Author: Scott Harris

Don Frye vs. Chuck Norris: Breaking Down the Greatest Fight That Never Was

Introducing first, fighting out of the red corner: Chuck Norris. And his opponent, fighting out of the other red corner: Don Frye. That’s right. Norris. Frye. The eminent karate master. The rugged wrestler. A shared love of winning. A shared repu…

Introducing first, fighting out of the red corner: Chuck Norris.

And his opponent, fighting out of the other red corner: Don Frye.

That’s right. Norris. Frye. The eminent karate master. The rugged wrestler. A shared love of winning. A shared repulsion for whining. Two mustaches. One victor. 

It was the fight of the century. So why didn’t it happen?

First of all, how do you know it didn’t? Maybe the universe collapsed on itself from the force of their collision, causing a tear in the space-time continuum that erased that moment in history without our realizing it.

See, why didn’t that occur to you? With that kind of three-dimensional namby-pamby thinking, it’s not hard to see why you never made Texas Ranger.

But fine. Let’s assume it didn’t actually happen. Give the baby his bottle, is what I say. So when, or how, could it have gone down? 

Let’s take a trip back to the year 1997. No one had yet realized that The Spice Girls were not especially attractive, and thus they ruled the pop charts. Titanic was teaching us all what it meant to truly love—and live. I knew a rich guy who owned something called a cellular telephone.

Chuck Norris was a Texas lawman who played by his own rules, unencumbered by what you and I, tucked away in those comfortable suburban enclaves, might consider acceptable. And in his spare time, he was still one of America’s foremost and most famous authorities on martial arts, or kara-TAY, as it was known in those days.  

To wit, it was in 1997 that Norris became one of the first Westerners in the history of Tae Kwon Do to receive the rank of 8th Degree Black Belt Grand Master. It seemed that, at age 57, Norris was truly hitting his stride.

Meanwhile, that same year, another mustachioed man was kicking in the door of the combat sports ivory tower. A Mr. Don Frye was becoming quite a dominant force in the fledgling world of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. After fighting a mere 11 times in 1996, Frye fought only once in 1997, defeating Eric Valdez at Unified Shoot Wrestling Federation 5.  Word is, after winning the Ultimate Ultimate 96 Tournament a year before, Frye left the UFC because he found the Octagon to be a little, ehhh, effeminate.

You can’t help but wonder what brand of mustache-on-mustache crime could have gone down between these two. Never mind the newspapers…THIS is the burning question of the day. 

So let’s break this bad boy down…that is, if you’ve got the guts.

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Going Medieval: MMA’s 20 Worst Beatdowns

MMA has come a long way. But it hasn’t come that far. Few things in sports touch off a powder keg of emotion like an old-fashioned beatdown. It’s simultaneously compelling and repelling, frightening and exciting. Lots of visceral stuff mixed …

MMA has come a long way. But it hasn’t come that far.

Few things in sports touch off a powder keg of emotion like an old-fashioned beatdown. It’s simultaneously compelling and repelling, frightening and exciting. Lots of visceral stuff mixed up in there.

Here are my picks for the 20 nastiest, most dominant beatdowns in mixed martial arts.

They are not necessarily the goriest, though there will be blood. Oh, there’s blood. And it’s more than just a single flash of leather; it’s sustained dominance. In this case, that dominance tends to come from the striking phase of the game, as I am personally disinclined to measure a beatdown in units of Octagon control. It is a “beat”down, after all, not a “grapple”down.

With that, please enjoy.

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UFC 130 Fight Card: Fat Jokes Aside, Is Roy Nelson a Legit Heavyweight Threat?

It’s time for the Rodney Dangerfield of MMA to seize his Back to School moment. In fact, come UFC 130, Roy “Big Country” Nelson is going to treat Frank Mir and the entire UFC-watching public to an extra helping of special education. On May 28, the…

It’s time for the Rodney Dangerfield of MMA to seize his Back to School moment.

In fact, come UFC 130, Roy “Big Country” Nelson is going to treat Frank Mir and the entire UFC-watching public to an extra helping of special education. On May 28, the plus-sized fighter who “can’t get no respect” is finally going to get some.

A lot of online sports books have Nelson vs. Mir as even money. But the popular favorite appears to be Mir. That could be based, in many cases, on the highly scientific revelation that—hope you’re sitting down—Roy Nelson is fat.

Yep. No getting around it. Roy Nelson is fat. He’s a fat guy. Six-feet tall, 263 pounds. Insert your own beer-gut quip here.

Trust me, it’s no problem. After all, you’d just be following Nelson’s lead. This is the guy who jokes about getting Burger King after a win, proudly rocks a mullet and enters the arena to the song titled—you know it—”Fat.”

All joking aside, though, with this fight, which I believe Nelson will win (if you hadn’t already guessed that), he will finally prove himself a serious contender in the UFC’s heavyweight division. Fat and all.

Just look at his past. It’s practically “bulging” with victories, if you take my meaning. He has a “glut” of successes, if you will.

No one does or should confuse the defunct International Fight League’s heavyweight division with Pride, but Nelson still won that belt and defended it twice. In fact, no one else ever even held it. 

Lots of noise these days about Brendan Schaub and his status as a rising star at heavyweight, and deservedly so. But at the same time, not so much noise about Nelson, who knocked Schaub cold to win season 10 of The Ultimate Fighter.

Admittedly, outside of Schaub, Nelson doesn’t have a “ton” of high-profile scalps on his “menu” of victories. Still, you don’t get a 15-5 professional fighting record by sitting around eating onion rings, or at least not exclusively. And even in his most recent loss, Big Country was still impressive, absorbing colossal punishment in going the distance with one Junior Dos Santos.

Know how many guys have gone the distance with Dos Santos? One. That’s right: the fat guy.

But of course, Nelson is more than a great chin. He’s a great athlete, too. He’s a jiu-jitsu black belt under Renzo Gracie. He has trained with the likes of Randy Couture. And he can throw some leather, too.

If you count his fights during The Ultimate Fighter, four of his last five wins were stoppages due to strikes. To be certain, he is a well-“round”ed competitor. 

And yes, he does use his weight to his advantage at times. He can grapple opponents to the ground and smother them under his ample abdomen, to the point where they can probably almost taste the Whopper essence emanating from his pores.

Ugh, that was a gross image. Sorry.

Bottom line: Whether it’s a lack of great victories or just his physique, Roy Nelson has yet to earn acknowledgement as a legitimate force in the heavyweight division. Now, having won two of three fights in the UFC and earning two Knockout of the Night bonuses, how many Nelson victories need to come with a, “Well, but he’s fat” asterisk before he gets his due? 

My answer: one. This one.

At UFC 130, Frank Mir will be the punchline, Roy Nelson will have his signature UFC win and people will finally be a little less apt to pick the pudgy guy last in the heavyweight division.

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The Top 15 Heavyweights in MMA History: Does Brock Lesnar Make the Cut?

If Brock Lesnar would just come out of his shell already, the world would be a better place. I long for the day—pine for it, even—when people finally have the pleasure of knowing this massive and massively talented man for the opinionated, …

If Brock Lesnar would just come out of his shell already, the world would be a better place. I long for the day—pine for it, even—when people finally have the pleasure of knowing this massive and massively talented man for the opinionated, large, charismatic, powerful, large, ornery and very large fighter that he is.

Until then, it seems that people like me are left to extol his virtues on his behalf. But mark my words: One of these days, he’ll get his just due. In fact, I predict he’ll make quite a few dollars in this sport before it’s all said and done.

While I wait patiently for Wallflower Lesnar to become a household name, I’ll go ahead and fill you in on some details. For starters, he fights in the Ultimate Fighting Championship promotion, as a member of their heavyweight division (that’s the biggest one). He has had many wins there.

So many wins, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder where he might rank among the all-time greats at heavyweight. The top five are more or less set in stone. The second five are slightly more mutable, but still pretty rigid. But the third five? Well, that’s where it gets interesting.

Does the shy, underrated Brock Lesnar wind up there? Only one way to find out: read on.

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Watch and Listen: The 50 Best Entrance Songs in UFC History

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.Maybe that’s why the big entrance is such an interesting part of fight night. Though obviously secondary to, you know, the fight, a good entrance energizes the fighter and his team, whips…

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Maybe that’s why the big entrance is such an interesting part of fight night. Though obviously secondary to, you know, the fight, a good entrance energizes the fighter and his team, whips the crowd into a frenzy and maybe even psyches out the enemy.

And the biggest part of that entrance is the song. The guy up in row double-Z can’t see your menacing scowl (and neither can your opponent, for that matter), but they can darn sure hear your anthem.

What makes a great entrance song? Clearly, music is completely subjective at the end of the day. In general, a great walkout song pumps you up, but that doesn’t mean that loudest is always best.

Great UFC entrance songs do intimidate, though, as well as offer some kind of a window into a fighter’s personality or style. And, of course, a great entrance song should really be original, because then it’s a signature song, and not just some regurgitation of the leftovers from an old halftime show.

So with all those criteria in mind, here are my submissions for the 50 best entrance songs in UFC history. Lots of weight classes and music genres represented.

Remember that the rankings aren’t directly related to a fighter’s ability or accomplishments, so save the questions about why DeMarques Johnson is ranked above Rich Franklin, and so on.

In some cases, I listed multiple fighters under one entrance song, though in others I only listed the fighter with whom the song is most closely associated.

I attempted to include walkout videos whenever possible, but failing that, I included a YouTube clip of a performance of the song.

Once again, this list is largely opinion-based. So if you’re looking for some kind of definitive formula for ranking walkout songs, then…well, good luck in your continued search. That said, if your favorite isn’t on here, let me know in the comments. And please enjoy.

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