9. Don Frye
The UFC's second and last “triple crown winner,” Frye makes his first Sherdog Top 10 list, finishing ninth. Personally, I had him fourth and think he is a largely underrated figure these days. “The Predator” was a little snakebitten because of his size; he wrestled in college between 160 and 170 pounds and even once he got into MMA, was only 210 pounds in his prime, smaller than even Vovchanchyn. And yet, he was the first good wrestler in MMA history who also possessed effective striking. This was a huge development for the sport and Frye was the very first to do it, preceding Randy Couture.
Frye went a nearly perfect 11-1 during the 90s and became the second triple crown winner after Dan Severn, as he won the UFC 8 tournament, a UFC 9 superfight and the second “Ultimate Ultimate” in 1996, a tournament composed of winners and runners-up of previous tourneys. Frye's biggest wins were a stoppage of a debuting and at that point thoroughly exhausted Gary Goodridge at the UFC 8 tournament, destroying BJJ ace Amaury Bitetti with his boxing in the UFC 9 superfight, prompting a stoppage after 9 minutes of carnage, a second, more definitive victory over a better version of Goodridge in the first round of the Ultimate Ultimate 1996, and finally, an old-school classic against the best version of David Abbott in the finals of that same event, where Abbott had Frye nearly knocked out with strikes early, but Frye recovered, took him down, and choked him out. The latter affair took just 82 seconds but was thrilling the whole way through. Frye's only loss in the 90s came against Mark Coleman, whom we will discuss later, in a gritty affair in the final of UFC 10. It turned out that good wrestling and decent striking can be surpassed by great wrestling, size—Coleman was 245 pounds that night—and devastating ground-and-pound, which was aided by headbutts being legal at the time. Sadly, after Frye won the Ultimate Ultimate in December of 1996, he disappeared from MMA for the rest of the decade, getting involved in pro wrestling. To me, this is one of the big what-ifs of MMA history. Frye had just turned 31 years old and was steadily improving as a mixed martial artist. What if he hadn't disappeared for five years and instead kept upgrading his skills and facing other top guys of the 90s? Sadly, we will never know, but he deserves recognition for his tremendous success and evolving the sport.
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