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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