I watched him in a really old UFC the other day win with a heel hook I was surprised
Talking in terms of the fight game Ken’s body was way too banged up to keep fighting at a decent level after 2000.
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well ken only had a few years training submission, only 1 pancrase fight before ufc 1
in his own words “we thought we were high level grapplers, turned out we werent evemn close”
i am sure many sambo dudes were just as good, and suzuki/funaki had to at least be better than ken due to experience
they said something about oleg being a wizard when he trained with them, i cant recall exACtly, but something like nobody in the room wanted to leglock battle with him
all that said, ken had some good technique, for the time, all around
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Royce has more failed steroid tests than Ken does
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Vs Rich Franklin
Hey onepunch, can you now do the Ken-Tito fights? Thanks in advance.
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Right.
People don’t realize the extent of Ken’s injuries.
I think 2004 after he beat Kimo again would have been a great time to hang it up off a win, and do seminars, commentary, promotion, things like that.
Ken was a really good commentator IMO.
And at that point the Tito fight would have been seen like a badge of honor for an aging pioneer.
Realistically, it was anyways. But everything that happened after that clouds it.
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I am not really a Ken fan but I can appreciate what he did well. His leg locks were some of the best in the early days
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Taktarov and Gokor were both pretty good at leglocks. Gokor never really fought and Taktarov was a bit old and small to fight in open weight.
Very good with leg locks, only.
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Funaki and suzuki weren’t from shooto(tigermask) lineage. They both had sayama’s book on shooting, manabu yamada from pancrase started in shooto
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Stand-ups did not exist at this time. They were brought in after this fight, because of this fight. The fight was over at 30 minutes and they just decided to randomly add an overtime which is why they started standing again. Not by referee choice.
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Ken was successful
In early mma because he had the knowledge and experience and the strength/size advantage.. once other fighters started learning the game and weight classes were introduced - Ken was no longer special in terms of submissions
I feel Ken never showed us his true ability in the octagon - he never met the hype in the cage ..
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Tell that to fucking Tito Ortiz, buddy….
He was over the hill and banged up after he came back from WWF. He was a top guy in ‘96, though.
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Did anyone save the image of Ken wearing a purple cape?