Ken Shamrock joins us now hello there
Ken welcome to Inside MMA my man you two know each other very well close friends. In fact didn't you
try to get Bas involved in the first UFC as well when you guys talked about
it in Japan? Oh yeah well when I first told my Bas about it he goes "what?" so yeah you know there's no referee
nobody's gonna stop it if a guys unconscious you keep hitting me he's going "yeah i don't think so" It's not the smartest thing because I know there's always guys who are either insecure or they want to look cool they
knock you out and then they give you like ten more hits and I go that that's
not healthy i need a referee once the referee came I'm like okay now
I want to do it i told him i said well if you're
unconscious you don't feel it anyways you were the one of the eight
fighters that actually, you were a ringer you had prior MMA-esque fighting experience Pancrase style rules the rest of them they were all came from their
disciplines and that was it you were pretty confident going into
that tournament yeah overconfident I felt like ground skills you know I had
over a year and a half and experience to about two years of experience and I felt
going into that that I'd fought people from all over the world over in Japan
and I was on top over there and I felt like well now i'm going to get some
karate guys guys wearing gis and pajamas and all these other things and once I got in there I felt really
confident when I saw the people there i saw Royce Gracie and I was like this guy
walks around he's got this gi on it looks like pajamas and I was like I'm
going to crush these guys and I went in there and I got Pat Smith who was
supposed to be one of the favorites and then Royce and whole story behind that
one but he catches me with choke and I remember sitting there and
thinking to myself you idiot I was not even prepared
for that cuz I didn't think it was going to happen I mean you don't think the entire event
was going to go? At all because it was no holds barred anything goes and so in my
mind I'm thinking okay they're going to come up to us in the locker room and they're gonna go okay this is how it's going to work and I don't want any part of that right then
I wanted to do what I was in Japan I love the hardstyle and so I went ahead with it thinking well we'll see what happens I went over to japan three days prior to
the UFC I fought I defended my title I won I flew out with Funaki and and Foque
and the just a trainer there and we flew to denver three days before the event in
my mind going this ain't gonna happen you know they're going to come to us and
tell us how it works all the way up until the fight actually
happened and I think the best fight that could have set the standard for UFC and
what people would see today because then it was no holds barred not in MMA it was
no holds barred was a manual to a i believe is Teila Tuli and GERARD GORDEAU Gordeau football kicks him in the face
when he goes down you get some with the right hand he goes to the ground all
fours Gerard walks up and boots him right in
the face while he's on the ground teeth go flying in the front row I mean Wallace is in there Kathy long
Jim Brown and if it was about half full in the stadium of people were screaming
and yelling and that went quiet and I remember even in the locker room guys get pageant you know all that testosterone is going in there and and and people
screaming yellow also we have monitors in there and it stopped liking it felt
like 10 seconds but it was a split second where people just like he just
kicked him in the face he teaches the first words that came up
on the market was all my god his teeth came flying in the front row at the foot
of people from that point on you could not deny what this new sport
was our new event was it was real before that was Bruce Lee movies the catwalk
sir john claude van damme I mean people don't realize that prior to nineteen
ninety-three was a totally different perspective yeah but what happened with the fight
was nobody but wanted to turn around today going ok you know what I had
inside up for it is well actually you signed up yeah right LOL was just like
myself where he just didn't believe it because you only saw it on TV and indeed
there is nothing in the world during that time that that even look anything
like that except for a street fight yep and so when it happened i think
especially the guys in the locker room who were athletes and fighters
themselves hadn't seen anything like this but in movies so their first thought was like I did
whoa whoa wait a minute that this is not what I signed up for and I remember hearing somebody say that
I go no this is exactly what we signed up for we just didn't think it was gonna
happen yeah he went to you or to use of course
helped usher in the modern boom of of MMA popularity the UFC you at 52 still
as of this past februari was still fighting in Bellator unfortunately with
the with the there's growing pains in every sport and here we are 23 years in
the morning let's go get fit but you see what where they sold the kind of 2001
and now it's evaluated it into the billions but jon jones were on the eve
of UFC 200 the biggest event in UFC history and he gets popped for a
positive drug test can you you've tested positive twice
what is there a problem here in the sport I mean I know there's a problem
why Wow listen I I think it's pretty clear
that people I've taken a stance on and my stance has always been upfront that
this needs to be regulated it needs to be a up the point where guys can use it
at a safe level because it does help it does help in your health and it does
help in your recovery I just don't see how they're going to
stop something that they've allowed to happen for so long and I think my
biggest my biggest anger with this is that it seems like everybody wants you
to believe that their heads was stuck in the sand when all this was going on and
then when something like this happens all their heads pop up out of the sand
and go oh my gosh I can't believe that happened how dare you you're such a bad person
I'm so angry at you and the reality of it is is that
everybody knows it's going on in almost every sport across the United States yeah but you have to do is like going to
be zero tolerance so can we were not hitting baseballs are kicking soccer
balls or you you're punching another human being a hero zero tolerance is the
key word yeah and it looks like they're getting
there now with positive especially keyword yeah that's the problem there is ZERO
tolerance even in today's standard will we sit
right now with everything that has gone and we see Dana White on there saying
that's you know it's unacceptable we're not gonna allow this to happen 42 sitting up there saying yeah we were
you know I just hope these younger guys understand that that we're not going to
tolerate it in that you know this they are going to have to understand
when they get in UFC that it's not going to happen anymore because the testing is
going to they're going to get caught and then you turn around with tonight's
fighter tomorrow night's fight with the waves and everything and you bypass
Brock Lesnar from testing so what message are we sending it he was just so
what message are we sending everybody yeah ok so what message are we sending
everybody yeah yeah
