Tag: Ken Shamrock

Age in the Cage: Are Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie Too Old to Fight?

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 c…

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.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Ken Shamrock vs. Royce Gracie 3 Announced for Bellator Event in February

Bellator is once again reaching into the history books to find its big main events, and it went deep for this one.
During the Bellator 145 broadcast, Scott Coker appeared on stage to announce that its next tentpole show, slated for February 19 in Houst…

Bellator is once again reaching into the history books to find its big main events, and it went deep for this one.

During the Bellator 145 broadcast, Scott Coker appeared on stage to announce that its next tentpole show, slated for February 19 in Houston, will be headlined by a threematch between MMA legends Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock.

Shamrock and Gracie defined MMA in the 1990s, becoming the two of the first breakout stars in the sport. Gracie won three of the first four UFC tournaments and held the record for longest UFC winning streak for a long while. Shamrock was a standout player in both the early UFC days as well as carving out a niche as one of the premier fighters in the Japanese Pancrase promotion.

They twice fought in the UFC, the first time at UFC 1 with Shamrock losing in 57 seconds via submission to a rear-naked choke. They later faced off again 18 months later for the UFC Superfight Championship, with the fight ending in a draw after 36 minutes of fighting.

Unfortunately, both men would go on to tarnish their legacy after their time in the UFC’s early tournaments.

When Shamrock returned to MMA following a three-year run in the WWF, he was a shell of his former self, amassing a 3-7 record between the UFC and Pride. After dropping back-to-back fights to Tito Ortiz, he had a highly unsuccessful run as a journeyman from 2007 to 2010, a stretch which was defined by a failed drug test and scrapped fights against Bobby Lashley and Kimbo Slice.

Similarly, Gracie would leave the UFC in 1995, but he came back in 2000 with Pride FC. Often fighting in bouts with special rules that favored his grappling-based style of fighting, he amassed a so-so record of 1-1-2. He would later fail a drug test following a 2007 rematch with Kazushi Sakuraba.

Shamrock returned to MMA suddenly in 2015 for a fight in Bellator with Slice, losing by first-round knockout. While the fight was quite controversial, he was quick to suggest he wasn’t done in MMA. Gracie, however, has stayed out of MMA competition since that second fight with Sakuraba.

Needless to say, this is an interesting play by Bellator, and it will be a fun throwback for longtime MMA fans. Also announced for the card was a bout between Kimbo Slice and Dada 5000.

Keep an eye out for more news on the card as it becomes available.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

B/R MMA in 2005: A Retrospective Look at the Sport a Decade Later

Once again, a year (and some change) has passed, and as MMA fans we look forward to the second half of 2015—anxious and hopeful as we always are amid so much change.
Whenever another year falls off the calendar, the fan in me cannot help but look…

Once again, a year (and some change) has passed, and as MMA fans we look forward to the second half of 2015—anxious and hopeful as we always are amid so much change.

Whenever another year falls off the calendar, the fan in me cannot help but look back on the past, ever grateful that the sport is still alive. You’ve probably heard it a million times from old-time fans, but you’re about to hear it again.

While the future of MMA is a given these days, it wasn’t always so, and I am both thankful and relieved it has not only survived but grown to a level I never expected.

2014 wasn’t the greatest of years for MMA for many reasons. Be it contractual issues or the injury bug, last year seemed to be more about what didn’t happen than what did, although it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

Now, deep into 2015, Zuffa and other promotions are looking at an old problem that has grown terribly large: performance-enhancing drugs. No one knows for sure how the movers and shakers in the world of MMA are going to handle this over the long haul (or if the UFC will revise its current policy), but it isn’t going away on its own—that much is certain.

Then, of course, there are other problems that come from the UFC growing too big—perhaps for its own britches, as the saying goes. Multiple parties are suing the UFC, and the government is renewing past investigations into the legitimacy of the company’s dominance of the sport.

Additionally, more than a few of fighters are noting their unhappiness with the Reebok deal, and new prospects of note (such as Ed Ruth) are choosing to fight with rival promotions simply because sponsorship monies are greater outside the Octagon. This is a particularly salient point given that this kind of situation—more money being available elsewhere—saw the formation of Pride FC and more than a few big fighters jumping ship to sail overseas (back in October 1997) where the grass was honestly greener and of a shade that only money can be.

Still, it’s a stark contrast to the sport in 2005, when the problems of today would have seemed like dreams come true, simply because times of plenty (even if it is plenty of problems) always look better than times of uncertainty.

And that is exactly what 2005 was: a time of uncertain promise, with the UFC playing the role of demanding midwife to a desperate sport.

So, as Sin City, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Batman Begins and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tried to pull us into the theaters, Dana White and the brass at Zuffa were still doing honest work in 2005, pushing that boulder uphill while trying to find ways to keep their checkbooks balanced, which would prove a wise move in the years to come.

Yet, they were also daring, crossing their fingers as the debut episode of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter aired on Spike on January 17. As they continued to do their best to put on successful pay-per-view events, they were watching the ratings, hoping against hope that two seasons of a reality show could help them break new ground and wrest first place in the sport from Pride FC, which was still going strong in Japan.

Once again, we stand and look back at the sport a decade later—older, wiser and hopefully every bit as excited and entertained now as we were then.

Here is a list of the events from both the UFC and Pride FC in 2005, in order of occurrence, as well as a list of the top fighters for the year and the top promotion and event. Once again, we hope it will bring about a realization and appreciation of what was and, more importantly, what is.

Begin Slideshow

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.

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Ken Shamrock Swears Kimbo Fight Wasn’t Fixed, Calls Out Joe Rogan

Weeks before Ken Shamrock was left plastered on the canvas like roadkill, the word in the MMA community was that the 51-year-old UFC Hall of Famer had no business being in the cage with Kimbo Slice, a 41-year-old street fighter turned MMA fighter.
It w…

Weeks before Ken Shamrock was left plastered on the canvas like roadkill, the word in the MMA community was that the 51-year-old UFC Hall of Famer had no business being in the cage with Kimbo Slice, a 41-year-old street fighter turned MMA fighter.

It was the senior-citizen brawl that no one really wanted to see. Yet the fight smashed Bellator’s ratings record by 27 percent, according to MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

After spending several years “hidden under the f–cking porch somewhere,” as UFC President Dana White would say (warning: video contains profanity), Shamrock emerged back in the mainstream spotlight by agreeing to fight Slice in a fight that should have happened back in 2008.

You all know the story by now. Shamrock somehow managed to cut his eye during warm-ups, and Seth Petruzelli Kimbo-bombed the EliteXC off the map.

Seven years later, fans were equally as eager to see Slice lock horns with “The World’s Most Dangerous Man.” The pre-fight hype was magical from a pure promotional perspective. Age might have taken away his speed and timing, but nothing had taken away Shamrock’s ability to promote.

And then the fight happened.

Hardly any punches were thrown, aside from Kimbo’s right hand that dropped Shamrock in the first round. Shamrock even missed on a routine rear-naked choke attempt—hooks in and all—after securing one of the easiest takedowns in MMA history.

So the 51-year-old fighter who wasn’t supposed to be in the same ring with Kimbo became the face of controversy for not putting up a decent fight. The circus bout that everyone penned as atrocious leading in became the subject of ridicule when it actually was atrocious.

According to UFC commentator Joe Rogan, when speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (warning: video contains profanity), the fight “looked fake as f–k.”

Speaking with Submission Radio, Shamrock swore on everything that the fight wasn’t fixed. He simply admitted he made a mistake, and Kimbo made him pay for it. As for Rogan, Shamrock claimed the commentator’s words could have ruined his career:

Being in a professional position, you have the people’s ear. You have a responsibility to make sure whatever you say you can back up, that you can prove and not just say it because you think it. Because you ruin people’s lives on something that you have no proof, and (Rogan’s) wrong in what he’s saying. He could have ruined my career and my life on what he’s saying.

Rogan wasn’t the only person to deem Shamrock’s performance scripted.

UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub, who appeared alongside Rogan on the podcast show, was also suspicious of the fight. Fox Sports 1’s Katie Nolan, the host of Garbage Time, accused Shamrock of taking a “dive” while live-tweeting during the event:

Amid a cloud of suspicion, Shamrock vehemently asserted the fight was not fixed in any shape or form: “I swear on everything that I love—my family, my God, everything that I love—that fight was not fixed. And the people that are saying it are saying it because they’re angry or they lost a bet in Vegas or they’re just trying to be hurtful.”

Imagine losing a massive bet after Shamrock missed that rear-naked choke attempt. I guess I’d feel salty, too.  

 

Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He also is the MMA writer for FanRag Sports and co-founder of The MMA Bros.

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