Mixed martial arts (MMA) has come a long way. Titles have changed hands, promotions have died, disciplines have transformed, and fighters have evolved in just a short period of time. The state of today’s sport is one jam-packed with skill, high-level expertise, highlight reel finishes, brutal blood fests, and international opportunity for prospects around the
Mixed martial arts (MMA) has come a long way. Titles have changed hands, promotions have died, disciplines have transformed, and fighters have evolved in just a short period of time.
The state of today’s sport is one jam-packed with skill, high-level expertise, highlight reel finishes, brutal blood fests, and international opportunity for prospects around the world. It is the product of promotional development, eager bank accounts, and the sport as a whole being absorbed by the mainstream.
But in order to truly appreciate where MMA is today, the pioneers of the sport must be the recognized. From former champions to trend-setting pathfinders, from ground-and-pound wizards to one-punch knockout artists, the cage has played host to an assortment of memorable and equally influential characters.
In accordance with championships won, life-time victories, everlasting footprints around the sport, and downright barbaric tendencies, here are the Top 10 old school legends in MMA history.
The 2016 MMA year began with a roar. In its first major event, held just two days into January, Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit produced an instant classic that will be a tall order to supplant as the best fight of the year. It was filled with sharp te…
The 2016 MMA year began with a roar. In its first major event, held just two days into January, Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit produced an instant classic that will be a tall order to supplant as the best fight of the year. It was filled with sharp technique, brilliant fight IQ, unrelenting ferocity and unwavering will.
That was then. Now? We are in the midst of a brief, but unnecessary return to the sport’s sideshow roots.
To be blunt, both of MMA’s largest promoters—Bellator and the UFC—are showcasing the worst the sport has to offer.
If you follow the UFC, you noticed an inordinate amount of time spent promoting two neophytes on last Saturday’s UFC Fight Night card. Mickey Gall was 1-0, while his opponent, Mike Jackson, walked into the cage 0-0. To encourage media attention, the two were included in the UFC’s fight week media day events.
Who were these guys and what were they doing on a major MMA card? Well, mostly the bout between them served as a lead-in to the upcoming UFC debut of former professional wrestler CM Punk, who himself has never competed in a professional MMA bout.
There is rarely anything beyond a purse at stake for a newcomer other than a job and a win bonus, so these stakes were…something. I just wouldn’t classify them as particularly good or important. While seeking out new talent is paramount to any organization in any industry, few fighters are ready for the big leagues straight out of the chute, so the regional promotions play an important role as filters.
Generally speaking, the UFC won’t look at signing fighters unless they have six or seven fights in the books. Even its reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, limits tryouts to those who have at least three professional fights. Before Saturday, Gall, Jackson and Punk didn’t have three fights between them.
There is an argument to be made that sports are meant to be fun, and such fight setups are little harm as long as they are occasional. That’s a fair stance, but UFC president Dana White and the UFC brass have never been shy about reminding us that they have the best fighters in the world.
It reminds me of when I asked White for his reaction to Strikeforce signing former NFL star Herschel Walker.
“It’s ridiculous,” and “it’s completely disrespectful to the sport” were two of his answers, as he also questioned what athletic commission would sanction a fight with Walker, who at the time was 47 years old.
To be fair, it’s not an exact parallel. Punk is 37, a full decade younger than Walker. But his athletic resume doesn’t hold a candle to Walker’s, who, aside from being a football star, was an Olympic bobsledder, a track star and a black belt in taekwondo.
Walker’s signing wasn’t “completely disrespectful” to the sport, but it also wasn’t a decision made on athletic merit. It was a cash grab—same as Punk’s signing for UFC. White doesn’t get to trash Walker’s participation and get a pass on Punk’s. That it also included the satellite programming of Gall-Jackson is both smart (on the promotional side) and troubling (because neither had proven themselves to be worthy of competing at the sport’s highest level).
The fight between Punk and Gall is projected for UFC 199, sometime around June, which means there is plenty of hyperbole to come in the next few months. We’ll probably hear about all of the sacrifices they’ve made in the gym, Gall’s future stardom and Punk’s brave departure from pro wrestling to chase his dream. That’s all well and good. They are not at fault; they are just two guys embracing opportunity.
But the fact is we have no idea whether either of them is any good. And for a league that promotes itself as the home of the best fighters in the world, that is a problem.
Meanwhile, over in Bellator, we’re about to ramp up the ol‘ hype machine for a Feb. 19 event that features Ken Shamrock vs. Royce Gracie and Kimbo Slice vs. Dada 5000 in the two headlining fights.
Shamrock is about to turn 52 years old. Gracie is 49. Slice is 42. Dada 5000 is 38. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s see how many fights these guys have won in the last five years, since the start of 2011:
Shamrock is 0-1
Gracie hasn’t fought since 2007
Slice is 1-0 (his win is over Shamrock)
Dada is 1-0
So the four have an average age of 45 and three combined pro fights between them in five years. What else needs to be said, really? Despite the honest efforts of the fighters involved, this isn’t high-level or even mid-level MMA; it’s circus-level. It’s just a thing to gawk at and later forget.
Every professional athlete has an expiration date, but expiration dates are easy to ignore when there is money to be made and eyeballs to draw. This is, after all, a business grown at least partially by a prurient interest in violence, and after having invested ourselves in these athletes’ careers for so long, it’s hard to look away, even for the final crash. That does not make it good, it just means we all hold some level of responsibility.
In the year 2016, Punk, Gall, Jackson, Shamrock, Gracie, Slice and Dada don’t deserve to be fighting in major MMA. The time has passed for most of them; for others, it’s in the future or not at all. And that means that while these events may be sports, they are most certainly a circus.
As loyal readers of CagePotato through thick and thin, you know what kind of respect we have for UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn. We’ve sung his praises from the highest mountain tops. We’ve named our future children after them (at least, BG has). Hell, we’ve even been luckily enough to be graced with his presence in the form of a brief but glorious mailbag column back in the day. Simply put, “The Beast” is the ultimate man’s man, a legend, and the kind of guy that could turn Ron Swanson into a prepubescent-voiced, salad-eating socialist if he so desired.
But like many fighters before him, Severn hasn’t exactly settled into retirement easily since collecting his 101st win back in 2013, especially when it comes to his former rivals Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie. Back in 2011, Severn tried to draw the Brazilian out of retirement for a match a UFC Rio that, for better or worse, never came to fruition. So from the moment it was announced that Gracie and Shamrock would be doing the damn thing one more time at Bellator 149, you just knew that Severn would have something to say about it.
As loyal readers of CagePotato through thick and thin, you know what kind of respect we have for UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn. We’ve sung his praises from the highest mountain tops. We’ve named our future children after them (at least, BG has). Hell, we’ve even been luckily enough to be graced with his presence in the form of a brief but glorious mailbag column back in the day. Simply put, “The Beast” is the ultimate man’s man, a legend, and the kind of guy that could turn Ron Swanson into a prepubescent-voiced, salad-eating socialist if he so desired.
But like many fighters before him, Severn hasn’t exactly settled into retirement easily since collecting his 101st win back in 2013, especially when it comes to his former rivals Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie. Back in 2011, Severn tried to draw the Brazilian out of retirement for a match a UFC Rio that, for better or worse, never came to fruition. So from the moment it was announced that Gracie and Shamrock would be doing the damn thing one more time at Bellator 149, you just knew that Severn would have something to say about it.
Now 57 years old, Severn is still ready to strap on the wrestling boots and manties at the drop of a hat, it would seem. Speaking with MMAJunkie, Severn not only preemptively put the Shamrock-Gracie winner on blast, but called for a “Masters Division” to give the Mark Colemans and Randy Coutures of the sport a place to keep throwing down.
“Well, they were on my to-do list in the first place,” said Severn. “So sure, I’d do it.”
“I think there is an appetite for, I don’t know, call it a masters division, like they have in other sports. And as long as it’s done right and those masters compete against other masters, I think it’s something people want to see. You just can’t put the 50-year-old guy against a 25- or 30-year-old guy, because the reality is that no matter how good your skills are, they are diminishing.”
In all honesty…this isn’t the worst idea we’ve ever-HEAR US OUT.
Look, guys like Severn, Gracie, Shamrock, and so on; they live to compete no matter how bad it affects their health. Us high-minded, all-seeing Internet writers can’t try and act like we understand the mindset of these guys all we want, but the truth is that we have no clue and never will until we step into the cage ourselves. The desire to test oneself at the ultimate level of any sport isn’t something that can simply be shut off, not by the worries of their training partners, life coaches, doctors, or even their damn families. So if soulless promotions like Rizin are content to sit idly by and continue giving guys like Kazushi Sakuraba fights until they literally beaten to death in the ring — which, they are — then shouldn’t we at least try to level the scales by having these old dudes compete against each other? We’re not being cruel, we’re simply softening the blow!
I dunno, I’m just saying that if these grizzled SOB’s still have some fight left in them, we let them fight. Not to mention, we’re sure that Royce could use the extra cash.
When first taking in the idea of seeing 49 year old Royce Gracie and 51 year old Ken Shamrock do battle in the Bellator arena, I was struck with a rather obvious, yet repeatedly forgotten realization. Mainly, that former greats of MMA (or any sport, really, but *especially* MMA) only decide to put the gloves back on for 1 of 3 reasons:
1. They feel that they’ve still got something to prove, a belt/championship to attain, an spouse’s face to rub it in, etc.
2. They miss it.
3. They’re broke.
In the case of Royce Gracie, who will be returning from a 9 year, steroid-shamed absence from the sport at Bellator 149, it’s become apparent recently that his motivations lie closer to #3 than #1.
When first taking in the idea of seeing 49 year old Royce Gracie and 51 year old Ken Shamrock do battle in the Bellator arena, I was struck with a rather obvious, yet repeatedly forgotten realization. Mainly, that former greats of MMA (or any sport, really, but *especially* MMA) only decide to put the gloves back on for 1 of 3 reasons:
1. They feel that they’ve still got something to prove, a belt/championship to attain, an spouse’s face to rub it in, etc.
2. They miss it.
3. They’re broke.
In the case of Royce Gracie, who will be returning from a 9 year, steroid-shamed absence from the sport at Bellator 149, it’s become apparent recently that his motivations lie closer to #3 than #1.
Duh, right? I mean, why else would someone — especially someone entering the era of osteoporosis — put their health on the line for something as undignified as a Bellator pay-per-view?
(*checks earpiece*) (*learns that Bellator 149 will in fact be broadcast on Spike TV*) (*cries*)
Needless to say, upon waking from the shame eruption blackout I suffered following that announcement, I immediately began running down my list of options. It couldn’t be that Gracie still felt he had something to prove — he was, after all, up 1-0-1 over Shamrock, rendering a trilogy fight all but pointless — and I don’t necessarily think that he found himself looking at how evolved and well-rounded the average fighter is nowadays and saying aloud, “Gee, I miss never being able to do that,” either.
It had to be money, right? What else could draw a man who belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of the sport out of hiding at 50 goddamn years old?!!!
Well, and you know how much I hate to say this, it appears that I was right. (It’s as much a curse as it is a gift, you guys.)
According to BloodyElbow’s Paul Gift, Gracie is being sought after by the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS for us laymen, for failure disclose upward of $1.5 million earned between 2007-2011, the majority of which was wired to Gracie from offshore accounts and spent on vacation properties and paying off credit card debt. After being summonsed to appear before the IRS and produce bank documents aligning with their income and failing to appear in 2012, the Gracies were then hit with a Notice of Deficiency petition by the U.S. Attorney Chief.
According to the Petition, [IRS] Agent Ybarra was assigned “to examine potential international tax issues relating to the [Gracies’] federal income tax returns…” She believed she had discovered foreign bank accounts in which the Gracies had signature authority, yet did not disclose to the IRS.
To date, my investigation has revealed that during the years 2008 – 2011: 1) the [Gracies] had signature authority over an [sic] foreign bank account at HSBC bank in Switzerland; 2) the [Gracies] had signature authority over a foreign bank account at Caixa Penedes bank in Spain; 3) the [Gracies] had a foreign bank account at First Gulf Bank in Abu Dhabi; and, 4) the [Gracies] did not disclose the full extent of their foreign bank account activities on their U.S. tax returns (Forms 1040) as required by law.
On February 1, 2013, the [Gracies’] attorney sent a letter listing their objections to complying with the summonses. No documents were included with this letter. Among the objections set forth in the letter was a claim that the 2008 year was barred because the IRS had closed its 2008 domestic audit. The [Gracies’] also raised a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
Not only that, but Royce and his wife, Marianne, also allegedly filed individual tax returns showing minimal taxable income, along with $4,000 child tax and earned income credit claims during the aforementioned three-year span. An Earned Income Credit, for those unfamiliar, “is essentially a subsidy to low-income, working families, providing a tax credit to the working poor which phases out as a family’s income rises.” As the saying goes, “All my heroes are ghosts. That, or tax cheats, sexual predators, domestic abusers, or recently revealed anti-Semites.”
You can read all the grimy details of the IRS case against the Gracie’s over at BloodyElbow. While there has been no word as of yet as to how this may or may not effect Gracie’s future meeting with Shamrock, Gift also notes that, “if Gracie’s attorneys prepared him for a likely settlement or possible undesirable trial outcome, he may have need for more liquid funds in the near future and fighting Ken Shamrock could be just the ticket.”
So great; two broke 50 year-olds are gonna be fighting for milk money in the main event of Bellator 149, but only after a two street brawlers with fake names swing hammers at each other first (or something). How far this sport has come. (*wipes tear from eye*)
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 MMAannounced 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.
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 KazushiSakuraba.
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.
