Royce would be an interesting fight but it depends on which Tank you get. UFC 11 300 lb Tank with no cardio and no preparation, Royce stands a better chance. But a slimmer, more motivated Tank like the guy who lost to Frye or beat Duarte stands a better chance. It really just depends on whether Tank could avoid compromising positions and was able to inflict damage.
Don Frye & Dan Severn talk about who would've won if Royce Gracie had fought Tank Abbott in the UFC?
To put in my 2 cents, I would put Royce as the winner but it wouldâve been a very risky fight that Rorian would have never let happen.
Tank had nasty KO power that wouldâve been lights out on Royce had it connected. But Royceâs sloppy double leg and clinch-up were also more than enough for a guy like Tank in those days.
You really believe Tank had no cardio or training. You can look at old Frye and Severn interviews where thay point out how he w as training grappling and wrestling paid for by the UFC. Don points out that he was onroids benching 600lbs as easily as he did and people believe he wasnt training? Go look it up for yourself.
Frye was a bad dude back in the day.
Great thread
Lots of good points made
[quote=âAttractiveSofa, post:100, topic:3725045, full:trueâ]
Nothing you wrote refuted my point. All I see is an inflammatory response that resembles trolling.
How about you tell us how this overrating Tank in any way: âTank was known as a guy with scary KO power, ferocity, defensive wrestling, and a limited gas tank.â If that was his expectations, and he lived up to them, heâs not overrated.
And who here is claiming Tank had a great record? What made him dangerous wasnât his record. Further, plenty of big guys fell to leg kicks in the early days of MMA (Severn, Abbott, Varlens, etc.), so thatâs hardly proof of much other than the effectiveness of leg kicks against an opponent who doesnât train to defend them.
Iâm giving you a chance to prove youâre not just a troll. 
Im not here to refute your point. You jumped in the middle of a discussion that was already going on and are surprised that i dont get caught up responding to your comments about mer personally. You are welcome to join the discussion but im not going to let you get ne off point with trolling and red herrings. 
I said he was overrated.
You made your comment about him.
Now you ask me how your comment was overrating him. I was replyimg to your comment. YOU were replying to MINE. This is madness. Lol
Troll confirmed.
Ive said many times before that im a troll. 6oure behind as usual. Now go away and let me troll.
Looks like a bad matchup for Kimo. He has no ko power, cant take Tank down, cant beat him in stadup. Tank is bigger and stronger with Ko power and defensive wrestling. That bjj stuff isnt going to work on a brawler that big and strong who can wrestle. RIP Kimo.
2 Likes
In UFC 11 he didnât. He even said so and was right around 300 lbs instead of the usual 260ish. He basically ran out of gas midway through the fight with Ferrozzo and that was why he lost. When he was in shape and prepared he tended to perform better.
The Tank that showed up against Hugo Duarte at UFC Brazil would be a scary opponent for almost anybody in any generation. Tank didnât take training as seriously as he should have, (most of the time), but that night he proved that if he showed up in any semblance of shape, he was dangerous. That was the only fight that he ever bothered to get into a fighting shape for, however. Interestingly, he gave Maurice Smith a lot of problems, and had his cardio not been absolutely horrendous in that fight, he may have pulled off what would have been considered a huge upset at that time. Smithâs cardio, on the other hand, was fantastic in that fight, he looked like he could go hard all night if he had to, probably the best conditioning we ever saw from him.
Anyways, Tank was a better fighter than he probably gets credit for, and if he had not been such a lunkhead, and tethered to his bar-brawler image/mentality, I think he could have seen a lot more success. Even with his faults he should have two tournament wins to his credit. Both Oleg Taktarov, and Don Frye had to cheat to get their wins against him, Oleg by colluding with Anthony Macias (whom Macias has gone on record admitting), and Frye by colluding with Mark Hall (who also has stated that Frye/Buddy Albin insisted that he do it.)
Royce had a difficult time with Keith Hackney and had Hackney not dove down into Royceâs guard he would have won that fight Royce couldnât get him down. Hackney was nowhere near as powerful or as good a wrestler as Tank either.
Oleg wasnât in on that. You can see after the match he was mean mugging Macias the whole time. He had trained with him and knew he shouldnât have tapped that quickly. Oleg was pissed.
Thatâs a good point. Had Hackney stuck to his game plan (where he showed some great sprawlânâbrawl he probably would have won. Royce was having a lot of trouble with him.
Ok. I found the quote. Taktarov might be innocent when it comes to knowing what happened, but Buddy Albin was not. Also, I donât believe for a 2nd that Don Frye didnât put pressure on Mark Hall (with Buddy Albin) to take a dive, which you can see during the post-match interview where he heaps tons of false praise on Hall, calling him a great fighter, etc., etc., lol.
Here is the quote from Macias, taken from one of William Colosimoâs interviews:
WC : Let me run this rumor by you and see how accurate it is. David âTankâ Abbott had won his semi-final fight, so he was going to the finals. Buddy thought Oleg would have the best chance in the finals, and wanted him to go in fresh- so you were threatened by Buddy Albin that if you didnât let Oleg win, you were done in NHB. Is that accurate?
AM: Yeah, pretty much, dude (laughter). You know- pretty much.
WC: So, Iâm assuming he probably wasnât your manager after that fight.
AM: Thatâs correct (laughter).
WC : When Albin told you that you had to lose to Oleg- can you tell me was anyone else in the room at that time?
AM: No, that was me and Buddy in the bathroom.
WC: Now how did that go down? Did he call you in there, and you could kind of tell something was up?
AM: I was already in there. He came in, and it was just one of those⌠Oleg was supposed to win UFC 5, is what he said to me. He said, âWeâve got a lot of money invested in this, and if you fight him- then youâll never fight for me or anywhere else again.â It wasnât that word for word, but thatâs basically what the conversation was.
WC: Then after that UFC, did you have any opportunity to talk- not through Buddy- to the actual UFC brass?
AM: Iâve sent them some correspondence, but Iâve never received anything back.
WC : Okay.
AM: Buddy had me on some ten year contract shit, I donât know what it was. It was some sixty-forty (laughter)- I get sixty, he gets forty, ten years, all that. SoâŚ
WC: Is that something you signed when you were 14 or so years old?
AM: (Laughter) Well, I was young. I wasnât that young, but I was probably 19 or 20.
WC: And that covered not only your kickboxing, but also your NHB fights too?
AM: No, oh- he penciled that in (laughter).
WC : (Laughter) Holy shit, didnât even use a pen. So then after-
AM: Well no, he penciled it in and then he copied it- so it looked like a pen (laughter).
WC: (Laughter) He doesnât sound like he was too much on the up and up with you.
AM: You know, I did a couple more things with him after that. The IFC- I did an IFC tournament with him, John Lober was in that. Yeah, I did a couple things with him.
Hackney said he got tired thatâs why he couldnât finish Royce, but he may have been the first sprawl-n-brawler.
I love hownprople bring up Royceâs wins as 3vidwnce he would lose. âSee? He was losing the whole fight and got lucky! If they fought again he would lose. This was a flukeâŚâ LOL! Youre provinig my point for me.
1 Like
I think Royce would have finished Tank much sooner than he did Hackney. Tank was slow and had ineffective striking while inside someoneâs guard.
Hugoâs fight iq was awful in that fight. Had he maintained position instead of going for an arm he couldâve won. But, thatâs how shit goesâŚ
1 Like