Fedor vs Heath Herring - Pride 23

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21

Heath fought Nog, CroCop, and Fedor all in their prime.

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22

Yeah and once he hit PRIDE he was able to fight Erikson, Enson, Vitor, Kerr, Vovchanchyn, Goodridge and Takahashi as well.

And he later fought Lesnar, Kongo, Aliakbari, Ishii etcā€¦

Pretty incredible career he had when you consider his career started by fighting Evan Tanner twice in two months after winning his first fight. By his 6th fight he was fighting Fulton.

First time I saw him fight was in that SuperBrawl tournament where he lost to Hoffman in the semis.

Man that tournament was stacked, it had Barnett, Herring, Hoffman, Marsh, Ricco and Fulton.

Herring is certainly one of those fighters who can say he fought ā€œeveryoneā€ or a ā€œwhoā€™s whoā€ of his era.

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23

I remember a while back someone saying he was a professional poker player or something?

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Funny how he was one of my favorites back in Pride. I thought heā€™d do ok in the UFC but he got wrestled to death in his debut and destroyed by Lesnar after an eyepoke by the referee.

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He moved back to Texas and his married with 3 kids under the age of 4. He didnā€™t even train for the Lesner fight, he just wanted out of his UFC contract.

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26

Tell me youā€™re a crazy mother fucker without telling me youā€™re a crazy motherfucker. Accept a fight with prime Brock and donā€™t train.

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27

Where did you find this? I found an interview where he said he didnā€™t train for the Nog fight. And hereā€™s what he said before the Lesnar fight

ā€œObviously, given what heā€™s accomplished in his life, the guy is a terrific athlete,ā€ Herring said. ā€œBut I can do some things in there, too. There will be two of us in that cage, not just Brock. I do things that Brock really hasnā€™t seen before. I have prepared so well for this fight, and I feel like I have a whole new career thatā€™s just starting.ā€

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Next to Mirko, youā€™re :100:.

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Weā€™ve been friends for over 20 years. My friend Seth was a 3X All American heavyweight wrestler at Cal Poly, and I asked him if he wanted me to call him and bring him out to Vegas for him to train with him. He said fuck it, I donā€™t care, this is my last fight for the UFC.

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30

Thatā€™s great.

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Great fight-Fedor was a nightmare back then for any heavyweight!

It would have been crazy to see him back then against prime Cain/DC or any top 5 current UFC heavyweights!

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I talked to him on Thursday

He is in the corporate world with a bunch of young kids

Sounds great

We are hoping to record this week for his episode

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33

lol

Iā€™M NOT GAY! Iā€™m not gay

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34

Heath responded properly

First real MMA moment to truly go viral

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35

Who won that tournament?

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36

Barnett beat Hoffman by UD in the finals and that made him 8-0 and setup a fight with Severn in Superbrawl next that he won via armbar and thats when he started getting some big press at places like Full Contact Fighter.

That tournament win and then the sub over Severn then setup his UFC debut vs Gan McGee and 1 1/2 years later he beat Randy and became the youngest HW champ in UFC history and that record still stands today.

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37

People kinda think of Barnett as going from UFC to PRIDE but he actually had some fights in NJPW, Pancrase, Inoki and K-1 before debuting in PRIDE.

Interesting enough, one of his Pancrase title defenses was actually credited to him when he defended that title vs Schilt at the Inoki Bom Ba Ye show. He also had defended it before at a NJPW show.

Man, when Shooto, Pancrase, NJPW, AJP, IGF, K1 and PRIDE were all going strong thereā€¦ that was just incredible.

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