You never know with this MMA reality competition show stuff. Sometimes it hits gold (many *cough*mostly early*cough* seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, for example) and sometimes you get The Iron Ring. Major media companies getting behind these reality-show endeavors is never a guarantee of compelling and convincing fight television content and neither is past success – as evidenced by several dud seasons of TUF (Ed note: *makes “watching you” gesture toward TUF 16*.)
That said, we were kind of interested to see what Spike TV was doing with their second go at MMA reality television, especially after the cast was announced. Fight Master is the network’s first foray into post-UFC MMA reality programming and features Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, Joe Warren, and Greg Jackson coaching aspiring Bellator fighters. The show debuts next week on Spike, but we got a sneak peak at the first episode Wednesday afternoon. After the jump, we’ve provided a little bit more info about the show’s structure, as well as the good and not-so-good aspects of the production, thus far.
You never know with this MMA reality competition show stuff. Sometimes it hits gold (many *cough*mostly early*cough* seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, for example) and sometimes you get The Iron Ring. Major media companies getting behind these reality-show endeavors is never a guarantee of compelling and convincing fight television content and neither is past success – as evidenced by several dud seasons of TUF (Ed note: *makes “watching you” gesture toward TUF 16*.)
That said, we were kind of interested to see what Spike TV was doing with their second go at MMA reality television, especially after the cast was announced. Fight Master is the network’s first foray into post-UFC MMA reality programming and features Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, Joe Warren, and Greg Jackson coaching aspiring Bellator fighters. The show debuts next week on Spike, but we got a sneak peak at the first episode Wednesday afternoon. After the jump, we’ve provided a little bit more info about the show’s structure, as well as the good and not-so-good aspects of the production, thus far.
The show begins with thirty two welterweight hopefuls; half of them will make it to New Orleans and onto the rest of the show, half of them will also make it to New Orleans but will be immediately hogtied and tossed into a swamp full o’ gators. Supposedly, the winner will receive $100,000 and a spot in a Bellator season tournament.
Each of the four coaches will have teams of four fighters. There’s more background info on the preliminary fighters from application videos and interviews than one might expect, resulting in a more heightened interest level in the guys trying to get into the house than I have, for the most part, experienced with their TUF counterparts on the first episodes of seasons past. Because of this additional footage, however, the elimination round is going to take more than a single episode.
Fight Master offers more twists on the TUF formats we’ve seen over the years in addition to some similarities. Here are a few of our favorites and some that we didn’t dig.
The Good:
The Fighters: To put it lightly, the initial average talent level of Fight Master appeared to be levels above some seasons of TUF. Sure, some were better than others and everyone had weaknesses, but for the most part, everyone looked pretty composed, coordinated, and skilled. At the heart of a good show are good fighters, and Fight Master seems like it could be a clear success in this regard. Think TUF seasons 1 and 5.
Coach Emotion: The four coaches watched the elimination rounds like creeps, sitting in easy chairs and with spot lights on them. But, they wouldn’t stop talking – providing an interesting snap shot of how they watch and analyze fights. What’s more, they really got into the fights. Randy Couture and Joe Warren, especially, seemed to get rowdy in calling out instructions to fighters, celebrating, etc. They seemed genuinely into it, which personally helped me get into it as a viewer.
Camera Work: At times during the fights, the screen was split into threes, allowing us to see both the coaches and multiple simultaneous angles of the match itself. There’s A LOT of cameras along the cage, is what we’re saying. It’s about time a promotion started maximizing their potential in this aspect, if only so we can see the action from multiple angles at once.
Fighter Control – Outside of BJ Penn sticking it to Jens Pulver on TUF 5 and telling fighters to raise their hands if they wanted nothing to do with Jens, we haven’t seen fighters get too much choice on these types of shows. On Fight Master, the winning elimination round fighters interview the coaches and decide whose team they want to be on. In this aspect, Fight Master is kind of like The Voice, if contestants on The Voice spent less time finding their harmonies with one another and more time trying to crush each other’s windpipes. Why the latter hasn’t happened to Adam Levine yet is beyond me.
The Bad
Fights Cut Short: I don’t care if it makes things move along or if it is during elimination rounds; I simply hate trimming fights down to mere highlights. Fights that went more than a few moments in episode one were cut and pasted into highlights. They’d better not get into The Contender type slow motion crap in future episodes.
Adjusted Rules: Making the fights two rounds with a third in the event of a draw is understandable. Taking out elbows isn’t, really. Hopefully that doesn’t continue after the elimination rounds. MMA is watered down enough already. (Ed note: *lights corncob pipe and sits back in rocking chair*)
Fight Master‘s first episode accomplishes this: We now want to watch episode two. Check it out next week and decide for yourself.
(It’s not a UFC fight, but you can’t talk awful title fights without at least referencing Sonnen vs. Filho II. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)
Today we’re talking about bad UFC title fights – fights that fizzled out after weeks of hype, bored even the most die-hard fans among us, and left us baffled that the winner was considered the best in his weight class. Since we’redealing strictly with UFC title fights, notable clunkers like Ruiz vs. Southworth II (Strikeforce), Wiuff vs. Tuchscherer (YAMMA), and Sonnen vs. Filho II (WEC) are ineligible for inclusion. Also, we promise that the only appearance of the name “Ben Askren” in this column lies in this incredibly forced sentence. Read on for our picks, and please, pretty please, send your ideas for future Roundtable topics to [email protected].
Detroit is known by many names – Motown, Motor City, and Hockey Town to name a few. None of which lend to the idea that the birthplace of the assembly line was also a mecca of mixed martial arts or a place to catch great fights on Saturday. Unfortunately, UFC didn’t care; they took the show to the Great Lakes State in 1996 for UFC 9: Clash of the Titans 2 nonetheless. Ken Shamrock and Michigan native Dan Severn were set to face off for the first world title outside of Japan, the UFC Superfight championship. However, thanks to Senator John McCain, instead seeing an exciting rematch that was sure to cover the canvas in bad blood, fans in attendance and at home watching on PPV were treated to what became known as “The Detroit Dance.” And to this day, it is regarded as one of the worst fights in the history of the sport.
(It’s not a UFC fight, but you can’t talk awful title fights without at least referencing Sonnen vs. Filho II. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)
Today we’re talking about bad UFC title fights – fights that fizzled out after weeks of hype, bored even the most die-hard fans among us, and left us baffled that the winner was considered the best in his weight class. Since we’redealing strictly with UFC title fights, notable clunkers like Ruiz vs. Southworth II (Strikeforce), Wiuff vs. Tuchscherer (YAMMA), and Sonnen vs. Filho II (WEC) are ineligible for inclusion. Also, we promise that the only appearance of the name “Ben Askren” in this column lies in this incredibly forced sentence. Read on for our picks, and please, pretty please, send your ideas for future Roundtable topics to [email protected].
Detroit is known by many names – Motown, Motor City, and Hockey Town to name a few. None of which lend to the idea that the birthplace of the assembly line was also a mecca of mixed martial arts or a place to catch great fights on Saturday. Unfortunately, UFC didn’t care; they took the show to the Great Lakes State in 1996 for UFC 9: Clash of the Titans 2 nonetheless. Ken Shamrock and Michigan native Dan Severn were set to face off for the first world title outside of Japan, the UFC Superfight championship. However, thanks to Senator John McCain, instead seeing an exciting rematch that was sure to cover the canvas in bad blood, fans in attendance and at home watching on PPV were treated to what became known as “The Detroit Dance.” And to this day, it is regarded as one of the worst fights in the history of the sport.
What did McCain have to do with any of this, you ask? The politician was fierce in his letter writing campaign against a sport he knew nothing about. He essentially scared or bullied local government agencies to ban the sport. You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Several key components in the UFC machine were tied up in the Detroit courts until 4:30pm the day of the event getting permission to hold an event that was already being set up. The hacks behind the desk said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “You can proceed with your barbaric and uncivilized fisticuffs spectacle as long as no one actually throws a closed fist to his opponents head nor will any butting of the heads be allowed. Anyone seen doing such things will be arrested.”
For the better part of twenty minutes, Shamrock and Severn circled each other with little to no contact. During the last ten minutes of the fight (if you can even call it that) the two played pat-a-cake until Severn decided to throw the special rules right out of Cobo Arena. Despite stalling for two thirds of the fight and head butting his opponent, Dan Severn won the fight and the championship belt. The Michiganders in attendance could be heard throughout the area booing and chanting, “Let’s go Red Wings!” There has never been a more pathetic example of a championship quality fight. The men in the cage deserved to be there, sure, but when you start adding special rules and stipulations, you’re watering down your product. So much so, that Detroit is now in two sport’s Hall of Shame.
It’s kind of ironic that Anderson Silva, who owns the most impressive championship reign in UFC history, also happens to have the distinction of participating in three of the worst championship fights in the company’s history as well. But ironic or not, it’s no less true. Picking the worst of the three is like deciding which segment you want to be in the human centipede, but I suppose it must be done. To that end, I nominate Silva’s bout with Demian Maia at UFC 112 as the worst of the worst.
I remember watching UFC 112 on an internet str- err, on pay-per-view. To say it was an underwhelming card is probably a little more generous than what it deserves, and that was before the main event. Matt Hughes fought Renzo Gracie – who didn’t know how to check leg kicks – for no conceivable reason. Frankie Edgar upset BJ Penn in the most unspectacular way imaginable, via a debatable decision with virtually no emphatic moments throughout the entire fight. But all of this would surely be a footnote when Anderson Silva, fresh off his humiliation of Forrest Griffin, would unveil some hitherto unknown debilitating maneuver that would drop all of our jaws to the floor while our feeble brains attempted to process what we just witnessed.
Instead, Silva spent the vast majority of five rounds dancing, taunting, and throwing the occasional oblique kick. To say it was frustrating doesn’t do it justice. It was maddening, made even more so by the lone flying knee Silva threw out of nowhere in the fight. It knocked Maia down, broke his nose and served as a reminder of just what Silva was capable of… and how he refused to bother indulging the audience with his capability that night. Maia, to his credit, never gave up. At one point in the final round, Maia – with one eye swollen shut – fell in front of Silva and kept swinging wildly from his knees. It was desperate and ineffective, but it exemplified heart and determination in contrast with Silva’s utter lack of such. Silva won the fight, Maia retained his pride, but the audience was left with the worst championship fight you could imagine. The UFC has not bothered returning to Abu Dhabi since.
It’s easy to feel a little sympathy for Tito Ortiz these days. He’s been going through some personal shit – the variety of which we are banned from getting too specific on. But hey, thems the breaks when you shack up with a porn queen. Well-adjusted females with run-of-the-mill daddy issues don’t generally get into fuck films. They just latch onto some poor bastard and systematically suck every ounce of pride and manhood out of him until he’s an obedient slob with a semi-manageable speed habit and a secret fetish for snuff porn. That’s life. The ones that go for the porn queens, well, all I’m saying is disregard the lessons of Little Bill at your own peril.
That sympathy, however, can cause us to forget that there was a time when Tito was a wildly popular UFC champion; not just some dude with a quick mouth and a gigantic head who only tasted victory once during the last six years of his career. It’s hard to deny Tito his accolades. Circa 2002 he was the most successful UFC champion there was. He won the belt and defended it five times. That’s more title defenses than Randy, and even one more than his arch-nemesis, Chuck had. Granted, both of those guys would eventually clown Tito en route to victories (x 2 for Chuck), and of course there was that whole saga of Tito allegedly ducking Chuck, but we’re talking numbers here, bitch. Context is irrelevant when trying to make an absurd point.
Hindsight being 20/20 ‘n shit makes Tito’s title defenses seem mildly comical by modern standards, considering the competition: Yuki Kondo, Evan Tanner, Elvis Sinosic, Vladimir Matyushenko, and Ken Shamrock. But you gotta remember this was pre-TUF, pre-FOX, and pre-UFC monopoly when the glory days of Pride were in full effect. UFC title challengers were often contemptible back then. Incidentally, Dave Menne won the UFC’s inaugural middleweight belt that same night, and well shit I’ll go as far as agree with Danga, Dave Menne – for real???
It’s easy to mock a couple of Tito’s title defenses on grounds of legitimacy. But interestingly enough, perhaps the most legit challenger – Vlady – provided for the worst fight. This was UFC 33, an event which Dana White still to this day describes as, “The worst show we’ve ever had.” It was so bad we could just as easily be talking about the co-main event of the evening – Jens Pulver vs Dennis “Balls” Hallman, but that wasn’t the main event, and the pay per view broadcast didn’t black out in the middle of it – two very important factors that help to solidify Tito Ortiz vs.Vladimir Matyushenko as the worst ever.
According to one analysis, the Tito/Vlady fight produced only 40 “significant strikes.” To further expound on that lamentable figure, in a 25 minute fight that means that a decent strike was landed only once every 37.5 seconds. Might not seem like a long stretch while you’re on YouPorn stroking yourself to some early Jenna, but during an actual fight that’s an eternity of visual pain. Contrast that extreme with a Cain Velasquez, who lands over six significant strikes per minute – or one every ten seconds, and the standard deviation model gets blown all to shit.
Basically, the fight was about as horrific as you’d expect of two wrestlers with rudimentary striking skills. Don’t forget, this was before Tito’s “improved boxing” that Joe Rogan liked to talk about almost as much as his “underrated jiu jitsu.” The bottom line is there have been many terrible title fights in the UFC, but not one of them headlined the worst show ever, and not one of them blacked out on pay per view before the fans could fully experience the horror of just how anally violated they got. So there.
Josh Hutchinson
In deciding the worst UFC title fight I chose to look at a number of criteria. Do I choose one that was boring (GSP/Fitch)? How about one that’s meaningless or undeserved (Jones/Sonnen)? What about one that shames the sport of MMA as whole (Arlovski/Buentello)? Luckily I didn’t have to look far to find a shit sandwich that’s comprised entirely of those three ingredients.
Sean Sherk vs. Hermes Franca at UFC 73 was a complete failure in every sense of the word. A highly forgettable fight, which was put on only to build anticipation for the return of BJ Penn, resulted in a glorified 25 minute sparring session. Someone managed to wake the judges up long enough to decide that Sherk had won, and everyone could start getting damp in their trousers at the thought of Penn fighting for the lightweight title again. Mission accomplished, right? Not quite.
The aftermath of UFC 73 is really what landed this fight as my top pick. It’s a special kind of person that tests positive for anything following a title fight. Honestly, at the highest levels of competition you’d have to be as blind as Anne Frank not to see a drug test coming. It makes it all the more amusing that both Sherk and Franca tested positive for steroids following the fight. I would give up anything in my life to have been able to be a fly on the wall when Dana White heard this news. Something tells me his reaction was a little more than a simple facepalm. As usual, neither fighter was at fault for their positive tests, as Franca was forced by the UFC to roid up, and the CSAC botched Sherk’s results. Hey, these things happen in MMA.
So there you have it folks, a boring ass fight that ended up with both participants being suspended and the champ being stripped of his title. All parties involved, fans especially, would have been better off had these gladiators met under the XARM banner, but alas, it now goes down as the worst title fight in UFC history.
Apparently, now, the CagePotato Roundtable only happens when The Boss is on vacation (which means the inmates run the asylum for a day or two with Mr. Goldtsein’s unbelievable wealth, a seventeen-day luxurious private cruise to the Bahamas – don’t forget my obligatory touristy t-shirt BG) and that means it brings out the “fringe” contributors who enjoy throwing spitballs while generally making a ruckus in the back of the room in order to mess with the substitute instructors.
The topic of the “Worst UFC Title Fight” is a bit of a conundrum for me because, personally, Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra 1 was one of the worst moments of my life because of my inner bro-mance with GSP and my buddies’ propensity for reminding me that my affinity is unnatural. But, I digress. Since I hosted all of the UFC parties (and got ALL the PPV bills) there is still one in particular that pains me.
It was a highly anticipated bout that pitted LHW Champion Randy Couture vs. Vitor Belfort at UFC 46 and if you look at the fight card now, you’d call me a poseur for complaining about this. No shit – the three prelim fights that didn’t air that night had Matt Serra vs. Pat Curran, Josh Thomson vs. Hermes Franca and Georges St. Pierre vs. Karo Parisyan. The PPV featured (in)famous names like Lee Murray, Jorge Rivera, Carlos Newton, Wes Sims, Frank Mir, Matt Hughes and B.J. Penn. The World Series of Fighting would double-barrel jerk-off Mr_Misanthropy AND crappiefloper while Fried Taco watched, if the promoters could get a collection of talent like that [Ed. Note: Wow.].
Needless to say, this main event fight should’ve been awesome but 45 seconds later . . . . . . It was OVER. That’s right! I lasted longer on Prom Night – she’ll tell you too, not by much . . . . but still – than the LHW Championship bout at UFC 46 and I screamed (on both occasions), “WHAT THE FUCK?!”
Then I realized that Couture’s eyeball was literally about to fall completely out of his head – Hostile style. Vitor’s glove grazed his outer eyelid and it caused a HORRIFIC paper cut-esque slice. Yeah, a paper cut that could actually make your eye-ball drop out of your head. It was gross and it was an absolutely warranted stoppage by the hot red-headed doctor (that I still dream of). Yet, 45 seconds later and the championship fight was over without a single punch landing cleanly.
Look, I get that every sport has to start somewhere. I GET THIS. But even by the incredibly low standards of the UFC circa 1997, Frank Shamrock’s light heavyweight title defenses against Igor Zinoviev and John Lober were laughably misguided at best and staged public executions at worst. While the promotion’s heavyweight division featured such names as Mark Coleman, Maurice Smith, and Randy Couture battling it out for the title, down at 205, they were booking Shamrock in freak show matches that even the Japanese wouldn’t touch with a ten foot gunto. The Japanese, you guys.
Where shall we begin?
Ah yes, that’s Franky boy slamming Igor through the mat in under 30 seconds at UFC 16. What a contest.
How a man coming off a pair of draws can be fast-tracked to a title shot in his promotional debut is anyone’s guess. Maybe the UFC honestly thought that this Igor character was the next Randy Couture, or perhaps he just possessed some otherworldly trash-talking skills. In any case, we were left with a pathetic mismatch, one completely shattered collarbone, and a ringside medical crew questioning whether or not a spatula was an appropriate tool to lift a fighter onto a stretcher with by the time all was said and done. Oh yeah, and Igor never fought again. He always knows when it’s about to rain, though, so perhaps it was for the best.
And if you think that’s bad, just try finding a video of Shamrock’s third title defense — a rematch against John Lober at UFC Ultimate Brazil. You won’t be able to, because the UFC most likely destroyed all evidence of the fight for legal reasons. We’ve all heard the story before: Lober managed to score a controversial technical split decision victory over Shamrock at a SuperBrawl event in Hawaii in ’97, so one year later, the UFC decided, “Hey, why not have these two settle the score now that ShamWow is the champ?”
“Sure, Lober has gone 0-5-1 in the time since they first squared off,” they said whilst diving nose first into a mountain of cocaine the likes of which you have never seen, “But it will sell because GRUDGE MATCH.” It’s a strategy that the UFC utilizes to this day, but never did it appear more transparent than during the 7-and-a-half-minute beat down that Shamaroo dished out on Lober before forcing him to tap to strikes.
Lober would go on to score two wins in his next seven contests, and Shamrock would defend the light heavyweight title against his only true test in Tito Ortiz before leaving the UFC citing “a lack of competition.” No shit.
Wow, you guys certainly left me with some options, huh? Let’s see…I guess I should point out that Ben Goldstein, if he was available to contribute, would have picked Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites, which is the only reason why I won’t be covering that turd on a plate. I could go old-school, “how the hell is one of those guys fighting for a title in the first place?” and tackle Pat Miletich vs. Andre Pederneiras or Maurice Smith vs. Randy Couture, but considering how weak the talent pool in general was back then, it really wouldn’t be fair to include them. So instead I’ll do something even broader, lazier, yet somehow twice as deserving as the rest of the fights we’ve omitted combined, and nominate all of Tim Sylvia’s title defenses as my selection.
Boring title fights from guys like Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre – while infuriating for fans to watch – are at least forgivable on the basis that they’re boring because the champion is simply that much more talented than the guy across the cage from him. I may not get too excited about watching GSP jab for five rounds, but I’ll be damned if I don’t acknowledge him as the greatest welterweight in the history of our sport. With Tim Sylvia, this was most definitely not the case.
Sylvia was a champion when the heavyweight division was weak enough for the “Cabbage” Correiras of the world to pick up victories inside the Octagon. During his reign over the heavyweight division, the “strikers” either lacked anything resembling technique (Exhibit A: Gan McGee) or lacked a tough enough chin to actually exchange punches with the big man (Exhibit B: Sylvia/Arlovski III), and the grapplers lacked the striking chops necessary to penetrate The Maine-iac’s awkward jabs (Exhibit C: Jeff Monson). In a sport defined by the diverse skills and athleticism of its athletes, Sylvia managed to defend the UFC heavyweight title that Cain Velasquez proudly wears by simply taking up space and staying on his feet; a “Great White Stiff” with unlimited upward mobility, ”the poster child for over-achievement.”
Fortunately for the fans who tried to stay awake during his title defenses, he was eventually matched up against Randy Couture, and that fight was incredibly memorable thanks to A.) how badass The Natural is and B.) a moment early in the first round, when Couture took Sylvia’s back and (not quite) Fatty Boom-Boom (yet) stalled in an effort to get a completely unnecessary stand-up, which inspired one of Joe Rogan’s greatest rants (“You’re on your back, tough! Figure out a way to get up! If that’s boring, baseball’s about a million times more boring!” Classic.). Ever since that fight, Sylvia began his transformation into the amorphous blob of his former self who loses to guys you’ve never heard of on the “Where are they now?” circuit that we know today. He’s still holding out hope for the possibility of a UFC comeback, but after watching him defend the once-meaningless UFC heavyweight championship…it’s probably for the best that he never even gets close to fighting for it again.
Did we repress all memories of your least-favorite UFC title fight? Then have the honor of ruining our weekends by bringing it up in the comments section.
Here at CagePotato HQ (read: my desk at work when the boss is in the crapper), we feel it only necessary to start writing the eulogy now, while the memories are still vivid, in an attempt to bring comfort to the grieving family and friends when the time comes. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we, and look back fondly at the most memorable moments in Strikeforce’s storied mixed martial arts history.
Frank Shamrock Gets a Friendly Stockton Greeting From Nick Diaz
In the spring of 2009, Strikeforce served up a hot matchup between former UFC champion and MMA legend Frank Shamrock and the future Strikeforce Welterweight champion and world-renowned trash talker Nick Diaz. As you can glean from the above photo and the ensuing nut grab you can see on YouTube at roughly the 3:23 mark, these two were about as cordial as a Kentucky Derby winner who had just spotted Alistair Overeem waiting in the stable with a knife and fork.
The remarkable thing about the whole ordeal was that Diaz remained true to himself at the risk of coming across as a disrespectful punk, not willing to play nice simply to placate other people, even if they did sign his paycheck. In all of the press conferences that have been held over the years, fighters have generally been pretty calm and polite — so much so that you have to wonder if they realize that the guy they’re shaking hands with is the same guy who’s getting paid to cave his face in come fight night. Not the Stockton, Calif. native, though, whoe’s about as subtle as he is media friendly. You’ll never have to guess what the Cesar Gracie product is thinking. This classic photo by Esther Lin is a reminder of just that.
(This belt means as much as the one Carlos Condit is carrying around. It’s funny how that works.)
Here at CagePotato HQ (read: my desk at work when the boss is in the crapper), we feel it only necessary to start writing the eulogy now, while the memories are still vivid, in an attempt to bring comfort to the grieving family and friends when the time comes. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we, and look back fondly at the most memorable moments in Strikeforce’s storied mixed martial arts history.
Frank Shamrock Gets a Friendly Stockton Greeting From Nick Diaz
In the spring of 2009, Strikeforce served up a hot matchup between former UFC champion and MMA legend Frank Shamrock and the future Strikeforce Welterweight champion and world-renowned trash talker Nick Diaz. As you can glean from the above photo and the ensuing nut grab you can see on YouTube at roughly the 3:23 mark, these two were about as cordial as a Kentucky Derby winner who had just spotted Alistair Overeem waiting in the stable with a knife and fork.
The remarkable thing about the whole ordeal was that Diaz remained true to himself at the risk of coming across as a disrespectful punk, not willing to play nice simply to placate other people, even if they did sign his paycheck. In all of the press conferences that have been held over the years, fighters have generally been pretty calm and polite — so much so that you have to wonder if they realize that the guy they’re shaking hands with is the same guy who’s getting paid to cave his face in come fight night. Not the Stockton, Calif. native, though, whoe’s about as subtle as he is media friendly. You’ll never have to guess what the Cesar Gracie product is thinking. This classic photo by Esther Lin is a reminder of just that.
Gina Carano vs. Cris Cyborg, The Biggest Women’s Fight In History
Before Ronda Rousey stole Dana’s heart, before Bellator ever had a woman’s tournament, and before Invicta FC ever promoted an entire fight card with nothing but female combatants, there was Gina Carano. The world loved her after being introduced to her on the revamped American Gladiators as “Crush.” From there she went on to become one of the most searched for people of the year — being named in Maxim‘s Top 20 Hot List didn’t hurt either. To say that the future Hollywood starlet had a following is a bit of an understatement. The buxom brunette was more than just a pretty face though, sporting an impressive 7-0 record heading into the inaugural Strikeforce women’s featherweight championship fight against the roid-fueled always-game Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.
I’m a firm believer that more people were interested in seeing Carano fight than they were in WMMA. That being said, it doesn’t change the facts. Scott Coker had big brass balls to promote an MMA event with two women’s names on the marquee and broadcast it on Showtime to boot. At the time, no one had any real sense of how successful the ladies would be at selling tickets or drawing the coveted 18-34 year-old television viewers. That’s how it is when you’re blazing a trail.
The fight was lopsided and with literally only a second to spare in the first round, “Cyborg” punched her way to a TKO victory earning her a place in Strikeforce history as the first women’s champ. According to the events Wikipedia page, Coker’s gamble paid off.
The event averaged 576,000 viewers on the Showtime cable network. It peaked with 856,000 viewers for the night’s main event between Carano and Santos. The Carano vs. Cyborg event set a new MMA ratings record for Showtime, eclipsing a card headlined with Kimbo Slice and Tank Abbot, which averaged 522,000 viewers. It also more than doubled Strikeforce’s previous offering, Lawler vs. Shields, an event that averaged 275,000 viewers.
Arguably the Greatest Round in MMA: Nate Diaz vs. Paul Daley
Lately, when the UFC kicks off another abominable installment of The Ultimate Fighter, they host a special two-hour (or more!) season premiere wherein all the hopefuls are cheered on as they drink donkey ejaculate paired off and given one five-minute round in the Octagon to prove their mettle. Sadly, most of the neanderthals that drag their knuckles up the cage steps aren’t particularity familiar with clocks or the concept of time.
Again and again, we see guys completely oblivious to the beating they’ve been dished out and are content to clean their plate. All the while Dana and Lorenzo are baffled that the kids don’t just go for broke, swing for the fences, something (anything!) instead of pulling guard or playing patty-cake. In short, the fights to enter the TUF house are the polar opposite of the championship bout between Nick Diaz and Paul “Semtex” Daley.
These two middleweight bad boys had no intentions of leaving the opening frame, let alone leaving it in the hands of the judges. Fists flew with ill ambition. Caution was not only thrown to the wind, it had a jetpack strapped to its back and shot out of a cannon. If you didn’t know any better, you might’ve thought they were told the loser of the bout would have to spend a year in jail with War Machine because neither man seemed to conserve energy for the “championship rounds” — instead opting to kick it into high gear when the tide shifted in their favor.
This one round is a casual fan converter. Have your buddy from work/gym/AA meetings watch this and soon you’ll only have to pay half price for the next PPV.
On the next page: “Business as usual,” the fall of a legend, and the fight after the fight…
With his fight career behind him, and the MMA promotion that he helped build heading towards disintegration, Frank Shamrock has reached a reflective moment in his life. Armed with the perspective from years of struggle, Shamrock has poured his thoughts into an autobiography published last week, Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter. In this revealing interview with CagePotato.com, “The Legend” discusses his formative years, the experiences that carved his mind and body into fighting shape, and the massive labor of love that resulted in his book. Enjoy…
CAGEPOTATO.COM: How are you doing?
FRANK SHAMROCK: I am slightly jet-lagged and my spine is killing me.
You just came back from ‘Glory 2’ in Brussels? Did you enjoy the fights?
Yeah, it was awesome, totally awesome. I’ve never called kickboxing, but I liked it. They [Glory] have a serious shot there. They have really good production people involved, the distribution seems to be pretty solid for the plan. Everybody just seemed to be on top of the world. It was pretty cool.
I read your book — in one sitting, because it was so riveting. It touched on a lot of personal issues, a lot of sensitive things [child abuse, molestation, incarceration, alcoholism] that we almost never hear fighters talk about. How tough was it to write this book? It was pretty tough — not the sharing part, but just the learning part. There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about myself during the book writing part. It was healing and it was challenging. I think it was more healing than anything.
How long did it take to bring this project to completion? It took four-and-a-half years. We started with an outline — I always knew I’d write this book — but it was an outline about four-and-a-half years ago. My story is my story, it didn’t change, it just kept growing. I wrote the skeleton down and got it going, and as soon as I found a writer [Charles Fleming], which took me a couple years, then it took me a year to sell him on the project. It took a long time to get people to realize what the depth of the work would be.
With his fight career behind him, and the MMA promotion that he helped build heading towards disintegration, Frank Shamrock has reached a reflective moment in his life. Armed with the perspective from years of struggle, Shamrock has poured his thoughts into an autobiography published last week, Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter. In this revealing interview with CagePotato.com, “The Legend” discusses his formative years, the experiences that carved his mind and body into fighting shape, and the massive labor of love that resulted in his book. Enjoy…
CAGEPOTATO.COM: How are you doing?
FRANK SHAMROCK: I am slightly jet-lagged and my spine is killing me.
You just came back from ‘Glory 2’ in Brussels? Did you enjoy the fights?
Yeah, it was awesome, totally awesome. I’ve never called kickboxing, but I liked it. They [Glory] have a serious shot there. They have really good production people involved, the distribution seems to be pretty solid for the plan. Everybody just seemed to be on top of the world. It was pretty cool.
I read your book — in one sitting, because it was so riveting. It touched on a lot of personal issues, a lot of sensitive things [child abuse, molestation, incarceration, alcoholism] that we almost never hear fighters talk about. How tough was it to write this book? It was pretty tough — not the sharing part, but just the learning part. There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about myself during the book writing part. It was healing and it was challenging. I think it was more healing than anything.
How long did it take to bring this project to completion? It took four-and-a-half years. We started with an outline — I always knew I’d write this book — but it was an outline about four-and-a-half years ago. My story is my story, it didn’t change, it just kept growing. I wrote the skeleton down and got it going, and as soon as I found a writer [Charles Fleming], which took me a couple years, then it took me a year to sell him on the project. It took a long time to get people to realize what the depth of the work would be.
You’ve campaigned against bullying, in particular through your organization Stand Together. What about situations where there’s an institution that protects an abuser, like Penn State and Jerry Sandusky? What do you think can be done better to protect people?
Besides going back to public execution? I don’t know. I think people need to be honest. This is one of the reasons that I wrote the book — I want to give people courage that it’s okay to be real and honest and if something happens to you, man, one of the worst things in the world is to carry a secret around. It hurts everybody.
It seems like when people try and stand up for themselves, like in Middle Eastern countries where if women file a police report for [sexual] assault, they’re the ones who are going to get arrested. It seems like the victim gets punished a lot of times.
Yeah, it’s true. We’re blessed in this country that we have a judicial system that will step up and take care of these things. A lot of people don’t. And there’s a lot of fear in this country, a well — the stigma of abuse and molestation and rape — there’s all these fears that people run away from. That’s the reason it continues to happen. People don’t talk about it, people don’t stand up. And we can.
In a cage, there’s rules, there’s officials. In prison, you could have gotten killed. It’s eight on one in one situation. The story in your book about where your television time gets taken away because eight guys want to watch In Living Color. Did you think about backing down [from fighting them], because there’s eight guys and just one of you — or would that have just set you up for more conflict in prison? That would have set me up to be — you name it. That would have been a life-changing experience had I not stood up to those men. The odds of them killing me were fairly high, but I knew what I was fighting for. In those types of places, you don’t back down or you’re done. And I was not done, by any means. It’s the same with bullies. When you’re 12 years old, if you don’t stand up for that kid, you’re going to feel like that for the next 20 years. You need to stand up for what you believe in, for yourself and protect yourself. And that’s an extreme situation — fighting eight men over television, it had nothing to do with the television. It had to do with respect. If I hadn’t have stood up, those 2,000 men [in the prison] wouldn’t have respected me and would have turned on me.
A lot of people seemed to have turned their backs on you, or they actively stood in your way. Like Bob and Ken Shamrock saying you didn’t have what it takes to be champion. How painful was it personally to hear that negativity? Did it make you doubt yourself? It definitely made me doubt myself. I turned it into a positive. I used it as a driving force. They [Bob and Ken] were the people I loved the most in the world, and they told me “You can’t really do it. We don’t think you can do it.” I turned it into something that motivated me and gave me energy. When I look back on it, they were two men who earnestly believed “He’s too nice. He’s too nice of a person.” They didn’t understand that you can be a nice guy, and be a killer. You just got to train for it. When I got older, I thought “Well, I can’t hold it against them for that,” because it gave me the drive to go do it.
A lot of people said the same thing about Georges St-Pierre, that he was too nice, he wasn’t vicious, but fighting is actually a skill that you condition yourself to do. What do you think your big strength was as a mixed martial artist? It seemed that you trained completely different than Ken. My strength was, I could always figure out a way to win — mentally, physically and technically. Because my mind was so hardened from the life I had, because of the things I experienced in my life, I was ready to go fight for my life. I’ve been there, it was scary, but it was a fear I faced so much, it didn’t seem that crazy.
What kinds of things did kickboxer Maurice Smith show you or work on together? On the stand-up, I just didn’t “get it” until Maurice came along. Ken [Shamrock] was the brawler, and everybody he brought in was either a boxer or like an American above-the-waist kickboxer guy. It wasn’t until Maurice came along, and he had a very simple system about a clock and angles, and all this made sense. And he was really personal, he was a brother that I needed at the time. We gelled in that way. But it just made sense, and it never made sense with anybody before. And when you added conditioning and training, to have the gas to do it, it was just so effective.
What exactly gave you the conditioning to train for two hours and not get tired? It was a combination of making my vascular system as strong as it could be, which [previously], I had no understanding of — no understanding that your heart pumping and the blood flowing is what really gives you the energy and the gas to go. So once I’d figured that out, and I had a vascular system that was really, really strong, that plus my understanding of the technique, to where I wasn’t wasting energy, wasn’t doing anything that wasn’t in line with my body’s natural mechanics, once I got those two things together — the cardio and the body mechanics idea, it’s like I had endless energy because I didn’t take the same amount of effort. I could just do anything — literally, anything with my body.
I read in an interview way back that Japanese fans used to ask you to kick them? Yeah, of course. Very common — kick ‘em, punch ‘em, choke them unconscious, and they wanted you to blast them. And they would be deeply hurt if you didn’t. In the beginning, we punched them in the head, that kind of stuff. We’d knock them out with it, we’re fighters, “Bam! There you go,” like trying to help a fan out. And then we realized, it wasn’t helping them. They were getting smashed. So we started kicking them in the legs, punching them in the shoulders, and stuff like that. And they wanted it — they would say, “You don’t respect me because you didn’t hit me hard.” They wanted a piece of it, a piece of the experience.
Did you have any interesting stalker-type fans? I never had the stalker fans. I had a lot of ladies who would pursue me around. The ones who made me uncomfortable would be the married ones who would have a few drinks and get really close to me; rub up on me in uncomfortable ways, that was a little bit different.
There were a couple of times after your UFC championship run in the late ’90s when the promotion made you an offer to come back. One time was after the Cesar Gracie fight in 2006, correct?
Yes.
What were you offered at that point? What did you have to give up in exchange?
I was offered what everyone else was offered at the top, at the time. I would have had to given up my exclusivity and control of my brand, and that was something I never believed in.
Are we talking about your likeness rights, video game rights… Everything.
…foreign sales, sponsorships? They want everything…Randy Couture was still going strong, the thing was, ‘You’ll get the same [money] as Randy and everyone else.’
That could have been you at the epicenter of the MMA world, taking the UFC middleweight title. Was it hard to turn down something like that? No. I mean, it was hard the first time [in 1999] when I retired to get out of my contract and be a free agent. But once I was free, I started to realize what was going on, and how much these guys were taking and how much it was becoming a chance that you might win it all, because of the factors coming into play. I wasn’t into the chance. I wanted to create something wonderful, do some amazing things, and then ride off into the sunset.
You love fighting, this is probably one of the things you love most in the world. It must have been hard to walk away from.
Yeah, it was hard. But the other thing is, my body is done. I didn’t have a choice, it was ending for me anyway. I was told when I was 16 that I’d never play contact sports, that I was going to be in pain for the rest of my life, and I had terrible scoliosis and I had to wear this crazy brace. I was like, “Yeah? I am going to be a world champion fighter and we’ll talk about it later.” And that’s what I did. I don’t believe in the normal. I believe you can do whatever you want. And my time is done with fighting; my body said “No.”
There was an incident, where you were with [UFC president] Dana White as his personal trainer for two weeks. When was that? I think that was right after they bought it, so 2001? They had just bought [the UFC], they were so new.
You were training Dana White, he’s doing some jiu-jitsu and a female grappler is trying to help him out and you mention an incident [in your book] where White is “overpowering her and grinding her to the mat.” I taught him to do balance and control, move his body. I had a really good jiu-jitsu girl help him — one of the top in the world at the time. Granted, he did the technique perfectly. He ground her to the ground using balance and control. But to me, there was something inappropriate about what was going on, in that he was trying to grind, he was trying to smash this girl who was trying to help him. It just didn’t make sense to me. I could never see myself doing that. I just realized then, we were creatures of different cloths.
You’ve been the subject of controversy in the past where you were talking about an anti-bullying campaign, and then [UFC fighter] Mike Swick came out, and he was a little upset because of how you trained at AKA together. You did some things to toughen him up, and he still carried this. Then you tweeted to Dana White, ‘I watched you beat up a girl and celebrate.’ Was this the incident that this was referring to? Yeah, that was. And poor Mike [Swick], god bless him. He’s the nicest kid. He used to write me letters from when he was in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or wherever he was. I brought him in and trained him, set him on a good career path. It was really sad to see him do that in search of an opportunity. It was really sad to see him go outside of himself and do what wasn’t honest.
We’re seeing a lot of revisionist history. There’s a lot of bonus money being floated around, there’s all kinds of incentives [offered by Zuffa] to play along. The flipside is that it kind of weakens the soul. It’s kind of tough to swallow sometimes. A lot of guys have just become sycophants. Obviously, you see that. All the time. I never sold myself, man. I believed in who I am, what I am, and what I stand for. I won’t trade that, and I won’t see something wrong happening and not stand up it because it’s not who I am. That’s not how Bob Shamrock raised me. I see the way the industry is going, and I see the way Dana White is the biggest star, and leading the charge with F-bombs and bigotry — it breaks my heart to see something so beautiful, this sport, treated that way.
Nick Diaz tested positive for weed after his fight with Carlos Condit. What was your reaction? My thought was, ‘Wow, that’s pretty silly.’ It’s not professional, of course. I don’t know, to me it all seems silly. If you can’t control yourself, and stick to the rules, you’re not going to make it. Guy’s got all the talent in the world, but you’ve got to be functional. I disagree with them saying it enhances your performance. Does smoking weed enhance your performance? I don’t know, but it’s against the rules.
Have you thought about doing jiu-jitsu tournaments, or something else competitive [besides fighting] that’s physical? No, absolutely not. I can, some days, barely get up. I have to have two fusions on my spine. So I do nothing physical, except for hiking and stepping down off a plane with my bag. And carrying my daughter, who currently weighs 40.5 pounds, which is a lot of weight.
Frank, is there anything else you wanted to say about your book, or in general? It’s tough for people to separate what they see on camera and that image from the person that I am. I think the book will give people great insight, not only into who I am, but what a human being can do if they really set their mind to it. And that’s one of the reasons that I wrote the book.
(Oh, Victoria. You’re *never* going to finish the choke from that angle. / Full gallery is after the jump.)
On July 7th, Tito Ortiz will be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, fight his last three rounds in the Octagon, then retire. In honor of this impending bit of MMA history, we’ve rounded up 20 of our all-time favorite photos of the Huntington Beach Bad Boy — some classic, and some you may not have seen before. Check ’em out in the gallery below, and if we’ve left out your favorite, shoot us a link in the comments section. Enjoy…
On July 7th, Tito Ortiz will be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, fight his last three rounds in the Octagon, then retire. In honor of this impending bit of MMA history, we’ve rounded up 20 of our all-time favorite photos of the Huntington Beach Bad Boy — some classic, and some you may not have seen before. Check ‘em out in the gallery above, and if we’ve left out your favorite, shoot us a link in the comments section. Enjoy.
Come on, Strikeforce. A simple MOM MADE PIZZA ROLLS would have been far less embarrassing
You know what? I honestly try to be optimistic about the future of Strikeforce. Even when the promotion is hemorrhaging money, even when their website is reduced to an MS Word document, I want to believe that the promotion is run by competent individuals who will find a way to keep it alive.
And then I see the vignette made to promote the upcoming “Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Kennedy” on July 14, and feel stupid for learning nothing from the death of WCW. Case in point:
Video after the jump
Come on, Strikeforce. A simple MOM MADE PIZZA ROLLS would have been far less embarrassing
You know what? I honestly try to be optimistic about the future of Strikeforce. Even when the promotion is hemorrhaging money, even when their website is reduced to an MS Word document, I want to believe that the promotion is run by competent individuals who will find a way to keep it alive.
And then I see the vignette made to promote the upcoming “Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Kennedy” on July 14, and feel stupid for learning nothing from the death of WCW. Case in point:
Strikeforce is attempting to promote an upcoming Middleweight Title Fight between their champion, Luke Rockhold, and the incredibly badass Army Ranger Tim Kennedy. So naturally, the promotion decides that they absolutely cannot promote this fight without bringing in Frank Shamrock. ”But maybe Frank Shamrock will go somewhere with this,” you probably aren’t thinking. “Maybe it won’t be completely terrible.”
Well, if you actually were thinking that beforehand, you immediately felt stupid when Frank Shamrock essentially called both the organization’s champion and number one contender pussies who can’t promote a fight. Shamrock then tries to solve the whole “Neither of you is a villain” problem by making both men villains (or “villains”) with comical (“comical”) results.
Well, that settles it. Frank Shamrock says there’s no reason to watch, so I’m going to just take his word for it. What about the rest of you, though? Did this generate any interest for you in Rockhold vs. Kennedy, or are you just waiting for Strikeforce to go under?
