Frank Shamrock has been on the ground floor of several new MMA companies, so it’s nothing new for him to be headlining on the debut of the latest, and perhaps most significant, opposition to the UFC’s throne when the revamped Strikeforce debuts on Showtime in April, building to the company’s CBS debut later in the year.
Shamrock, 36, is in the main event of the first card on April 11 in San Jose against Nick Diaz. It’s just the latest in firsts for Shamrock:
In his 1994 MMA debut, he was part of a 16-man tournament in Japan to crown the first major promotion world champion in the sport – the original King of Pancrase tournament, won by adopted older brother and original trainer, Ken Shamrock. Frank defeated Bas Rutten via decision in his first pro fight before losing in the second round of the tournament to Manabu Yamada.
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In 1997, he was in the first legitimate main event match in RINGS, which up to that point had been a pro wrestling promotion, winning a decision over Tsuyoshi Kosaka, at the time one of the best heavyweights in the world.
Three months later, he became the first weight-class champion in UFC history, winning the middleweight (now known as light heavyweight) championship, beating former Olympic gold medalist Kevin Jackson in 14 seconds with an armbar.
In 2006, on the debut of the Strikeforce MMA promotion, and the first major show held in the state of California, he was in the main event, knocking out Cesar Gracie in 21 seconds.
The next year, he was on the debut of MMA on premium cable, the first show of Elite XC on Showtime, losing via disqualification for an illegal knee to the back of the head against Renzo Gracie. He was also the catalyst as headliner later that year for the first major joint promotional effort, the combined Elite XC and Strikeforce show in San Jose, when he defeated Phil Baroni.
All of those companies had a heyday, but RINGS hasn’t existed for years and IFL and Elite XC only lasted a few years. Pancrase still exists, but hasn’t been a major MMA promotion in a decade.
He’s seen a lifetime of business failure – including stock in the IFL and Elite XC that at one point was worth millions on paper before the companies imploded – in a sport that until recent years, he wasn’t even sure would even make it. But he’s confident Strikeforce will avoid the mistakes that saw UFC lose millions before it turned its fortunes around in 2005, and killed most of the pretender companies.
“From day one I knew Pro Elite didn’t know what they were doing,” he said. “They were making the same mistakes that Dana (White) made when he first got the UFC. They didn’t have anyone who knew martial arts.
“The IFL, they came along with a concept (the teams idea) but they weren’t ready for television, and television wasn’t ready for them. “They did all the things television people told them to do. They hired the pretty girl (to be the co-host of the TV show), they made music videos. It didn’t work, and they had people who had worked for UFC and had seen what didn’t work when UFC tried the same thing.
“When I started in UFC (the original version in late 1997), they were already in the grave and I was trying to keep the dirt off,” he said.
“Bob (original owner Bob Meyrowitz) made a lot of mistakes. He treated the talent good but didn’t understand the grave situation he had gotten himself into. By the time he embraced that he had to change (no longer market it as a freak show and needed athletic commissions to accept it as a sport), it was too late. Bob was proud, and a little bit arrogant and it came back to haunt him.
“With Strikeforce, we didn’t have the capitalization to take advantage of our initial success. We really expected 10,000 people at our first show (March 10, 2006 in San Jose’s HP Pavilion). We ended up with 18,000 and turned away several thousand. It was a lot of things. The first show in California. MMA was just hitting it big. The Shamrock vs. Gracie names in the main event. But getting capitalized was a challenge.”
Shamrock even believes that in the long haul, Strikeforce, with CBS clearances, has an advantage over UFC, because UFC’s television platform is the basic-cable Spike TV.
He noted that with more eyeballs watching they have a bigger platform to create stars more quickly, and he believes the UFC’s monthly $45 pay-per-view concept won’t last forever.
Shamrock feels the difference between those who failed at a national level is that Scott Coker has 20 years experience in promotion, originally with kickboxing, and has been around the martial arts scene his whole life.
The companies that failed were either run by fans who didn’t understand promoting, or promoters who had no experience in martial arts and didn’t know the sport.
“With Showtime and CBS, the technology, money and distribution are all there,” he said.
The question is, even if the foundation to be a viable long-term second major U.S. promotion is in place, did it come in time for Shamrock?
“In my mind, I’ve got nine years left,” he said. “I want retire at 45 and have a 24-year-career. I feel I can do it.”
But with the singular exception of Randy Couture, the plight of past-40 MMA fighters has not been pretty. Shamrock is coming off a broken arm in a loss to Cung Le in his last fight a year ago. He’s taking a risk in fighting with a plate still in his arm, saying that he’s been to seven doctors, and they are mixed on whether he should get the plate removed before fighting, with the risk being if the arm breaks again, the plates could sever a tendon. And the training injuries are coming more frequently now than when he was younger, causing him to have to constantly work around them.
He’s also abandoning a long-held concept for a match that he thinks would capture the public’s imagination more than even that of a usual big fight, and taking on a new approach.
For years, he proposed “Blood Brothers,” his idea for a pay-per-view fight against his brother, Ken Shamrock. He figured if the story of both of their lives and careers were told it could be a match that would capture the imagination of people who weren’t necessarily even fans of the sport. Promoter Gary Shaw of Elite XC was a major proponent of the idea, and had talked of it being the main event for the company’s first pay-per-view show. But the company burned through money so fast it never got there.
Frank Shamrock said he spent over $100,000 trying to put it together and worked on it for a couple of years but is now resigned to the fact that it’s not going to happen, much to the chagrin of Ken.
“Ken held CBS up (for more money) the day before the Kimbo fight,” Frank Shamrock said, noting that when Ken Shamrock’s name has been brought up with anyone from Showtime or CBS the past few months, it elicits a very cold response saying they have no interest.
His new idea is to venture into pro boxing and fight a big-name pro boxer, doing another first, as the first major name in MMA to face a major name pro boxer. He’s even thrown out the name Antonio Tarver as his desired opponent.
On the surface, it sounds like suicide for someone who has never had a pro boxing match to face an experienced star under that person’s rules.
Even though boxing is a part of MMA, and virtually all fighters train as boxers, the sports are entirely different. Shamrock believes the first such match could draw huge curiosity from fans of both sports, and perhaps even the general public, which would make the difference between normal and huge business.
It’s one of the reasons Anderson Silva has talked of doing a match with Roy Jones, Jr. While there are no guarantees, the first meeting of this type as a gimmick with big enough names and good enough hype has a shot of doing big numbers. But it’s clearly a novelty and getting there second would be too late.
“It’s always been a dream of mine,” he said. “I came to a realization in 1999 of how important striking was going to become in this sport because it’s the most efficient way to finish a fight. Almost all of my training in the last ten years has been in boxing and kickboxing.”
