Both top notch themes!
I’ve always wondered how Steve Blackman would have fared had he competed in NHB/MMA. He has been anointed as legitimately skilled by both Ken Shamrock & Kurt Angle. He also had an MMA school for a number of years in Harrisburg, PA. Dennis Bermudez got his start there training under Steve.
Always kind of thought Blackman could have done something if he wanted to.
Yeah I’d imagine with the stability he had with the WWF and the money he was making during the attitude era it probably wouldn’t have been worth his while to have attempted it then. I would love to have seen him compete on some level though. He did a great shoot interview with RF Video back in 2007 and an interview with Chris VanVliet about a year ago. He currently runs a bail bonds business up in Harrisburg, PA and has ran that for years.
The real loser in that fight was the fans. Dans fight with Kimo was almost as bad.
I don’t think Blackman had a grappling or wrestling background though - he was very athletic and had good striking which could have gotten him a few wins over the Harold Howard’s of the sport
Folks always bring up Haku as being the toughest wrestler and that he could have done well in the ufc.. I disagree
Generally agree.
He might have gotten a couple wins in the early UFCs.
But if you replace him with Matua vs Tank, I have a feeling it would have been a similar result.
Haku would do well in K.O.T.S lolll
MENG would have gotten bodied by everybody. Maybe he beats Joe Son.
He joined islam. Fuck Royce.
I definitely see what you mean here. It’s really hard to say though. My understanding is he wrestled in jr. high and/or high school and started training jiu-jitsu at various places in the 90’s. I don’t know the extent of his ground training though. The only time I’ve ever seen him compete at any level was in the Brawl for All against Marc Mero. That was the mixed rules tournament that the WWF put on in 1998 where it was essentially a boxing match (no kicks) with takedowns (no submissions). They also wore boxing gloves and not MMA gloves. Mero was a Golden Gloves level boxer so Blackman just beat him on takedowns. I believe Blackman was able to get 13 takedowns in that one. With Mero being a pure boxer, it probably wasn’t too big of a challenge to just play the wrestling game in that one, but you could definitely see some skill at work there. He ended up injuring himself training for the next fight and did not continue in the tournament. I think a lot could be learned about what kind of skills he possessed from some of his ex-students/fighters. He did have 4 guys come through his school in Harrisburg, PA that would eventually compete in the UFC at least once including Dennis Bermudez. I’ve never heard any details from any of his ex-students on what kind of skills he had or how he ran his school. I’d love to know more about his old MMA school, Blackman MMA, if anyone has any info. I think he ran it for 12 or 13 years before it closed.
I remember going back and watching all the original UFC’s a few years ago and I had almost forgotten how dominant Ken and The Lion’s Den had become before that farce of a rematch with Severn and him retiring to join the WWF. Remember, there was a time when Tito was kind of that guy who lost to Guy Mezger and disappeared. It wasn’t until he came back and went on a tear that things changed.
Nowadays, most UFC fans image of Ken is seeing him take a bunch of embarrassing loses fighting post WWF out of his prime through injuries that took away some of his best weapons as he got older and older.
On another note, I really miss old school Pancrase. It was like real life Japanese Professional Wrestling.
Yeah they were at the front of the curve.
A lot of people don’t understand the extent of this.
Ken’s injuries largely defined the downside of his career. And it wasn’t just his knees, his neck was probably worse. He had to get disks fuzed.