I really don’t think ufc showrunners expected any fighter to go out there and fight like Ken did though - did he fight smart? Sure but is it really that impressive to hold down a Gracie when you outweigh him by 30 pounds and have a large amount of grappling experience?? Again, you know something is really bad when your own cornerman is begging you to do something!!! lol
Good points and I agree. Royce demonstrated in the third fight that he was ultimately the better fighter.
I disagree whrn it comes to Ken looking the best in Pride - he was basically a stand up brawler at that point - he didn’t even utilize his biggest strength(grappling).. I mean, he got knocked out by Sakuraba! Ouch
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Who cares? Neither guy came to win that night.
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I was specifically thinking of the Fujita fight, not necessarily Pride, but after reading Scott’s stuff maybe he was all coked out.
NO TIME LIMIT, THE FIGHT LOOKS exactly the same, but probably for a few hours. and royces face looks much worse from 3 hours of headbutts and punches
thats what ken trained for
looked up the stats, lol
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Royce Did.. he never came into a fight to play defense or fight to a draw..
Ken was definitely using performance enhancing drugs his entire career and quite a few recreational ones on the side.. he was more of a party guy than I expected
Don Frye attended to Ken after the Fujita fight and said his blood pressure was sky high and that he was close to having a stroke
Jon peretti said Ken chased him around at a hotel after he told Ken to lay off the anadrol - he said Shamrocks was face was purple lol
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Well he pulled out of one due to injury when Royce was unable to continue.
I don’t think anyone doubts he would have won.
It was a bad decision on his part – but at the time he probably didn’t have the foresight to predict that people on Internet forums would forever hold that against him lol.
Also, Ken has just won the King Of Pancrase Tournament, and Royce had just beaten Severn in the final of the previous UFC tournament. Severn won the UFC 5 tournament that had the Ken/Royce Superfight on the card.
So Ken was the most logical choice at the time, being the champion of another organization – and it was a much anticipated rematch.
Meh.
Ken fought almost 30 times in 3 years and beat mich better guys than Mitchell.
So he took a few minutes to beat a guy when he was injured. Nobody is going to be that active and not have a few hiccups. And we’re talking about a fight he won by submission.
Sheesh.
By fouling Ken?
Nah.
Peak vs peak Ken could do to Royce what he did in the second fight every time.
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Bingo. We’re looking at it from a modern mentality… he was the first to break the myth of the guard that was making everyone get stuck in subs. It was a methodical break down of it.
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Ken looked good vs Fujita but was really reverting to his brawling.
He always had that in him. He won a couple Toughman competitions back in the day.
In his early UFC days he had a grappling focused gameplan and didn’t approach fights with much intent to strike on the feet.
But he had the power. He dropped guys with oalm strikes in Pancrase and showed some solid knee strikes too.
The main reason Ken looked different in Pride was his injuries.
He was very much physically limited, so he had to change his approach to include more striking l, because he didn’t really have the explosive takedowns anymore.
The Fujita fight was a glimpse of what Ken was capable of – but the best Ken was in the 90s.
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Probably not, but the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu mystique was in full effect during this era and Royce had not yet lost to anyone in the UFC up to this point and held a submission victory over Ken from UFC 1. Ken wasn’t worried about what the UFC showrunners were concerned with, his obsession at this point was getting that win back and figuring out how to minimize the effects of jiu-jitsu. If he was worried about what the UFC thought, he would have completed the tournament at UFC 3. His obsession at this point was stepping in there again with Royce and proving that jiu-jitsu could be dealt with so he backed out knowing that tournament was a lock for him and made them give him Royce again. Agree or disagree, this is what Ken wanted and made it happen. I totally see what you are saying about the size difference, but Ken’s grappling experience at this point was far less than Royce’s jiu-jitsu experience. Ken had some wrestling and had been in the Pancrase system with Funaki & Suzuki for about 3 or 4 years at this point. He had learned a solid submission game especially in regards to leg attacks, but Royce had been a jiu-jitsu practitioner his whole life. At this point in time, fighters not from Brazil were just trying to figure out how jiu-jitsu worked. Ken knew he needed to learn how to defend against jiu-jitsu above all else. That fight at this point in time had to be about patience. Keep Royce compromised on the ground, stay positioned such that you avoid a submission, and attack when there was an opening. Ken did these things and would have won the fight had the time limit not been put in place or if the fight had judges.
I’m obviously a lifelong Ken fan, but this is how I see this fight. Implementing a game plan that worked. Just my opinion. Not taking anything away from Royce, he showed a ton of heart in this one, but Ken was prepared and had the winning game plan that night and was able to execute it.
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This tends gets overlooked a little in hindsight.
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Royce vs Ken 2 with no time limit
It’d still be going
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A bad decision to pull out? If he was truly injured then it was wise - there’s a chance he gets buckled by Howard in the finals with the way he was hobbling out of the ring after the Mitchell fight
Matchmakers were desperate to capitalize on the Royce vs Ken rivalry and a rematch for the first Superfight?! So they went with it and it turned out terribly
Simply put they should have post poned the superfight until ufc 6 - put Ken in the bracket at ufc 5 - make him win a tournament - the winner of the tournament then fights Royce at a superfight at ufc 6.. problem is, I don’t see him winning ufc 5 with Severn, Oleg and beneteau .. he’d win a fight or two then back out due to injury
Apparently he would have continued despite the injury had it been Royce in the finals.
The thinking is that Howard would have been an easy win, therefore bad decision legacy wise.
So on one hand you were criticizing Ken for the Mitchell fight.
On the other you are acknowledging he had a significant injury.
Weird.
Nah.
Anything can happen.
The time was right and so was the matchup.
Ken was the Pancrase champion, Royce was the undefeated UFC tournament champion.
Title fights have been somewhat arbitrary throughout MMA history.
Regardless, there’s no doubt these were the 2 best fighters in the UFC at the time.
Also, you seem to be forgetting that Ken and Royce would have met in the final of UFC 3 had they both remained healthy.
Ken fought 4 times in 2 days to win the King of Pancrase tournament – and that event was arguably more stacked with talent than those early UFC tournaments.
Sure, he could have had an injury.
But part of the Superfight format was to take that kind of bad luck out of the equation.
Tournament winners have often gotten an injury or matchup advantage. Just look at Steve Jennum coming into the finals fresh.
It wasn’t just Ken who was injured in UFC 3.
Royce Gracie and Keith Hackney both had to exit the tournament after wins.
This kind of thing is part of the reason the tournament format was phased out.
Tournaments are fun. But to find out who is truly the best, fighters need to compete healthy in head-to-head matchups.
Ken proved he was better head-to-head than guys who won UFC tournaments.
That is more impressive than having good luck with injuries or a favorable bracket.
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I don’t buy it for one second that Ken would have continued(despite the injury) if Royce was waiting for him in the finals. So he sort of struggles with a kenpo guy, comes out of the fight worse off injury wise yet would have went in and fought Royce in the finals?! Jesus Christ this is absurd - he had a full training camp for ufc 5 and was injury free and even then managed to mostly just defend against Royce.. he would have gotten submitted pretty quickly had he fought Royce injured at ufc 3
That’s the problem with Ken - he’s full of shit when it comes to many things.. I remember him saying he could have submitted Oleg in their super fight at ufc 7 but didn’t want to do it because he was managing Oleg and didn’t want to have to keep him out of future fights LOL ridiculous.. or him bench pressing 250 for 50
I don’t know the extent of his injury at ufc 3 but I saw him wobbling but then he later claims he would have continued if Royce was still in wtf.. that sort of tells me he wasn’t as injured as he let on but it’s Ken so reality isn’t always an active participant in these discussions
Honestly you make way too much out of Ken being a Pancrase champion .. is it impressive to me? Sure but I and many others also realize Pancrase had tons of works - any time you have an organization where 20% of the fights are fixed then it’s not as relevant in terms of combat sports ..
Ken had his opportunity to shine in the octagon and I just will always feel he never the hype .. elite fighter in the early days no doubt but later on when the game caught up to him he showed he wasn’t as well rounded as he claimed .. even his grappling has holes - not being able to finish Kimbo was a bad look
You can choose to believe what you want.
But that’s been the consistent story the entire time.
Doesn’t have much to do with Ken being the best choice to face Royce in the Super fight though.
He was contracted for Pancrase at the time and Ken didn’t want to injure him.
Now maybe that’s a better excuse than to tell people he was coming down off an all night ecstacy binge and was sluggish for the fight – as some of his LD students have said.
If I had to guess I’d say it was a combination of the 2.
Ken beat the fuck out of Oleg at the Lions Den. So bad that Oleg locked himself in the bathroom for an hour after.
So it’s not like Oleg had anything for him.
We know which ones were works though, and none of his KOP fights were.
So the works are irrelevant to how impressive that tournament win was.
He definitely underachieved.
Yeah
The store of Ken’s downfall had a lot more to do with injuries and his personal life than the sport “catching up with him”.
I’m not saying that wasn’t an aspect of it, because Ken himself admitted it he wasn’t pushing himself – which is why he went and trained with Paulson.
But people really don’t seem to understand the extent of Ken’s injuries.
It’s a common theme in these threads.
Most people’s do.
But he showed some good fence escapes in the first Tito fight despite taking a beating and being old with a torn ACL.
Like most guys there was stuff he was good at and that stuff worked when he was able to impose his will physically.
Ken has fused disks in his neck.
By the time of the Kimbo fight his mobility was very limited relative to fighting.
My opinion on the Kimbo thing was he didn’t quite have the leverage but thought he had it sunk. So he kept squeezing it and blew up his arms. By the time he realized it wasn’t happening it was too late.
He should have realized is sooner and switched his grip.
That’s just my theory based on my observations.
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Ken was fucking 51 years old with almost 50 fights when that fight took place. He was brought in by Bellator to be a meat puppet for Kimbo.
What you just typed is one of the craziest takes I’ve seen through almost 20 years of being on this forum.
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