4) Kevin Randleman (Pictures)
He did, though it’s telling that his lone win during that run was against Mirko Filipovic (Pictures). That’s Randleman, one of the most maddeningly inconsistent athletes to ever hop over the ropes. Ask a mad scientist to craft the perfect physical specimen and out he’d pop, a mass of fast-twitch muscle fibers and body-smashing girth. On paper, nobody should be able to stop this man’s takedown and subsequent rampage. In reality, nobody can — except Randleman himself.
Cornerman and friend Mark Coleman (Pictures) has assessed his fighter’s handicap on multiple occasions: he simply doesn’t listen. Randleman will abandon game plans and common sense in order to slug it out or feed the intensity of the moment. He refuses to fight his fight. He refuses to garner a more complete understanding of the game. As such, he’s refusing a spot as one of the greats.
3) Frank Shamrock (Pictures)
To make a decent living as a fighter, you need one of two things: ability or personality. If you’re able-bodied in the ring, you’ll endear yourself to the crowd. If you post a .500 record but can talk a good game, you’ll endear yourself the crowd.
If you can do both, you’ll be a star.
Frank Shamrock (Pictures) could do both.
His run as the UFC’s light heavyweight champion was an amalgam of charisma and formidable, violent in-ring ability. He smashed Igor Zinoviev to unify the UFC and Extreme Fighting titles; he gave rapid-fire submission lessons to Olympian Kevin Jackson and (in a grappling event) Dan Henderson (Pictures). And most notably, he weathered the assault of Tito Ortiz (Pictures) in one of the best fights no one has ever seen.
Watching his performance against Ortiz in late 1999, with a small but vocal crowd erupting at the sound of his name, I thought that Shamrock had finally broken through as one of the new marquee stars in the sport. But where I saw a beginning, Shamrock himself had seen the end. He competed only sporadically after that, despite incessant promises to the contrary.
Some hypothesize that the Ortiz fight coupled with his years in Pancrase had ravaged his body, making it impossible to hold up to training and active competition. Frank himself declared that he had accomplished all he wanted to. Whatever the case, we seem to have been robbed of one of the sport’s greats in his prime.
2) Rickson Gracie
Rickson Gracie rarely grants interviews. (Lord knows I’ve tried.) Rickson Gracie hasn’t competed in six years. Rickson Gracie is nearing 50 years old, when even the most determined of athletes find themselves slow to get out of bed.
And yet he remains the most controversial figure in the sport for exactly those same reasons.
His record is a who’s-who of mediocre competition — clueless strikers, half-blind lightweights, lumbering professional wrestlers. Couple that with his inactivity and you’d figure he would be little more than a curiosity.
But because respected athletes herald him as the most skilled practitioner in the most defied style in the game — jiu-jitsu — his mythology continues to grow. Paulo Filho (Pictures), a highly capable Brazilian Top Team middleweight, returned from a training session with Gracie and professed his amazement. Countless others have mirrored that sentiment.
And so Rickson has become the greatest “What If?” story in martial arts history, surpassing even Bruce Lee for the simple reason that he had the opportunity to prove his worth, whereas Lee did not. To believe the stories of his technical prowess is to be disappointed that he chose to remain a question mark.
Even now, stories continue to circulate about Rickson’s return. I suspect the talk is fueled more by the intense curiosity of his fans than his actual plans. But regardless of what he does in the future, his disinterest in competition during the 1990s will cement him as one of the sport’s biggest absentee athletes.
1) Kazushi Sakuraba (Pictures)
Sakuraba’s appearance on this list is probably going to prove incendiary; regardless, his is a cautionary tale of excess.
After the immensely popular Nobuhiko Takada (Pictures) proved that his shoot fighting abilities were virtually nil, PRIDE (and former owners KRS) would’ve been effectively crippled if not for the emergence of Sakuraba. From his amazing grappling displays against Allan Goes and Carlos Newton (Pictures) to his legendary feud with the Gracie family, Sakuraba was a promoter’s dream: a technical prodigy and master entertainer in one package.
The bottom began to fall out when DSE, either in tandem with Sakuraba or acting independently, insisted on pairing him in bouts that ignored his physical limitations. A natural middleweight, he was brutalized in a mind-numbing three bouts with Wanderlei Silva (Pictures); had his face broken against world-class heavyweight kickboxer Mirko Filipovic (Pictures); and suffered further torment at the hands of Ricardo Arona (Pictures).
Collectively, these bouts probably took three years off of Sakuraba’s prime. In an era where fighters strain to retain every ounce of size in order to level the playing field, Sakuraba marched into a ring where he was unable to overcome the size differential. Considering PRIDE’s recent support of its Bushido series and a new 183-pound division, they appear to finally be cognizant of the problem.
Too little, too late, however. Sakuraba is now under the employ of K-1, and one can only hope he’ll be invested in competitive matches. While his career has been impressive, it’s easy to imagine the greatness he could’ve achieved if promoters had been more sporting.
For comments, email jrossen@sherdog.com.