American Football Destroys Kung Fu!

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A few weeks ago, I was indulging my love of 90s MMA by watching Pedro Rizzo's pre-UFC fights. Rizzo was my favorite fighter as a kid, and most of his early matches occurred in a long-defunct Brazilian promotion called World Vale Tudo Championship. In his last appearance for WVC in 1997, Rizzo had a superfight against Richard Heard.

Now, if you look at Heard’s record, you might assume he was a solid mixed martial artist. He has a record of 5-1, all victories by submission, and the lone loss to an all-time great in Rizzo. Hell, even Rizzo required over 13 minutes to defeat him, so even there, Heard presumably held his own. And yet, watching him compete, a realization dawned on me: Heard couldn’t fight at all.

That’s not meant to be an insult or exaggeration. He legitimately had no clue how to properly fight. His punches were wild overhand slaps. His idea of wrestling was to push his opponent into the ropes with outstretched arms. Most ridiculous was his clinch technique, where his legs were far away from the opponent’s, and he bent over at his waist, arms grasping outwards to hold his foe, just begging to be blasted with knees, which Rizzo happily obliged. But don't take my word for it; watch the battle for yourself:



How had Heard gone 5-0 before this? Simple, actually. He came from a professional football background, and at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, was a big, strong and very tough guy. Believe it or not, simply being a big, strong, tough man, even in the absence of any fighting skills whatsoever, was enough to have a certain degree of success in MMA back then—not enough to beat the very few fighters who could competently fight, like Rizzo, but more than enough to have success against almost everyone else. Including all the “traditional” martial artists who specialized in kung fu, taekwondo, ninjutsu, Japanese jiu-jitsu, aikido and yes, even karate. In fact, big, strong guys with very limited or nonexistent fighting backgrounds did vastly better in the sport than any traditional martial artist did. Before we get into the simple reason for their success, here are two further examples who were even more famous and successful than Heard in the sport.

Paul Varelans

“The Polar Bear” was one of my favorite characters of old-school MMA. A 6-foot-8, 350-pound behemoth, he had also played American football, just like Heard. His formal fighting background consisted of a single year of high school wrestling. That's certainly better than nothing, but it's still very little. After all, Tom Cruise had at least two years of varsity wrestling, which makes him a martial arts master by comparison. Varelans was also billed as a practitioner of “Trapfighting,” which was something he had done for a few months, and largely involved him preparing with a few friends for his UFC debut in 1995. Back then, fighters were billed as masters of a style, and “Trapfighting” sounded better than “Big Meathead We Pulled off the Street.”

Granted, Varelans lost many fights to the best fighters of his day. He was viciously mauled by Mark Kerr, brutalized with punches and kicks by Igor Vovchanchyn, who was a foot shorter and 130 pounds lighter, finished with leg kicks by Marco Ruas (amusingly, Rizzo's coach and mentor), ragdolled and submitted by Dan Severn in under two minutes, and even knocked silly by Tank Abbott, also in under two minutes. Yet against opponents who weren't legitimately skilled, and especially representatives of the traditional martial arts, Varelans was an absolute terror. Whether employing his tremendous height in the clinch or using his massive size and limited wrestling abilities to take an opponent down and get on top, Varelans would finish them with his crushing downwards elbows to the back of the head. This is illegal nowadays for no less than two infractions, but back then, it was permitted and caused many of Varelans' victims to either give up or be saved by a referee. Cal Worsham, Mark Hall and Gerry Harris, all traditional martial artists, felt the fury of those elbows at UFC 6 and 7, each being dismantled in a little over a minute. To Varelans' credit, he even defeated a practitioner of a truly useful martial art. Joe Moreira, an eighth-degree red belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (one of the highest ranks in history) and a third-degree black belt in judo, nevertheless dropped a close decision to Varelans at UFC 8. “The Polar Bear” finished with a respectable 4-4 record in the Octagon. Not bad for a guy who barely knew how to fight.

Gary Goodridge

Yes, Goodridge, an MMA pioneer with many big wins over famous, even great opponents, was basically just a big, strong guy when he began MMA. In interviews he mentioned boxing a little in his teens, not even enough to have an amateur record, and that was essentially it. UFC co-founder Art Davie became interested in Goodridge because of his success in a different sport altogether: arm wrestling. Goodridge was a many-time world champion in arm wrestling by the mid-90s, known for a lightning-quick “hit,” and to this day is cited as one of the greatest ever, with wins over arm-wrestling GOAT John Brzenk. Apparently, Davie had reservations about billing Goodridge as an expert in the fearsome art of arm wrestling, so Goodridge spent about two weeks going to a Kuk Sool Won school in Canada where, to promote the Korean martial art, he was gifted a black belt. (Incidentally, Davie would go on to found the bizarre hybrid kickboxing/arm wrestling league XARM, so perhaps Goodridge convinced him of the potential of arm wrestling as a skill base for fighting.)

So Goodridge, being little more than a brutally strong 6-foot-3, 260-pound man with world-class grip strength and some boxing in his teens entered the UFC and immediately had success with a legendary knockout from the crucifix position of hapless Paul Herrera. He followed that up by knocking out the massively smaller, but plenty skilled Jerry Bohlander, whom I've written about before. It took a very skilled opponent indeed, Don Frye, to finally expose that Goodridge had no real fighting background.

To be perfectly clear, while Goodridge lacked fighting skills prior to his MMA debut, he instantly went to work correcting that minor flaw. Goodridge began seriously training in kickboxing and grappling, and had a natural aptitude for both. Knockouts of Don Frye, Oleg Taktarov, Dan Bobish, Valentijn Overeem and Andre Roberts, among other triumphs, attest to that.

So why did big, strong, tough guys with little to no fighting skills have so much success in the 90s? Simply put, hardly anyone knew how to fight then, in any aspect of MMA. The traditional martial artists of that time period sure didn't. And in a battle between two men who don't know how to fight, guess who wins? The bigger, stronger, and tougher one. So the next time you hear about how awesome kung fu and taekwondo are, give that person a knowing grin and say, “Yeah? Well, the deadly style of American football easily crushes them!”