Originally Posted by
slacker00
Shamrock was kinda like Royce Gracie, a top dog in the sport once upon a time. But the sport evolved and these guys couldn't/wouldn't/didn't evolve with it. I've been watching the fights from the very early days all the way to the modern era, and it's just mind blowing how the sport has changed. I can't really blame the guys, because it's a completely different game, now. It's like comparing vacuum tube technology from 100 years ago with today's solid state electronics. It's no wonder these guys are now artifacts.
Back in the day, anyone who had a clue about submission fighting had a HUGE leg up. Some of these fights, if it gets to the ground, they are helpless turtles laying on their backs. That's why the Royce dominated. Ken Shamrock knew enough about submission fighting to not get caught, and could catch unwary opponents is fairly obvious stuff if they were completely clueless. Otherwise Shamrock would rely on plain old wrestling and strength, basically brawling. I guess it worked for him to a point, but today's fighter needs to be more than a brawler than knows enough about submission to just get by. This is why the Lion's den eventually couldn't turn out top tier fighters anymore, they focussed on strength, but largely ignored the technical aspect of fighting that is critical to today's modern fighters.
Another knock on Shamrock is that he went into pro wrestling for a while. Maybe he got a payday that he couldn't get in MMA, who knows? But that hurt his MMA career as well as the camp that he started, the Lion's Den. His fans even turned on him, calling him a sellout. Shamrock probably deserves the way his MMA career disintegrated, whereas guys like Couture kept working to hone his craft, Shamrock fell off the map, and then tried to make a comeback but could never quite catch back up to the modern game.