The changing landscape of MMA has created new opportunities for the many pioneers of the sport. Men like Marco Ruas, Maurice Smith, and Don Frye have all been seen in recent competition, despite being in their forties. Early legends of the sport, whose efforts have paved a once rocky road for mixed martial artists, are now able to share a stage with their young successors.
Randy Couture, however, has accomplished a truly exceptional feat. Emerging from retirement earlier this year, the former champion once again reclaimed the UFC heavyweight title, winning a five round unanimous decision victory over Tim Sylvia. Fighting at 44 years of age, Couture defeated an opponent 13 years his junior. Randy Couture’s win signaled to fans and fighters alike that talent has no expiration date.
Ken Shamrock, then, is but the latest quadragenarian to plan a comeback. Shamrock recently announced that he was in talks to return to fighting in the UFC. Those claims have been refuted by UFC President Dana White. Nonetheless, Shamrock’s possible return to competition garnered quite a bit of interest and attention on the MMA web.
However, Shamrock’s plans were met with some skepticism, not the least of which has come from Dana White himself. White is quoted as saying, “He’s just not at that level anymore as a UFC fighter.” White later released Shamrock from his UFC contract, squashing ‘plan A’ for the “World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
Shamrock last fought in the UFC in October 2006, facing, and ultimately losing to Tito Ortiz for the third time. Shamrock’s loss to Ortiz was by TKO due to strikes at 2:23 of the first round. It was the fourth fight in a row Shamrock lost by first round TKO. Ortiz-Shamrock 3 remains one of the most watched fights in UFC history, garnering an estimated 5.7 million viewers.
In an interview with Sherdog.com after the fight, a then 42-year-old Shamrock admitted that age was becoming a factor in his fights, saying, “Reality sets in and, you know, I have to realize that I just don’t have the skills I used to have or the strength I used to have.”
Despite a flagging resume, Ken Shamrock has already secured his legacy in the world of mixed martial arts. A charter inductee into the UFC Hall of Fame, Shamrock became one of the promotion’s first stars after competing in the first ever UFC tournament in November 1993.
It’s easy to dismiss Shamrock as just some victim of nostalgia, unable to escape the stranglehold of the past. Having acknowledged that he “just can’t compete with these guys now,” the decision to try to do so is, on its surface, difficult to fathom.
But consider what is possible for today’s mixed martial arts athlete. When men like Shamrock first fought, there were no lucrative paydays financed by record setting pay per view sales. ESPN and Sports Illustrated weren’t calling for interviews. There was no Ultimate Fighter reality series to usher them into the limelight.
In the not-so-good old days, fighters labored at their day jobs while training and competing for little more than a place in the history books. An uncertain course before them, many fighters nurtured the fast held belief that the developing sport would one day lay claim to legitimacy. In the meantime, they would continue to compete in the face of public scorn and political censure, notwithstanding the labels of ‘thug’ and ‘brute.’
Now, it seems, opportunities abound. Shamrock and his colleagues are widely recognized as athletes. They are able to not only earn a living, but prosper by doing what they most love to do. They are able to ensure the continuation of their legacies by guiding talented young athletes to achieve their own successes.
But the greatest reward offered by mixed martial arts competition today is our respect for their craft. It was the sweat of Ken Shamrock, among others, that helped propel mixed martial arts to the popularity the sport enjoys today. It’s not unreasonable, then, for the Ken Shamrocks and the Randy Coutures of the MMA world to step forward to claim for themselves some measure of what they have helped to create.
It is not for others to tell these men they must now subdue the passions upon which their entire industry has been built.