The best two fighters at the very first UFC event in 1993 were Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie. After a spirited 57 seconds in the cage, Gracie choked Shamrock out en route to winning the inaugural tournament and launching a new sport into the American consciousness.
Two years later they ran it back at UFC V, one of the most highly anticipated events in the sport’s young history. After 36 minutes, no winner could be declared, and the fight was called a draw.
Friday night, Bellator MMA announced that, more than 22 years after their first epic encounter, the two Hall of Famers will attempt to finally settle the score Feb. 19 at the Toyota Center in Houston.
But what was a great fight in 1995 may not stand the test of time and remain relevant in the modern era. The two fighters will be a combined 101 years old by the time they step in the cage.
We asked Bleacher Report’s MMA staff to chime in on what will surely be one of the most controversial fights of 2016. Is it OK for Shamrock and Gracie to remain MMA headliners into their dotage? Or is MMA a sport that shouldn’t feature the equivalent of a masters division?
Michael Chiappetta
It is not difficult to understand Scott Coker’s reasoning for booking Gracie vs. Shamrock and Kimbo Slice vs. Dada 5000, Bellator 149’s co-main event. Both fights bring with them back stories and eyeballs, which are things that every promoter realizes to be necessary in building a successful event. In a competitive field with a dominant market leader, it is often imperative to stand out with whatever attractions are available to you, and that is precisely what Coker is doing here.
But let us remove ourselves from this MMA bubble for a moment and see this for what it is: lowest-common-denominator programming.
Neither of these fights deserves to be booked in major MMA in 2016. When Shamrock and Gracie fight in February, neither will be within a decade of his prime. Despite their past contributions to the sport, it is ridiculous to suggest they deserve this forum. We must agree that your rights to the cage expire at some point, and we’re well past it for both. Shamrock is 2-8 in his last 10 fights; Gracie hasn’t fought in almost eight years.
With all due respect, these two should be playing shuffleboard and enjoying retirement, not fighting. The sport has moved on, even if the promotions can’t.
As for Kimbo vs. Dada, can’t we leave the mystique of those backyard fights to history? Kimbo’s knees are shot, and Dada, whom the greater sporting public has probably never heard of, never proved he was worthy of the spotlight of a major promotion.
Maybe Bellator should consider booking Benji Radach and Danny Lafever, too. After all, we’re only one ring away from a three-ring circus. You may see it all as harmless fun, but when bookings like this become the norm, where are we eventually going? Where are we headed, except for a race to the bottom? I don’t mean to suggest that the rivalry that made MMA could somehow undo it, but we must accept the obvious: With these bookings, the sport is by definition going backward.
Nathan McCarter
I understand taking a Kimbo, Shamrock or Gracie and running with the name to help promote a card as long as the next fight down is elevating one of the actual legitimate fighters on the roster. But that is not the impression Bellator gave when it made the announcement.
The announcement of Shamrock vs. Gracie can hit an MMA fan right in the feels and get his nostalgia going, but once you think of this fight in any realistic fashion, depression should set in. This is supposed to be a sport, and putting two men with a combined age of 101 against each other with what they’ve shown in the cage in their most recent outings is disgusting.
Then you have Kimbo against someone I have never heard of with a ridiculous nickname. This kind of booking is not going to advance Bellator in any substantive way. Bellator should be trying to create its own fresh stars. It even had Kurt Angle announce the Shamrock vs. Gracie main event while teasing his possible foray into Bellator. It’s nonsense.
Bellator doesn’t have the deep and talented roster of the UFC. Everyone understands Bellator can’t put together a stunning stacked event, but it can at least give us one or two quality fights with its younger talent underneath this circus. Even if Bellator does end up putting a decent fight under these two mockeries parading around as actual bouts, it won’t get the promotion it deserves or showcase the quality talent.
Booking it in this way is what I don’t get. It does nothing for me except extend the belief that Bellator is a sideshow. And that’s unfortunate.
Steven Rondina
I remember back in the day when I looked at MMA as a pure sport. It was a time when the UFC could be expected to sign top-10-ranked free agents. It was a time where the UFC could be expected to let an untested pro wrestler’s MMA debut occur on the regional scene. It was a simpler time. It was a more innocent time…
It may sound melodramatic, but I’m at the point where I’m just sitting back and enjoying the ride with all of this. I’m totally on board with Slice vs. 5000 (is that how we’re abbreviating this fight?). My only concern with Gracie vs. Shamrock is it ending on the stool due to a heart attack.
Am I nervous about the bleak future we are most certainly heading toward? Sure, but let’s not pin that on Bellator. The UFC sets the bar in MMA, and it has never actually set it very high, both in terms of reaching into the history books for main eventers and in terms of promoting clear-cut freak-show fights. The only difference is that Bellator isn’t going to look you in the eye and tell you that Slice vs. 5000 is a legitimate athletic contest the way the UFC will whenever CM Punk vs. 0-0 Jobber gets booked.
Jonathan Snowden
I’m not nearly as down on these fights as my colleagues here. Fight promotion is about putting together contests that fans want to watch. That’s a promoter’s job, and for all the righteous indignation above, the fact remains that Shamrock and Slice crushed the Bellator record for television viewers earlier this year.
This is, like it or not, what we want.
Bellator has booked these fights for the same reason UFC trotted Shamrock out for two curtain calls in its own formative years. For the same reason it brought Kimbo Slice into the fold to record numbers.
Because it works.
Both fights, at the very least, are competitively matched. Slice and Dada have equally sparse official resumes. Shamrock and Gracie are both really, really old. No one is being put into a situation beyond his capabilities. As the promotion teeters between sport and spectacle, that’s important.
The UFC has left competitors little room to maneuver in the MMA space. It has hundreds of fighters under contract, more than it can use to its full capabilities. You have to believe that is, in part, to keep competitors such as Bellator from finding the kinds of diamonds in the rough that made Coker’s previous foray into MMA promotion with Strikeforce so successful.
Truly great fighters, such as Patricio Freire and Will Brooks, are few and far between outside the Octagon. These kinds of fights are what remain for Bellator while it awaits the opportunity to sign big-name UFC free agents. Until then, the promotion is in a holding pattern, forced to resort to sleight of hand to keep fans interested while waiting for its own investment in the sport’s future to emerge.
For many, it seems, that’s going to be an excruciatingly long wait.
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