Ken Shamrock’s Borrowed Time
Jake Rossen Jul 19, 2010
He needs money, but that’s hardly the problem: Michael Jordan has
more than the Federal Reserve, but they had to drag him off the
court.
He’s old, but that’s not quite it, either. You can shut him down before he takes too much damage. It’s the young guys who can hang in there for a beating you have to worry about.
It’s that Ken Shamrock
still thinks he breathes fire. Hearing him talk about “getting in
Pedro
Rizzo’s face” and working him over standing -- Pedro Rizzo,
the kickboxer who turned Randy
Couture into a temporary cripple -- is Shamrock lulling himself
into a kind of self-hypnosis. He’s willing the body into action.
But the body began falling apart 15 years ago. And whatever’s left
now is no longer equipped to deal with the torment and violence of
a prizefight. The fire has no fuel.
You got that on full display -- in neon colors and big, bold font -- on Saturday, when Shamrock was leg-kicked into submission by Rizzo in what was dubbed the “main event” of the evening for an Impact FC card in Sydney, Australia. Poor Rizzo essentially repeated the role of mercy killer against an outmatched, outdated name that he first performed against Dan Severn in 2000. In both cases, the stagnant athletes folded in pain after a handful of kicks to the thigh.
To call Shamrock a washout is like counting nostrils: there’s not much of a point. His best days ended in the closing moments of the Don Frye fight back in 2002. His celebrity is so persuasive that he can maintain employment. Getting Ken Shamrock on a card is a linear connection to UFC 1. He’s living history -- that you can punch.
Here is what promoters continue to fail to understand about longstanding attractions like Shamrock: they want to see him win. The affection the Sydney audience had for him was palpable. They were disappointed when he lost and cheered him while he mopped his wounds. At 46, this is supposed to be his victory lap: fights of minimal challenge that leave him openings for success. Did audiences pay to see Sean Connery as James Bond again in the 1980s in the hopes he’d get his ass kicked? They did not. They paid to see him shoot thugs and score Kim Basinger. If a screenwriter suggested Connery be beaten to death at the end, he would be throttled.
This is where a manager comes into the picture and tries to crystallize the situation for all parties. “We understand Ken might be attractive to your pay-per-view partners,” he might say. “We would like to participate. Unfortunately, Pedro Rizzo is not the fight for us. Is Kimo available?” Managerial aversion to certain fighters or styles is done with athletes half of Ken’s age. This business of flying blindly through a fight career is amateur hour.
But he does, at great speed. There will probably be more fights that make no sense and more opportunities to curdle. Ken’s misguided self-confidence is apparently contagious: the audience booed as he contemplated retirement. They believe in him. He believes in himself. And I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing.
He’s old, but that’s not quite it, either. You can shut him down before he takes too much damage. It’s the young guys who can hang in there for a beating you have to worry about.
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You got that on full display -- in neon colors and big, bold font -- on Saturday, when Shamrock was leg-kicked into submission by Rizzo in what was dubbed the “main event” of the evening for an Impact FC card in Sydney, Australia. Poor Rizzo essentially repeated the role of mercy killer against an outmatched, outdated name that he first performed against Dan Severn in 2000. In both cases, the stagnant athletes folded in pain after a handful of kicks to the thigh.
To call Shamrock a washout is like counting nostrils: there’s not much of a point. His best days ended in the closing moments of the Don Frye fight back in 2002. His celebrity is so persuasive that he can maintain employment. Getting Ken Shamrock on a card is a linear connection to UFC 1. He’s living history -- that you can punch.
Here is what promoters continue to fail to understand about longstanding attractions like Shamrock: they want to see him win. The affection the Sydney audience had for him was palpable. They were disappointed when he lost and cheered him while he mopped his wounds. At 46, this is supposed to be his victory lap: fights of minimal challenge that leave him openings for success. Did audiences pay to see Sean Connery as James Bond again in the 1980s in the hopes he’d get his ass kicked? They did not. They paid to see him shoot thugs and score Kim Basinger. If a screenwriter suggested Connery be beaten to death at the end, he would be throttled.
This is where a manager comes into the picture and tries to crystallize the situation for all parties. “We understand Ken might be attractive to your pay-per-view partners,” he might say. “We would like to participate. Unfortunately, Pedro Rizzo is not the fight for us. Is Kimo available?” Managerial aversion to certain fighters or styles is done with athletes half of Ken’s age. This business of flying blindly through a fight career is amateur hour.
But he does, at great speed. There will probably be more fights that make no sense and more opportunities to curdle. Ken’s misguided self-confidence is apparently contagious: the audience booed as he contemplated retirement. They believe in him. He believes in himself. And I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing.
