…Or, we could all just kick back, crack open an A.M. Ale and remember a better time. A time when guys like Tank Abbott and Wesley “Cabbage” Correira were considered elite athletes despite holding a little something extra around the midsection. A time when the term “brawler” could be used to describe someone’s fighting style without question or the smallest sense of irony. A time when men were men, dammit.
Abbott and Correira’s pair of bouts were quick and anything but painless, lasting a combined fight time of just three minutes and thirty-seven seconds, yet managed to capture everything that we loved about mid-2000’s MMA: wild haymakers, the muay Thai clinch, and gas tanks that expired before most of the audience could even find their seats. They were the kind of brawls that you might see in a John Wayne movie, but the fact that they were being contested inside a cage and for money instantly elevated them to near legendary status among true fans of the sport.
So rather than bore you with the same mundane news you could read anywhere else, let’s relive the visual poetry that was Cabbage vs. Tank, starting with their first encounter at UFC 45. After the jump: Abbott vs. Correira, pt. II.
…Or, we could all just kick back, crack open an A.M. Ale and remember a better time. A time when guys like Tank Abbott and Wesley “Cabbage” Correira were considered elite athletes despite holding a little something extra around the midsection. A time when the term “brawler” could be used to describe someone’s fighting style without question or the smallest sense of irony. A time when men were men, dammit.
Abbott and Correira’s pair of bouts were quick and anything but painless, lasting a combined fight time of just three minutes and thirty-seven seconds, yet managed to capture everything that we loved about mid-2000′s MMA: wild haymakers, the muay Thai clinch, and gas tanks that expired before most of the audience could even find their seats. They were the kind of brawls that you might see in a John Wayne movie, but the fact that they were being contested inside a cage and for money instantly elevated them to near legendary status among true fans of the sport.
So rather than bore you with the same mundane news you could read anywhere else, let’s relive the visual poetry that was Cabbage vs. Tank, starting with their first encounter at UFC 45. After the jump: Abbott vs. Correira, pt. II.
13. Basically refusing to sign Cris Cyborg forever.
14. Lying about all the fighter’s credentials and accomplishments for UFC 1.
15. Lying about all the fighter’s credentials and accomplishments in the modern day.
16. Instant rematches when the wrong guy wins.
17. Interviewing Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker whenever they show up at events.
18. The fact that you can buy Arianny t-shirts on the UFC website.
19. Every single time when they brought a potential opponent into the cage to square off with someone who just won their fight (this is our favorite example).
20. Bringing back Tank Abbott in the early 2000′s.
For some MMA fighters, professional wrestling was just a one-time cash grab. For others, it became a second career. Inspired by yet another week of TNA Impact Wrestling’s efforts to get anyone to care about the professional wrestling experiments of two broken-down MMA legends, we’ll be examining fighters who took up professional wrestling after they made their names in MMA in our newest installment of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.
Bear in mind that this article is focusing on mixed martial artists who transitioned to professional wrestling careers, and not fighters who started off as professional wrestlers. So that means fighters like Brock Lesnar, Ken Shamrock, Bobby Lashley, Giant Silva, Bob Sapp, Dos Caras Jr. (aka Alberto Del Rio), Dan Severn (Google it) and Sakuraba will not be covered here — although a few of these men will make appearances in this article. Let’s start off on a positive note…
The Good
The Professional Wrestling Career of Josh Barnett.
When you’re thinking of good instances of an MMA fighter turning to professional wrestling as a second career choice, Josh Barnett should immediately come to mind. There have been other fighters who dabbled in professional wrestling, but Barnett is one of the only ones to be just as popular and successful in it as he was in MMA.
Before his transition, Barnett became the youngest heavyweight champion in UFC history by defeating Randy Couture at UFC 36. After being stripped of his title due to a positive drug test, Barnett set his sights on the Japanese professional wrestling scene, where the fans value legitimacy and toughness from their wrestlers more than mic skills and charisma (although Barnett has both in spades). He immediately challenged for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and although he came up short, he went on to enjoy the most relevant crossover career of any fighter on this list before his return to the UFC earlier this year put a halt to the wrasslin’ for the time being.
For some MMA fighters, professional wrestling was just a one-time cash grab. For others, it became a second career. Inspired by yet another week of TNA Impact Wrestling’s efforts to get anyone to care about the professional wrestling experiments of two broken-down MMA legends, we’ll be examining fighters who took up professional wrestling after they made their names in MMA in our newest installment of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.
Bear in mind that this article is focusing on mixed martial artists who transitioned to professional wrestling careers, and not fighters who started off as professional wrestlers. So that means fighters like Brock Lesnar, Ken Shamrock, Bobby Lashley, Giant Silva, Bob Sapp, Dos Caras Jr. (aka Alberto Del Rio), Dan Severn (Google it) and Sakuraba will not be covered here — although a few of these men will make appearances in this article. Let’s start off on a positive note…
The Good
The Professional Wrestling Career of Josh Barnett.
When you’re thinking of good instances of an MMA fighter turning to professional wrestling as a second career choice, Josh Barnett should immediately come to mind. There have been other fighters who dabbled in professional wrestling, but Barnett is one of the only ones to be just as popular and successful in it as he was in MMA.
Before his transition, Barnett became the youngest heavyweight champion in UFC history by defeating Randy Couture at UFC 36. After being stripped of his title due to a positive drug test, Barnett set his sights on the Japanese professional wrestling scene, where the fans value legitimacy and toughness from their wrestlers more than mic skills and charisma (although Barnett has both in spades). He immediately challenged for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and although he came up short, he went on to enjoy the most relevant crossover career of any fighter on this list before his return to the UFC earlier this year put a halt to the wrasslin’ for the time being.
With Frye’s “rematch” against Yoshihiro Takayama being one of the few exceptions, the professional wrestling careers of Don Frye and Bas Rutten have been exactly what you’d expect them to be. If I need to explain why that’s a good thing, you’reobviouslynewhere.
The Polar Bear Fights Taz at ECW Hardcore Heaven.
(Enjoy the video while it lasts. Seriously, WWE’s lawyers will probably have it taken down soon.)
By 1996, a stocky, Brooklyn-born judoka by the name of Peter Senercia — better known as Taz — was one of the most talented, respected wrestlers on the independent circuit. Dubbed “The Human Suplex Machine,” Taz brawled his way through most of the ECW roster and was looking to take on some credible new opponents. This led to a problem for ECW owner Paul Heyman: Despite its success among hardcore wrestling fans, ECW was still very much an independent promotion that couldn’t afford to bring in established wrestlers just to job to one of their top stars. Always one to embrace new ideas, Heyman solved this dilemma by bringing Paul “The Polar Bear” Varelans in from the upstart Ultimate Fighting Championship to challenge Taz to a “real” fight at Hardcore Heaven.
At 6’8” tall and tipping the scales at 300 pounds, Varelans was the perfect fighter for Heyman to utilize. He was big enough to be seen as a formidable opponent, but his MMA record wasn’t too impressive for anyone to buy that Taz could actually beat him. The strong-style nature of the match hid The Polar Bear’s lack of professional wrestling training, yet also wasn’t out of place in ECW — especially not while Taz was in the ring. And while Taz obviously won the fight, he relied on outside interference. Having heels bend the rules in order to defeat larger, more skilled opponents is not only a common way to generate heat, but it also makes the ending more realistic in the eyes of the ECW fans who were familiar with those early UFC events. Well, at least as realistic as a fight that ends by Tazmission after an outsider dropkicks one of the fighters can look, I guess (work with me, people). Basically, everyone involved benefited from the situation and the fans actually cared about the angle — something that rarely happens when MMA fighters infiltrate the world of professional wrestling.
Bonus: According to wrestling legend, it was Taz who brought tapping out to professional wrestling. Taz was a huge Royce Gracie fan, and thought it would be more authentic if wrestlers tapped out at the end of their matches instead of just verbally submitting. If you think wrestling looks fake now, just imagine what it looked like when wrestlers verbally submitted to choke holds.
Brian Johnson Reinvents Himself in Japan
I’m willing to bet that, like most MMA fans, you’ve all but forgotten about Brian Johnson — the man who punched out a hapless Reza Nasri in under 30 seconds at UFC 11 before being emphatically tackled by Big John McCarthy. In terms of his real fighting career, you didn’t miss much — Johnson retired barely one year after he started fighting and lost to everyone he’s fought that you’ve heard of. However, with few other career options available for hulking spandex-clad athletes, Johnson turned to fake fighting and quickly excelled at it. He enjoyed success as a tag-team wrestler, pairing up with guys like Don Frye and Kazuyuki Fujita in the Japanese professional wrestling circuit.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s professional wrestling career would eventually serve as a brutal reminder that even though the fights are fake, the injuries that plague wrestlers are all too real. A series of concussions led him to retire in early 2001, and later that year, at only thirty-two years old, he would suffer a severe stroke. Though Johnson is alive and well today, he has wisely stayed away from the squared circle.
Hit that “next page” link for god awful gimmicks, the career that should have been, and the partnership that never should have…
Tournaments seem like a great way to determine the best competitor from a group of athletes. You have 8 (or 16 or 32 or whatever the number) fighters, put them in a bracket, and then let them fight it out. The last dude standing clearly must be the best because he survived the tournament, right?
Tournaments — like the ones the UFC used to run — are heavily dependent on how the bracket is organized. Some fighters get an easy run, others get a gauntlet.
This got us at Cage Potato thinking: What if some of the early UFC tournament brackets were re-organized or even shuffled just a little bit? Who would end up becoming the “Ultimate Fighters” of the 1990s? Let’s find out!
UFC 2
UFC 2 was the first and only 16-man tournament run by the UFC. The first round of the tournament — save for Royce Gracie’s fight (of course)—didn’t air on the PPV and aren’t on the DVD either. These “lost fights” from UFC 2 have quite a few interesting characters such as the enigmatic Pencak Silat master Alberto Cerro Leon and the chubby, sweatpants-clad Robert Lucarelli.
Look at the complete bracket and see how many names you recognize. Most of these guys from the UFC 2 dark matches had no chance in the tournament, save for a man named Freek (or Frank) Hamaker. We’re going to stick with Freek because it rhymes with Reek. A fighter like Hamaker was a rarity in the early days. He wasn’t a hapless striker fated to be embarrassed. He was a sambo practitioner who trained under legendary European grappler Chris Dolman.
Hamaker’s first (and only) fight was at UFC 2 against the mysterious San Soo Kung Fu man Thaddeus Luster. The fight went like the typical early UFC fight. The guy with grappling immediately took down the guy without grappling and won shortly afterwards. Hamaker withdrew from the tournament after defeating Luster and disappeared to the pornography theater from whence he came.
(And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why history must be re-written.)
Tournaments seem like a great way to determine the best competitor from a group of athletes. You have 8 (or 16 or 32 or whatever the number) fighters, put them in a bracket, and then let them fight it out. The last dude standing clearly must be the best because he survived the tournament, right?
Tournaments — like the ones the UFC used to run — are heavily dependent on how the bracket is organized. Some fighters get an easy run, others get a gauntlet.
This got us at Cage Potato thinking: What if some of the early UFC tournament brackets were re-organized or even shuffled just a little bit? Who would end up becoming the “Ultimate Fighters” of the 1990s? Let’s find out!
UFC 2
UFC 2 was the first and only 16-man tournament run by the UFC. The first round of the tournament — save for Royce Gracie’s fight (of course)—didn’t air on the PPV and aren’t on the DVD either. These “lost fights” from UFC 2 have quite a few interesting characters such as the enigmatic Pencak Silat master Alberto Cerro Leon and the chubby, sweatpants-clad Robert Lucarelli.
Look at the complete bracket and see how many names you recognize. Most of these guys from the UFC 2 dark matches had no chance in the tournament, save for a man named Freek (or Frank) Hamaker. We’re going to stick with Freek because it rhymes with Reek. A fighter like Hamaker was a rarity in the early days. He wasn’t a hapless striker fated to be embarrassed. He was a sambo practitioner who trained under legendary European grappler Chris Dolman.
Hamaker’s first (and only) fight was at UFC 2 against the mysterious San Soo Kung Fu man Thaddeus Luster. The fight went like the typical early UFC fight. The guy with grappling immediately took down the guy without grappling and won shortly afterwards. Hamaker withdrew from the tournament after defeating Luster and disappeared to the pornography theater from whence he came.
Hamaker had tremendous potential given his background in an effective martial art and given that having any kind of grappling ability in the early UFCs was tantamount to bringing a taser into the cage with you.
We don’t need to re-imagine the UFC 2 bracket much to have a more interesting outcome.
Let’s just pretend that Hamaker never got injured and consequently never withdrew.
After defeating Luster, he’d take on kickboxer Johnny Rhodes. Judging by the fact that Patrick Smith submitted Rhodes in a little over a minute, a more qualified grappler in Hamaker probably wouldn’t need much more time to do the same.
That would bring Hamaker into the semifinals against Pat Smith, who was previously submitted by Ken Shamrock at UFC 1 in short order, and was destroyed in the UFC 2 finals by Royce Gracie. Smith may have had enough grappling to beat the Ray Wizards and Rudyard Moncayos of the world but he likely wouldn’t have enough submission acumen to beat Hamaker. So in CagePotato’s alternate reality version of events, The “Freak” — that wasn’t his nickname, but it should’ve been. Freek “The Freak” Hamaker? You don’t like it? Fine. — therefore gets his hand raised for third time that night.
Could Hamaker really have taken out Royce Gracie in the finals?
Probably not, but keep in mind that Gracie initially struggled against Keith Hackney at UFC 5, a karate guy who had added just a smattering of BJJ into his arsenal. So, Gracie still would probably have won UFC 2 but he would’ve looked mortal doing it — and that’s the important thing.
At UFC 1, Royce Gracie looked like an unstoppable killer; maybe not a Che Mills-level killer, but a killer nonetheless. He took martial arts “experts” down and submitted them without breaking a sweat. Gracie did much of the same at UFC 2.
It’s unlikely that Hamaker would’ve beaten Gracie (pre-drug-testing Ken Shamrock lost to Gracie the first time and the skilled Judoka Remco Pardoel also lost to Gracie as well), but he had a good chance of at least making Gracie look like a regular, fallible fighter.
A Hamaker-Gracie finale would’ve shown the world that BJJ (or, more specifically “Gracie” Jiu-Jitsu) wasn’t a martial arts panacea and that Royce Gracie wasn’t some kind of god. It took Jesus-freak, motivational speaker, and meth enthusiast Kimo Leopoldo to do that.
Although he’s getting more press for his TRT usage than he is for his actual octagon performances nowadays, there was a time when Vitor Belfort was just a fresh-faced Brazilian assassin who was quite literally trimming the fat from the UFC’s heavyweight division. That time was 1997, and there was perhaps no greater a display of Vitor’s ability to crush hopelessly outmatched and overweight opponents than his UFC 12 thrashing of Scott Ferrozzo. Thankfully, UFC.com has made the fight temporarily available to the public, presumably so we can gain some perspective on what a true squash match looks like and be happy with the fights we’re given.
As hilarious as it is depressing, join us after the jump as we take a look back at just what constituted a UFC tournament final. You will laugh, you will cry, you will declare that you’re getting too old for this shit.
Although he’s getting more press for his TRT usage than he is for his actual octagon performances nowadays, there was a time when Vitor Belfort was just a fresh-faced Brazilian assassin who was quite literally trimming the fat from the UFC’s heavyweight division. That time was 1997, and there was perhaps no greater a display of Vitor’s ability to crush hopelessly outmatched and overweight opponents than his UFC 12 thrashing of Scott Ferrozzo. Thankfully, UFC.com has made the fight temporarily available to the public, presumably so we can gain some perspective on what a true squash match looks like and be happy with the fights we’re given.
As hilarious as it is depressing, join us after the jump as we take a look back at just what constituted a UFC tournament final. You will laugh, you will cry, you will declare that you’re getting too old for this shit.
(Props: MMA Fighting via UFC.com. Scroll to the right to enable fullscreen.)
Honestly, there is just so much fail going on in the video that we momentarily thought it was another JERRY RIPS! masterpiece. A few highlights…
0:06 – Best. Tale of the Tape. Ever. 0:15 – It’s moments like these that just demand Mike Goldberg. “Belfort is 118 pounds lighter and 13 years younger, but the rest is VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL.” 0:20 – Psssh, has this joker on the mic even attempted to start a fight with an MMA fighter in an elevator? 0:52 – When they called Ferrozzo a “pit fighter,” do you think they were referring to the fact that his training regimen likely consisted of starting a fight at the annual family barbeque? 1:52 – “It don’t matter. You know, Roy Jones Jr. ain’t gonna knock out Mike Tyson.” Yep, that’s Tank Abbott comparing Ferrozzo to Mike Tyson. I promise this is not a Scanners gif. 2:02 – “It’s done, it’s over with.” – Tank Abbott, currently reconsidering the Jones Jr./Tyson comparison he just made. 2:15 – A Vitor Belfort fight ending with a series of illegal punches to the back of his opponent’s head? Surely you must be joking. 2:55 – “What’d this guy do, win the Olympics?” – Tank Abbott, clearly the authority on appropriate celebrations. 3:36 – “I don’t think that you can compare either one to a boxer.” – Tank Abbott 4:51 – “Brazilian motherfuckers.” – We’re just going to assume Tank Abbott.
Before Tank Abbott re-enters the UFC and takes the heavyweight strap back from these pussy-ass point-fighters, his latest comeback will begin with a tune-up fight against guyliner-clad palooka Ruben “Warpath” Villareal, who has lost eight of his last ten fights. The match will go down April 13th at King of the Cage: Fighting Legends, at Gold Country Casino in Oroville, California.
According to a KOTC press release published last week, Tank Abbott is “the world’s most famous cage fighter” (!!!), and his fight against Warpath will be for the King of the Cage Superfight title, whatever the hell that means. And of course, Abbott’s second-career as a novelist also gets a plug:
“[Abbott] recently took a few years off to write a 300,000 word trilogy about the origins of cage fighting entitled “Befor There Were Rules” with the first novel, “Bar Brawler”, now available for purchase as a paperback or digital download from Amazon.com.”
I think it’s really cool of KOTC to keep the misspelling of “Befor,” so as not to embarrass or confuse Tank. Anyway, there’s a little video profile on Tank after the jump hyping the 4/13 fight. Check it out if you want, but just keep in mind that his fascinating toupee is still in hiding.
Before Tank Abbott re-enters the UFC and takes the heavyweight strap back from these pussy-ass point-fighters, his latest comeback will begin with a tune-up fight against guyliner-clad palooka Ruben “Warpath” Villareal, who has lost eight of his last ten fights. The match will go down April 13th at King of the Cage: Fighting Legends, at Gold Country Casino in Oroville, California.
According to a KOTC press release published last week, Tank Abbott is “the world’s most famous cage fighter” (!!!), and his fight against Warpath will be for the King of the Cage Superfight title, whatever the hell that means. And of course, Abbott’s second-career as a novelist also gets a plug:
“[Abbott] recently took a few years off to write a 300,000 word trilogy about the origins of cage fighting entitled “Befor There Were Rules” with the first novel, “Bar Brawler”, now available for purchase as a paperback or digital download from Amazon.com.”
I think it’s really cool of KOTC to keep the misspelling of “Befor,” so as not to embarrass or confuse Tank. Anyway, there’s a little video profile on Tank after the jump hyping the 4/13 fight. Check it out if you want, but just keep in mind that his fascinating toupee is still in hiding.
