardest of hardcore McGregor fans could truly celebrate.

McGregor is a true fighter. He believes he’s better than Aldo. He wants to make his case in the most definitive way possible. He wants to beat Aldo at his very best. Unfortunately, there is no best-case scenario. Not anymore. There is only the lesser of two evils—a win against an obviously diminished foe. 

That’s no fit way to begin the McGregor Era. 

Worse still would be a McGregor loss. Right now the UFC has a hot property on its hands, He would have remained a potential box-office star win or lose against Aldo—at least against a healthy Aldo. But, after all his posturing and crude trash talk, can McGregor afford to lose to an Aldo the world knows isn’t at the peak of his powers? 

McGregor has a gift for fight promotion. But, at the heart of his trash talk is performance. He gets away with it because he goes out to the cage and makes it true. That’s the difference between boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Adrien Broner. One has a shelf life—the other is immortal. 

This fight was supposed to be special. It was a chance for one of the smaller weight classes, for the first time, to step into the limelight and prove it can draw big money for the UFC. The stars seemingly had aligned. McGregor is the breath of fresh air the promotion has prayed for. Aldo is the perfect foil, the long-standing champion with the big reputation.

This was going to be the Fight of the Year—the rare bout that’s a combination of sport and spectacle. Now? It may still be an excellent fight. The two may go into the Octagon and have the amazing stylistic matchup we all crave—a clash between Aldo’s straight-ahead muay thai and McGregor’s slick karate and intricate footwork.

But something will be missing. Doubt will linger. We’ll wonder what might have been had the two both been at full strength.

Now, instead of being the definitive clash between two icons, it’s just another fight for a belt. And that’s a real shame. 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Inside Ken Shamrock’s Quest to Show He’s Still the World’s Most Dangerous Man

SAN DIEGO — Next to the bed in his Windsport motor home, parked behind a discount tire store in suburban San Diego, “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” has a Bible and a Glock.
“That’s the American way,” Ken Shamrock says, breaking into a smile with…

SAN DIEGO — Next to the bed in his Windsport motor home, parked behind a discount tire store in suburban San Diego, “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” has a Bible and a Glock.

“That’s the American way,” Ken Shamrock says, breaking into a smile with just enough malice to make you wonder. “Me and my Bible will beat the faith into you.”    

In the next room, a timid pit bull whines, tail between its legs. She’s been Shamrock’s only company as he prepares for Friday’s much-anticipated fight with Kimbo Slice. There’s a greasy George Foreman grill in the back. A ubiquitous and eponymous energy drink is everywhere. There are no luxuries here.

“Because of who I am and what I’ve accomplished, everything is pretty much given to me,” Shamrock says. “People cater to me all the time. It’s almost like I’ve lost that edge—lost the ability to want something and then put in the work necessary to get it.

“I have to earn whatever it is I get from here on out. Right now I don’t even have running water in that trailer. I have to go and shower at the gym. Shave at the gym. I have to bring in water in jugs in order to have water to boil for food. It’s been rough.”

A UFC Hall of Famer, the 51-year-old Shamrock was the first man to earn seven figures for a fight in the Octagon. That was 10 years and a lawsuit ago. Now, in a sad motor home in a questionable part of town, he’s looking for one more chance—a chance to write that happy ending all fighters dream of but few can realize.

A pink sign hanging on the door reads “The Gift of Friends.” That may work for Mama Shamrock, but the grizzled cagefighter inside belies that message. The bathroom looks like it belongs to a college freshman. There’s a pan on the bed to catch the drip, a rare spring storm having created a significant leak.

Last night, he says, he was forced to sleep on the couch with the dog. He says it with a twinkle in his eye.

Ken Shamrock looks happy.

“I feel really good,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been given a second chance to do what I love doing. I thought I had lost my opportunity to go out of this sport the way I wanted to go out—and that’s to go out fighting and go out fighting at a relatively high level.”

Twenty minutes later, down the road at Cully’s Restaurant in Poway, Shamrock is no longer in quite the same jolly mood. We walk into the place, a definitive greasy spoon where Shamrock eats each morning, and then walk out and back in again. We do it several times as reality television cameras from Spike TV attempt to capture the perfect authentic greeting from the restaurant staff.

Eventually they give up. They’ll shoot it again when we’re done. Reality, after all, is malleable. You quickly become inured by the cameras in Shamrock’s presence. If it’s not Spike, it’s a team shooting a documentary on his life. If it’s not them, it’s a Marine with a cellphone camera. If you’re with Shamrock, you are being documented.

It’s easy to forget the two cameramen and the producer, though, when Shamrock has a bone to pick.

More than 21 years after his first professional fight, there’s still a raging intensity just underneath the surface. There’s a face Shamrock used to make as a WWE wrestler when he applied his signature ankle lock submission. He’s wearing it at breakfast while chastising Spike’s team for what he feels is a Kimbo-friendly slant.

“He’s been last in everything,” Shamrock complains. “Last one out at every press appearance. Getting the last word in the TV commercials. It’s supposed to be a promotion of equals. That’s OK. They’ll see.”

The interview, at some point, turns into a performance piece. It’s my interview, but there are notes for me as well as for Ken, who orders pancakes and six scrambled eggs, insisting all the while that it probably won’t be enough food. He’s fighting at heavyweight and still hitting the scale at a svelte 217 pounds. The weight, he says, just won’t stay on anymore in the face of all the intense workouts he’s putting himself through.

“Eat more aggressively,” I’m told, and I give it my all. Ken is instructed to stab violently into his eggs, covered in ketchup, while he discusses how much he loves to make an opponent bleed. He literally pounds his food while talking about inventing the MMA strategy of ground-and-pound.

At first, it seems a ludicrous claim. Invented it? But there he is on tape, sitting in Royce Gracie’s guard at UFC 5, 20 years ago, creating a sport with the power of invention and desperation.

“Technique is certainly a lot better now. But when you talk about countering the guard, I developed that in MMA to fight Royce,” Shamrock says. “If you stay in the guard and control the hips and flatten him out, you can control him. And that was the start of ground-and-pound.”

In a way it’s like listening to a basketball player discuss inventing the jump shot, a reminder that this is still a sport very much in its formative stages. Shamrock is MMA’s most enduring star. Part of a pro wrestling troupe determined to put on matches that weren’t fixed, he hit his physical prime at just the right time to make a global impact.

Within months of the first legitimate pro wrestling match in decades, Shamrock was one of the breakout stars of the very first UFC. He’s been a presence on the scene ever since.

The doors at the San Diego Combat Academy roll up to let in the air. UFC fighter Liz Carmouche and a business partner have claimed two bays in an automobile repair shop. Instead of rebuilding engines, they are building fighters—even reclamation projects like Shamrock.

For Ken, this camp is a family affair. Waiting for him, in addition to trainer Manolo Hernandez, is Pete Williams, one of Shamrock’s top students in the formative days of his legendary Lion’s Den training camp. The first MMA “supergroup,” the young men who met Shamrock’s exacting standards and lived in his famed fighters’ house went on to great success in the sport’s early days. After all, if you could survive a training session with the 1995 version of Ken Shamrock, you can survive just about anything.

“He used to wake me up by whispering, ‘I’m going to beat the f–k out of you today,'” Williams says with a laugh. He can laugh after two decades. But at the time it wasn’t always so funny.

“There were definitely days we would be stretching and warming up and dreading whether or not Ken was going to come in that day,” he says. “Because if Ken came in, it was going to be an intense day. When Ken showed up, it went to another level of intensity. Depending on what was going on in his life. The worst days were when he was looking to blow off some steam. Then he was going to beat the crap out of some people. You had to either up your game or get your ass kicked on a daily basis. It was a live or die situation.”

Shamrock smiles when he hears Williams’ description of their early days together. If you squint hard enough, you can pretend it doesn’t have a predatory edge.

“It wasn’t that bad! But I can imagine that’s what they all thought,” he says. “To me, it was all about toughness. It was about preparing these guys for a career. It was bare-knuckle at that time and pretty brutal. That was the only way you were going to make it.

“If they were going to do this, they had to know what you were getting into. My whole thing was getting in there with these guys and really pushing their limits. Testing their toughness and their desire.”

The Williams sighting is kind of a big deal in the MMA subculture. Over the years, since riding a losing streak right out of the sport just as things finally started looking up, Williams has been a complete recluse.

More than a decade since his retirement, sporting a gnarly graying beard and a bit of a paunch, Williams is looking to reinsert himself into the fight game. Once again, Shamrock is leading the way. Williams has been there since the beginning, serving as Shamrock’s main training partner for almost every one of his big fights.

Does his mentor still have what it takes to compete?

“I think 51 is probably too old to compete with the 20-somethings or try to go in and get the belt,” Williams says. “But a grudge fight or a superfight where the opponent is also over 40 years old—I think it’s totally viable.”

That’s certainly fine with Bellator promoter Scott Coker. Sitting cageside at an event in Temecula, California, he says he has no intention of pushing either Shamrock or Slice into title contention. Instead, the two big names from yesteryear are intended to be a bridge—to connect lapsed fans to the promotion’s current crop of exciting young fighters.

“We do some fights like this that I call fun fights for the general fan and other fights for the hardcore fan. We have something for everybody,” Coker says. “The fun fights we do are designed to cast a net for the audience that used to be there.

“The beauty of all those eyeballs is that they’ll get to see Pitbull [featherweight champion Patricio Freire] and they’ll get to see Michael Chandler. The same way the Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar fight basically launched Will Brooks. We’re going to build stars every time we have one of these fun fights. We’re really going after it.”

Even the normally unflappable Coker, a living repudiation of his bombastic UFC counterpart Dana White, couldn’t hide his excitement for the fight—or his surprise that Shamrock was willing to step back into the cage again after five years on the outside. When Shamrock pointed at Royce Gracie at a legend’s convention and said, “I want to fight that guy,” Coker says he nearly fell out of his chair.

“I thought he was kidding,” he says. “I asked, ‘Wait, are you still interested in fighting?'”

Then the wheels really started turning.

“The next thing I asked was ‘Would you fight Kimbo Slice?’

“And he said ‘I’d love that fight.'”

At the San Diego Combat Academy’s flagship gym, Shamrock’s son Sean laughs at the idea he might be surprised his dad is stepping back into competition.

“He’s going to be 80 years old and walking to the ring with an oxygen mask,” he says. “He’s gonna do it until he can’t no more. It’s exciting that he’s getting back to what he loves to do. It’s like things are back to normal.”

If you were expecting trepidation and fear about Grandpa Shamrock returning to action, you’ll be disappointed in Clan Shamrock’s shoulder-shrugging nonchalance.

“I’m not worried at all. It’s going to be fun,” Sean’s older brother Ryan says. “I hear what everybody is saying, that because he’s old he can’t do it. But I see his training. Just wait until he gets in the ring and everybody sees what he does.”

If their confidence seems misplaced, have a look at this recently posted picture of Shamrock defying Father Time:

In the gym at least, the old Ken is back. He does a circuit that includes leg presses, flys and bicep curls on a balance ball. More insidious are the “wheel of doom” and the Indo Board.

The motivation for Shamrock is simple.

“I don’t want to be disappointing again—to myself or my fans,” Shamrock says.

He’s open about his last several fights failing to live up to his own high standards. His problems go all the way back to a fight in Japan in 2000, when he was forced to quit during a fight he was winning handily, asking Williams to stop the bout with the haunting cry of, “Petey my heart.”

“No matter how tough you are or how much willpower or determination you have, if there’s something wrong with your body it’s going to shut down and stop,” Shamrock says. “It’s good to have those qualities, but it’s important to know what you’re pushing against. And I almost pushed myself into the grave. I was frustrated. I was disappointed. I was depressed. This is not me. This can’t be all I have. This can’t be it. But there came a time when I had to accept that it was.”

He claims to be back on the right track now. And while there’s every reason to be skeptical that a man’s physical condition would be better at 51 than it was at 36, Shamrock’s strength and conditioning coach Bill Crawford says the fighter’s work in the gym is a powerful counterpoint to any critics.

“I can’t really throw anything at him he can’t handle,” Crawford says. “I train fighters from the age of 19 all the way up to Ken. All I know is that he does the same workouts they do.”

Inside Team Shamrock, there’s much talk about his spiritual walk and how much he’s changed over the years.

“Getting a chance to live with him since he’s been going to church and living the way he’s supposed to live, you can definitely tell a difference,” Sean says. “Anybody who knew him before can see that.”

But glimpses of the old Shamrock emerge from time to time.

At his trailer, Sean somehow manages to take up three parking places. “I park where I want to park,” he says. The lax attitude doesn’t extend to others’ cars, and when the Shamrocks are forced to take a short walk because a Mustang has blocked the entrance to the motor home, Father Shamrock screams, “Hey, whose car is this?”

The anger is palpable as he stalks the parking lot looking for the culprit. It quickly dissipates when an older woman, not at all impressed with the hulking fighter, calmly comes out to move her car.

If Shamrock needs to access his dark side, it’s not far from the surface. Just the mention of Slice can get him going. The two men have a long and sordid history. In 2008, they were set for a fight on CBS, a bout designed to continue Slice’s launch into the MMA mainstream.

For Shamrock, it was a stormy time. He knew he was there as the opponent, expected to lose to a man most famous for backyard street fights on YouTube. Already in a dark place because of his father’s failing health, a fight week contract dispute with promoter Elite XC sent him spiraling on a downward trajectory.

“They told us they didn’t have to meet with us,” Shamrock says. “We could do the fight or they would see us in court.”

And then, in the midst of the madness, it happened.

“I got a friend of mine, Dan Freeman, and we moved all the stuff out of the way in the hotel suite and started rolling around,” Shamrock says. “Easy stuff like you’d do in the locker room to warm up. Just to get my mind back on the fight.

“As I had his back, my head came down just as he popped his head up. Boom. He caught my eye. It wasn’t really that hard, and we even kept moving. Then I saw blood.”

It was a bad cut, on the day of the fight no less. Shamrock was scratched from the card, forcing Kimbo into a fight with the unknown Seth Petruzelli instead. Petruzelli knocked Slice out in 14 seconds. Shamrock was surrounded by whispers that he had cut himself on purpose in protest over Elite XC’s poor treatment.

Neither man has ever really recovered from the incident. Slice claims to this day that Shamrock was looking to duck out of the fight because he was afraid. In Team Shamrock, this is literally only mentioned in whispers. Even today, it’s a claim that stings.

“When Kimbo said that, I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? Who are you? Where did you come from?’ I would never say that about another fighter. Because I don’t know their situation. I would never do that,” Shamrock says. “To me that’s just a guy that’s got no character, he’s got no morals, he’s got no respect for life or for people.

“I fought all over the world against everyone. I ain’t afraid of nobody. Fighting in a ring is not scary. On the street, with guns and knives, where I came from? That’s scary. Fighting in a ring? Please.”

With Shamrock, you have to take these displays of temper with a grain of salt. His years in the WWE have made him a master salesman and, over and over again throughout his career, a series of opponents have been turned into his arch-nemesis for the purpose of ticket sales.

Still, there is the sense that there is truth here, lurking just under the surface.

“He called Ken a coward,” Shamrock’s business partner Des Woodruff says. He shakes his head, unbelieving.

“When I watch them interact, you can feel how much they dislike each other,” Coker says. “This is going to be a fight. These guys are going to fight. They are going to come out, and it is going to be on. When they walk in, I’m going to have goosebumps. It’s going to be that kind of fight. The emotions are so high it’s going to be a special night.”

As Shamrock towels off to leave the gym, a month before the fight, he looks ready to go. He’s on track, he says, already in shape to do three rounds. He’s fueled by many things—his doubters and his opponent among them. But most of all, there’s a burning desire to prove something to himself.

“I’ve been saying forever that I needed to do this again. Inside of me, I knew I had something more,” Shamrock says. “People who are given second chances often squander them. This is my second chance, and I promise you I am going to go into that ring and give everything I have.

“And it’s not just about winning. It ain’t about winning a three-round decision. It’s about finishing him in the first round. It’s not a fight I want to go to a decision. I want to finish this guy because I can.”

 

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.

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UFC 188: Cain Velasquez’s Loss Puts Junior Dos Santos Back in the Catbird Seat

While the loudest cheers no doubt came from Fabricio Werdum’s corner, the new UFC heavyweight champion’s extended entourage weren’t the only interested parties watching his fight with longtime champion Cain Velasquez at UFC 188 closely. 
Sitting r…

While the loudest cheers no doubt came from Fabricio Werdum’s corner, the new UFC heavyweight champion’s extended entourage weren’t the only interested parties watching his fight with longtime champion Cain Velasquez at UFC 188 closely. 

Sitting ringside was Junior dos Santos, until now Velasquez’s greatest rival. And the Brazilian slugger was no doubt smiling from ear to ear when Werdum choked the champion out in the third round. 

To most dos Santos is, at worst, the third-best heavyweight in the world. He’s beaten six of the big boys in the UFC’s top-15 rankings, most in spectacular fashion. In a perfect world, he’d have been the perfunctory top contender, just waiting word of the winner so he could properly prepare his training camp.

The problem, simply put, was Velasquez. The two men had already met three times in the Octagon. After dos Santos’ stunning knockout victory in the very first UFC fight broadcast on network television, Velasquez quickly went about setting the record straight. In the last two, Cain starched dos Santos in dominant performances, the kind of savage beatings that are hard to forget. 

That made a title shot dubious so long as Velasquez held the belt. At the very least enough time would have to pass for memories to fade, if just slightly. 

As a result, dos Santos became the world’s most unlikely Werdum fan in the days leading up to the fight. A Werdum title reign made a path to the championship far less circuitous. Unlike Velasquez, who seemingly has his number, dos Santos actually owns a win over the new champion. In an interview with Combate in Brazil (h/t Bloody Elbow), he made it all too clear he understood the stakes.

“If he wins, I think I’ll face him right away,” dos Santos said. “That would be a great rematch. If Cain wins, however, I will probably have to fight once or twice more. I hope Werdum wins. It would be great if the fight happened in Brazil. Two Brazilians fighting for the heavyweight title would be amazing for the country and for the sport.”

Although no official announcement has been made, it seems likely dos Santos’ all-Brazilian title dream will come true. In their first fight, dos Santos ended Werdum’s night, and his first UFC run, with a knockout of the night performance. A lot has changed in the seven years since that bout. 

Werdum has reinvented his striking game and looks fresher than ever at 37. The younger man chronologically, dos Santos has aged noticeably thanks to his wars in the Octagon. It shapes up to be something pretty exciting—for dos Santos and fans happy to have an active champion on the throne.

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