On This Day In MMA HistoryThe legendary Frank Shamrock 11 years ago took on Nick Diaz in the latest—and, as it turned out, last—stop on his tour of grudge matches. The 36-year-old Shamrock had come out of retirement three years before and knocked out Diaz’s mentor, Cesar Gracie, in seconds. Since then, he had fought periodically and had stayed relatively competitive in his fights, restricting himself to age-appropriate opponents such as Renzo Gracie and Phil Baroni.
In Diaz, however, Shamrock found himself faced with an opponent 11 years younger and seemingly a full era ahead of him in terms of development. Diaz thrashed Shamrock that night, showing himself to be superior in all phases. He took down Shamrock and pummeled him from mount in the first round before dropping him with a body shot in the second and finishing him with ground strikes.
From there, Diaz continued with business as usual, the Shamrock fight more or less a strange aside in his rise to contention. The drubbing of Shamrock was the fourth victory in what would become an 11-fight streak that ended with a contentious decision loss to Carlos Condit for the Ultimate Fighting Championship interim welterweight title. Meanwhile, for Shamrock, the writing was on the wall. While he publicly mulled the idea of a final fight against his adoptive stepbrother Ken Shamrock, the 47-year-old has yet to fight since.
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Also of note on that card were early career appearances by such future stars as Luke Rockhold and future Invicta Fighting Championships and UFC women’s featherweight titleholder Cristiane Justino, as well as yet another incredible come-from-behind victory by Scott Smith, who one-shotted Benji Radach in the third round of a fight in which he was being dominated.
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