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Hopefully he's fighting someone terrible, so he gets an easy win.
Edit: Sorry, It appears to be a pro-wrestling event.
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If you try telling someone who watched him only in the last 1,5 decades or so that Ken used to be a fast and explosive submission artist they'll look at you like you told them you believe in Santa.It's getting hard to convince kids these days that Ken was once the real deal and one of the absolute best to ever do it.
Hopefully he's fighting someone terrible, so he gets an easy win.
It's getting hard to convince kids these days that Ken was once the real deal and one of the absolute best to ever do it.
Problem is that Ken was already past his physical prime in Pride.Probably because he never was.
The very first MMA event I ever watched was UFC 7: The Brawl in Buffalo in 1995, where Ken Shamrock took on Oleg Taktarov in the Super Fight. Despite all the steroids Ken was on (not controversial, since he has tested positive multiple times, and him and training partners have all but admitted it) and being significantly bigger, he could do little except take Taktarov, a very average wrestler, down and land piddly, crappy GnP.
In fact, Taktarov would have gotten a kneebar against him if not for a really bad habit he had from his sambo background, keeping his head too close to Shamrock. The fight ended up as a time limit draw.
I respect Ken Shamrock as a pioneer, but his reputation always exceeded his actual fighting abilities.
In the early to mid 90's, Ken was a decent wrestler with poor striking and GnP and a very old-school submission game that worked in very early Pancrase and marginally in the early UFC but would be antiquated by 2000. When he came back from pro wrestling in 2000, his knees were shot, making him a mediocre wrestler who couldn't get takedowns anymore. His striking had improved, however, and he could throw some hard punches. However, his cardio had gotten much worse in that time as well.
Ken's best fight in MMA from the standpoint of skills is actually a loss; against Kazayuki Fujita at PRIDE 10, he did a fine job of sprawling-and-brawling and beating up Fujita before his cardio betrayed him and he had to quit.
Anyways, I know Ken Shamrock has been having money problems since the 90's thanks to his various divorces and poor spending habits. Sad he has to resort to this to make money.
Problem is that Ken was already past his physical prime in Pride.
Still, one thing overlooked: Ken technically neutralized Beast´s wrestling [even though Beast was past his physical prime], and that´s no small feat.
More: people shit on Ken´s striking, but he dropped Kimo [ok, past his physical prime too, and with lingering injuries] with one single knee.
The fact that Ken had a successful run in Pancrase (he was a complete noob when he got into Funaki´s gym a few months b4)
is impressive.
Mixing? Hardly.. Im assessing his skill set & what he showcased against different skill sets.You're mixing and matching versions of Ken here, though. You're taking his wrestling from the mid 90's, when his striking was poor, and pairing it with his striking from the very early 2000s, when his wrestling had degraded.
Yes, if you could magically combine the wrestling and cardio from early Ken with the striking from later Ken, you would have a much better fighter, but that's all just a pipe dream.
Not true. He had some submission wrestling training with Fujiwara Gumi, even if the fights there were pre-determined. Ken had been training shoot wrestling for at least a year before his first match in Pancrase.
Yes and no. Early Pancrase kind of sucked, and the deficiencies of their style were exposed when Royce Gracie, who was probably only legitimately of purple belt caliber back then (according to his own family members and friends) tooled him at UFC 1.
Quite a few of Ken's victories in Pancrase were works (pre-determined) too, such as his second "victory" against a green Bas Rutten.