Frank Shamrock saw Kazushi Sakuraba as a kindred spirit. |Photo: Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
Shamrock’s greatness is sometimes undervalued, partly because it isovershadowed by the longstanding beef with his brother and partlybecause he did much of his best work during the UFC’s darkest days.Make no mistake, a fight between Shamrock, who had a memorabletwo-year reign as UFC champion from 1997 to 1999, and Sakuraba, whowas arguably the greatest MMA talent to ever come out of Japan,would have been epic in both fighters’ heydays.
There is little doubt that Shamrock would have taken great pleasurein succeeding where his older brother failed. In 2005,
Ken Shamrockfell to Sakuraba via controversial technical knockout stoppage.Frank, of course, saw nothing wrong with the ruling.
“If you’re sleeping with your head through the second rope, you’rein a bad way,” Frank said during an interview with Sherdog.com. “Hegot clocked. He went down. According to the rules, he was no longerdefending himself and that’s the end of the fight.”
It would have been interesting to see how a well-rounded Frankcould have handled the quick single-leg and gas tank of Sakuraba,particularly in their prime years from 1997-2000. Shamrock alwaysfelt that Sakuraba was a kindred spirit in the fight game.
“Well, we had the same teacher. We have the same lineage. My thingat my height of learning was that I really wanted to kind of findmy style of fighting and develop it,” Shamrock toldFiveOuncesofPain.com in 2010. “He was the only other guy that hadthe same lineage of teachers and training and experience that Idid. I felt like we were destined to meet; we just never did.”
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