Ken got good fast. He was a natural. He was also abnormally strong, which helped him a lot.
Keep in mind that the first time Ken trained with Funaki, it was after he had rolled with 2 Young Boys and Suzuki.
Suzuki worked him over too, but Ken said Funaki was better.
I’m not saying Ken could have beat Funaki day one.
But once he got the hang of things, he was definitely in his element over there.
Maybe.
As with Ken, I think Funaki could have beaten Royce with a dedication to the right gameplan.
But they didn’t have anything to base it on.
Once on the ground, neither of them had the experience to counter what Royce was doing.
Their groundwork wasn’t as smooth as Royce’s, but they weren’t out of water there either. These guys had the same lineage as Sakuraba did.
I’ve heard that the catch guys were aware of the Gracie’s, but I don’t know that for certain.
My thought is that the slickness and polish of Funaki or Suzuki would have matched better with Royce. Better than the raw horsepower coupled with rough technique Ken brought to the table at that point in November 93.
I’m just guessing though. I love both the Gracie’s and the catch guys from Japan. Maybe I’m being a bit of hipster hoping Funaki would beat him.
Either way, it’s been fun discussing this stuff with you.
They were used to a lot more space, and more transition.
Royce was going to wrap you up and use his gi for traction and as kind of a third hand.
But I really think it’s also down to gameplan.
Royce had the advantage of not really needing to know what his opponents might do for GJJ to be effective.
On the other hand, anyone would have needed to know what Royce was going to in order to hope to avoid it.
I don’t know…maybe.
It would have been nice to see those guys in the early UFCs for sure.
Keep in mind that a lot of the “hazing” of Young Boys is something Ken brought from Japan – and his senior LD students in large part repeated that treatment to new students coming in.
There was no precedent for an actual modern MMA school, and Ken had the first in the States.
His goal was to make the training a lot tougher than the fight, so when his students got in the ring or cage they would have nothing to fear.
And it did work for a time, because his LD students started off very successful.
It just wasn’t sustainable long-term.
I’m not necessarily defending Ken here.
He definitely had some rage incidents that went over the line – his personal life was a train wreck – and he had a screw loose for sure.
The rules change regularly but Karelin was bodying everyone under every rule set. Only after they made a rule about a point when your grip breaks in the over under against the Rulon with a back a mile wide covered in sweat did Karelin “lose”
Haven’t read the newest one, Vernon and Tony Galindo, on the lights out podcast, had stories about Ken becoming more and more crazy with time and injuring training partners and students, he used the Japanese model of training but took it to another level from my understanding, he divorced his wife and remarried some trashy woman and this added to the stress and was around the time he was in pride, I’m going to get that book
Why is she necessarily trashy?
IIRC she was a childhood friend and they had always had something together but the timing was never right.
This wasn’t the WWF girl.
His first wife was fucking around too.
Yeah he probably did first…but 2 wrongs and all.
I highly recommend the 3rd book.
It’s just a fun read.
Really puts things in perspective too.
Vernon and Tony said she was sleeping around and Ken thought it was one of them, not sure who it was, whoever he was with around the time of the fujita fight
Apparently Ken was beating the fuck out of Vernon and Tony behind a bar.
Crazy story.
Also a story about Ken putting such a beating on Oleg in training, that Oleg locked himself in the bathroom crying for like an hour.
Also that Ken was coming down off ecstasy when he fought Oleg.
Crazy shit.
I’ve done a lot of fucked up things in my life – and I know from experience that a hard partying lifestyle leads to a lot of very “colorful” incidents.
If I was the measure of my worst moments – I wouldn’t deserve the beautiful family that I have.
But I’m not.
I’m a flawed human and have seen some very bad lows, but those also helped shape who I became later, and for the better.
I’m not really comparing myself to Ken…but he himself has done a lot of soul searching in recent years.
Just saying.
The Shamrock story is a glimpse into some extremes of the human experience.
Like him or not… It is very interesting.
The sense I’ve always gotten from Ken is that he did some insane things, but he wasn’t malicious. I’d love to read his books. Between that and Drysdale I have some reading to do
Honestly I don’t. Maybe 2005/2006. Somewhere around then would be my guess. It was in San Diego but I don’t know shit about San Diego and didn’t drive. Vernon White beat my ass!
Hmm…I think he was probably a little malicious at times.
And I think those times were colored by extreme substance abuse.
There is a very self destructive balance that can be lived between hard training and hard partying.
It’s amazing to me that Ken achieved what he did as a fighter – considering the life he led.
It’s like a Mickey Rourke movie.
Brief summary of the 3 books:
Inside The Lions Den:
is kind of Disney produced “boys eye view” of Shamrock’s career up to the WWF.
There are some personal insights and information about his tumultuous childhood. Also a pretty good summery of the Nasty Boyz incident.
The instructional half was very cool for the time, but probably lacking by today’s standards.
Overall, it’s definitely the G rated version – but worth reading IMO.
Beyond The Lions Den:
Goes deeper into the Japan stuff, which I find highly interesting.
More insight into a kind of resolution of the Nasty Boyz thing, and some insight into the post WWF fights – including Fujita and Tito.
The instructional part is better produced (full color vs black and white) – but also includes a Sunset Flip to Keylock move – which I think might have been an intentional “Easter Egg”.
The World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Snowden:
This is more like a “Rated R” tell all book that pulls no punches.
It’s biographical instead of first person by Ken.
Apparently Ken called everyone and told them to be brutally honest with the interviews.
There is no instructional section.
It’s really a hard hitting look at an extreme life – that is IMO is in many ways comparable to the story of Mike Tyson.
