The Road Warriors. Demolition. The Hart Foundation. Scott Smith.
Which one of these names doesn’t belong? Trick question, brother. All these names belong alongside one another in the annals of tag-team combat sports history.
At least they will once Nov. 23 has come and gone. That’s the day that the California-based Gladiator Challenge MMA organization will get in touch with its inner carnival barker and host a tag-team MMA fight—you read that correctly—featuring Smith, a professional mixed martial arts veteran with multiple fights in the UFC, WEC and Strikeforce under his belt.
Smith (18-10-1) will team up for the action with fellow middleweight Blaine Wilson (1-2). The partners will face two other middleweights in Bellator alum Jaime “El Cucui” Jara (34-15) and Mike Quaintance (4-1).
The Gladiator Challenge news release for the event notes that the stakes for the fight will be nothing less than the very first tag-team championship in the history of mixed martial arts history. This is quite an age we live in.
Though the championship belts may or may not be a first, there is some precedent for tag-team MMA, though the examples in existence kind of make Gladiator Challenge look like the golden days of Pancrase by comparison.
Smith, 34, is probably best known to UFC fans for staging what is in many books the greatest in-fight comeback in UFC history. During their fight at The Ultimate Fighter 4 Finale, Pete Sell doubled Smith over with a body shot. But when Sell rushed in for the kill, Smith caught him with a perfect shot to the jaw, knocking Sell out and netting him the victory and a Fight of the Night bonus check.
But Smith is far from a one-hit wonder. Though his UFC record stands at a tepid 1-3, he does have career wins over the likes of Cung Le, Terry Martin and Kyle Noke.
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