The passage of time makes the expression of an honest opinion more difficult than it should be. For the last week, the major topic of debate in MMA circles has been the ill-fated bout between two legends of the sport, Renzo Gracie and the near-mythical Frank Shamrock. While my peers largely predicted Shamrock to cruise to victory via some kind of magic-infused Tiger Knee that sends both Renzo’s lifeless body crunching to the mat, and Frank racing up the middleweight rankings.
I didn’t think the fight would play out like that. In fact, I picked Renzo to win. Just not in the completely random manner the fight ended. I won’t bore you with the details, because they have been pored over in the last few days as though everybody on the internet was Oliver Stone, and Frank’s knees were a couple of bullets sent from the grassy knoll. Ooh, did the illegally-thrown knees land on the head, or the neck, or one on each? Or did they in fact pierce the very BJJ-filled soul of Gracie? And how about the pressure being put on referee extraordinaire Herb Dean? ‘Come on Herb. We need to know. DQ or no DQ?’
How about the fight itself? Well, it went pretty much as one would have reasonably expected: Frank was a bit handy on the feet, so Renzo decided to take him down. As with Shamrock-Tito (no, not the laughable debacles from the last couple of years. The proper Shamrock-Tito), Frank was very active from the bottom. This was just as well, because he seemed about as able to escape from below as a particularly concrete-shoed Sopranos victim. In other words, he wasn’t going anywhere, so he did right to knee the body as much as humanly possible.
I would like to think that even an above-average halibut would have the spacial awareness to know where someone’s ribs are, which is somewhere entirely different from where a man’s head is situated. That would lead me to reason that the cranial knees were rather intentional, and that dear Frank ‘wot, me break the rules?’ Shamrock got everything he deserved. People have been debating who was winning up til that point, which is rather moot if you ask me.
Anyway, the simple facts are that Renzo was controlling the fight, but doing little damage. Frank was doing some damage (I wouldn’t fancy getting Tiger Kneed, even if they are being delivered from the ground up), but was a complete stranger to the concept of ‘control’. Here is lesson number two for Frank (the first being ‘in America, don’t knee someone in the head when they are on the ground’): Renzo is a bit smarter on the mat than Bryan Pardoe, and you therefore have to prepare something more in the way of a guard game than just the ‘grab an arm’ philosophy that worked so well a few years back. Or maybe even takedown defence.
Funnily enough, Frank put in the kind of ‘throw some strikes, get taken down and controlled’ performance we have come to expect from his next opponent, one Phil Baroni. That should be a fun fight, though one that should probably end up enacting this one, albeit with Frank in the Renzo role. Still, the idea of one of these men getting knocked out fills me with the kind of toasty glow once only associated with a Ready Brek* overdose. As long as that ‘one’ is Frank Shamrock, anyway. I would like to clarify that this doesn’t come from a dislike of Shamrock; more an absolute fandom of Baroni.
Baroni is more of a jerk than Frank. He effortlessly oozes wonderful dickhead charisma as he saunters to the ring in his Yankees cap and glittery robe. Shamrock, on the other hand, seems to try a wee bit too hard to make people dislike him.
See, Shamrock performed a post-Renzo fight routine in the character of what fake-fighting fans would call a ‘heel’. That is to say he was a jerk, but didn’t really mean it. I think the etymology of the word is actually based outside the carny world of pro-wrestling, but that’s the only context you will find it being used in today. Anyway, he went on about how he was here to fight, and shucks, I wasn’t to know these little knees of mine were illegal in this new fangled set of rules.
Yes, apparently Frank’s last fight took place in 1836. I’m surprised he didn’t just pull out a blunderbuss and blast Gracie’s face off, if he really did think he was ‘here to fight’. Maybe it’s just me, but if I am a casual observer of this show, a gimmick whereby a fighter claims not to know what the rules of a fight are would make me think he was a bit, you know… simple?
At least Wes Sims knew he was breaking the rules when he was stamping Frank Mir’s brain cells in a few years ago. I’m sure Sims is a nice person, but if you’re an MMA legend, you don’t want to advertise yourself as being dimmer than him.
Still, something Frank knows a lot about is promoting a fight and when the inevitable Frank-Renzo (fighters always seem more cuddly when referred to by their forenames) rematch is announced, lots of people will pay to see it. And, after all, is that not the reason why people fight for money? Well, I’d personally hope the desire to win might be somewhere near the top of the list marked ‘PRIORITIES’, but what can you do.
***
*For those wondering, Ready Brek is a warm, oat-based breakfast, somewhat reminiscent of porridge. Anyway, the adverts in the eighties would feature kids with mullets eating vatfuls of the stuff and being consumed in an orange glow. That’s not an after-effect I would associate with a healthy breakfast, but maybe that’s just me.
