Elite XC Results - Main Event Controversy

The event's aired everywhere it's going to by now so spoiler tags are unnecessary

Tim Persey def Bo Cantrell by KO in round 1
Mike Pyle def Ross Ebanez by rear naked choke in round 1
Javier Vazquez def Adriano Pereira by split decision
James Edson Berto def John Shackelford byTKO in round 2
Riki Fukuda def Chris Gates by submission from punches in round 1
Charles Bennett def Karl James Noons by KO in round 1
Gina Carano def Julie Kedzie by unanimous decision
Joey Villasenor def David Loiseau by unanimous decision
Antonio Silva def Wesley Correira by TKO in round 1
Renzo Gracie def Frank Shamrock by DQ due to knees to the head on the ground in round 2

From what I've seen of it so far, it wasn't a bad event. A few teething problems are to be expected with a first show, but Showtime put on a decent event. Nice production values, reasonable commentary, cute circular cage, it's just a shame they put their faith in Frank Shamrock for their main event. For some reason, people still talk about this guy like he's a top-tier fighter, but I don't see that happening again for a while.
The ladies bout was surprisingly the fight of the night for me. While Gina Carano got most of the attention for this bout, mainly due to her being very attractive, well-spoken and generally coming across well (Gary Shaw wants her to be "the face of female MMA"), her opponent Julie Kedzie's no joke and could seriously have put a spanner in the works. Carano's standup was just plain evil throughout, nearly putting a very game Kedzie out on numerous occasions with sharp punching combos and throwing high kicks that would've taken Kedzie's head off if they'd connected. When Kedzie managed to get the fight to the mat, Carano was able to reverse position and stand it back up, getting a clear unanimous decision.
Most of the other fights were good too, a particular mention goes to the Villasinor/ Louiseau match. Both fighters were coming off losing twice in recent fights (Louiseau two in a row, Villasinor 1-2 in his last 3 fights, two in a row in Pride) but Villasinor just tooled a tentative Louiseau in the first two rounds. Louiseau tried to press the pace a bit in the third, much like he did against Swick, but just wasn't able to get a foothold against Villasinor who again, took him down at will and hurt him bad on the feet. Villasinor was very impressive, getting a unanimous decision
As for the main event, Renzo Gracie took Frank Shamrock down at will in the first round, passed to side control and knee-mount and was clearly much better than Shamrock on the ground while working submission attempts and elbows from side mount. Round two, Shamrock stopped a couple of takedown attempts, but Renzo scored one in the end, passed to side mount again and Shamrock kneed him in the head/ neck twice from the bottom. Gracie was stunned as Herb "The Curse of Shamrocks" Dean took a point off and gave Gracie five minutes to recover as medical staff checked him over and put him in a neckbrace. Gracie couldn't recover in time, though was able to walk out of the cage himself and Shamrock was disqualified and showed little class afterwards (essentially calling Gracie a coward and stating that he was "just setting him up to knock him out")
It's a shame the main event ended the way it did. Elite XC put in a nice effort for a first show and I hope to see more from them. I still have concerns about Shaw's involvement due to his reputation from the boxing world, but aside from a couple of Dean-induced miscalls, the much-maligned and misunderstood "fifteen second" ground rule worked out well and the fights were pretty exciting

 

I'm glad Renzo won, but being too injured to continue from knees to the head while he had Shamrock in side control just seems weird. Yet stranger things have happened and I can't make any judgments until I've seen the footage...

 

Basically, Shamrock "launched" them off the cage and got a fair bit of power on them. Despite Shamrock's deliberate, illegal (and repeated) strikes, referree Herb Dean needs to take some of the flak for this one - he really screwed up letting the first knee slide. There were a couple of seconds after Shamrock threw the first one before he threw the second, much harder, knee, certainly adequate time for the ref to have intervened. I'm not a big fan of calling refs on screw ups - most of the time it's unwarranted and they do a thankless task - but in this case, the ball was well and truly dropped. I reckon Gracie would've been able to continue after the first, but the second was right on the base of the skull
A lot of fighters, I'd be suspicious about their being "unable to continue" after such a strike, but with Renzo, I'm taking him at his word. The knees looked nasty, particularly with where they landed and I've been an MMA fan for over ten years, right back in the days when we'd score third-or-fourth-generation VHS copies of UFC and Pride events and I've never seen Renzo Gracie be anything other than a straight-up guy. It was the doctor who said he wasn't allowed to continue fighting in this case
Anyway, here's a gif of the knees. Watch the second one

 

Okay, now that I've seen the whole thing, I pretty much agree wholeheartedly with you. And Renzo is one of the last fighters I'd suspect of faking an injury. The man let Kazushi Sakuraba break his arm.

I also watched the post-fight interviews they had on Sherdog. Frank Shamrock seemed like a total jerk in his. Renzo was dropping him onto his back whenever he took the clinch, was dominating him on the ground, and wasn't taking any damage on the feet. He had total control of the fight until Shamrock broke the rules. If he's serious about wanting a rematch, Renzo will probably choke him out next time.

I don't know why Frank Shamrock seems to have no respect for his opponents anymore.

 

those should definately be legal IMO.

 

Under no ruleset anywhere in the world is striking to the back of the head or neck legal due to how easy it is to cause serious injury. Knees to the rest of the head would be great; it'd certainly make a lot of American MMA events a lot more interesting, but for safety reasons, I'd never want to see the kind of strikes Shamrock used legalised

 

I just saw a tape of the fight last night and I have a totally different perception of the fight than the rest of you. When I first heard about the fight here and on Sherdog (and later on Martialtalk), I wondered if something had went terribly wrong with Frank's training or something. After seeing it for myself, I know it is because people may be much more familiar with the game plan in BJJ and not with how Frank trains and fights.

Frank trained regularly at my instructor's school for several years and what he did was something we train to do. Renzo did take him down with Frank providing little to no resistance, this is true. But so did Kevin Jackson in Frank's first UFC win, right before Frank submitted him. I really believe that Frank had no reservations at all about letting Renzo taking the fight wherever he wanted to because Frank was confident that he would be dominant no matter what.

Though Frank would have had the easiest win by KO'ing Renzo by strikes (like he did Cesar Gracie late last year), IMO Frank was trying to prove that he could beat Renzo wherever he took the fight, standing, ground, striking or grappling. Part of how we train in MMA is a seven part pattern of combos from different positions. What Frank did was textbook in our training. When Renzo took the side mount, Frank clinched his neck and shouders in a chain or climbers grip and went to work on him with knees. For us, this was just Frank playing the part of the bottom position in section three.

If I were in the same position that Frank was, I would have been very happy to stay there a decent portion of the early rounds and just wear Gracie down, punish him and wait for him to make a mistake. The way we train, I know that I would not have been at all frustrated or trying things out of desperation and I don't believe Frank was either.

In many ways, it reminds me of the first few UFC's with Royce getting people in his guard and kicking them with his heels to the kidneys. To observers unfamiliar with Royce's strategy and tactics, it looked like the guy on top (in his guard) was dominant, while that fighter would have blood in his urine for the next week. Without the announcer's (who were on Rorion's payroll) educating the public of what Royce was actually doing, for people more familiar with the guy being on top being in control, it would seem like Royce was being owned unil he finished the guy off.

Now let me say that if you are going to fight under a certain set of rules, you should do your best to abide by them. OTOH, how you train is how you react. Watching the fight, when I saw Gracie shifting to the north/south position, I KNEW what was going to happen next because that is exactly how we train. Welcome to section seven of our NHB striking pattern. I think that Frank probably was not expecting a fighter as experienced as Renzo to move into that position though. That's just moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I will say that I am certain that there was no faking or milking of the injury on Renzo Gracie's part, though. He is a warrior and has way too much pride and indomitable spirit for that. Still, though it may seem to some that I might be trying to cover for one of my "home team", I really don't believe that Frank was trying to intentionally foul Renzo OR that the fight was ever going in any direction that Frank was unhappy about, let alone desperate or frustrated about. The only exception to this was the closing seconds of the first round; at that point it looked like Gracie did have a truly superior position.

I'm flying out to San Jose this weekend for some training and for my instructor's 60th birthday party. Odds are that I will see Frank there (and if he has other commitments and isn't there, I'll at least run into guys from his training camp) and I'll report back what his thoughts were of the fight without the media posturing and the hype. If i'm wrong about my perceptions of the fight, then I'll be the first to admit it and give Renzo all the credit in the world. However, as I saw it and knowing the way we train and how we train, I fully believe that Renzo had Frank exactly where Frank wanted to be (though I think he would have been comfortable in most positions) and Frank really was setting him up for a legal KO or submission and Renzo just "went the wrong way" to avoid the punishment.

 

The problem is that those techniques were completely illegal under the ruleset that both fighters knew about beforehand. Whether or not this was Frank attempting to show his dominance is utterly irrelevant because Renzo's ability to defend those attacks was never called into question because he was operating under the ruleset and cannot be faulted for not defending against an attack both fighters agreed to not perform via the rules meeting! Consider a Sambo or BJJ'er entering a Judo tournament and getting a tapout via leglock but being disqualified. Shamrock has no more room to complain, and no more savvy, than this hypothetical leglock maniac.

 

I didn't know "fire" was synonymous with "cheating." If Renzo had been allowed to throw knees from the top, they'd have even more power than the knees Shamrock was throwing. He didn't do that because knees to the head (on the ground) were illegal. Renzo obeyed the rules. Shamrock did not. That's why he lost.

 

In all honesty, if Shamrock's gameplan was to wear Gracie down by letting him take him down at will and pass his guard like it wasn't there, he needs to get himself a new gameplan. It may have worked on Tito Ortiz eight years ago, but he made Tito tire himself out by working to keep his guard, not just letting Ortiz move position at will. It's certainly not a valid way to beat an experienced man like Renzo in a 3x5 fight, especially with the way American judging goes. Even without the knees, Shamrock would've most likely lost the decision unless he managed to finish him (not easily done where Renzo's concerned - he's only been TKO'd once by Dan Henderson and that was more by accident than design and realistically, there's no way would he have submitted him)
The fact is that his "training method" is completely irrelevant. He messed up and wouldn't it make sense to be training according to the ruleset he would be competing under anyway? Had those attacks been legal, Gracie would've known to expect them and would most likely have kneed the crap out of Shamrock's head early in the first. The strikes were illegal and there is no excuse for throwing them. No "how you train is how you fight," nothing. Personally, I've entered judo competitions and I've never leglocked anyone, even when they've been given to me on a silver plate
I believe had he just admitted he screwed up, maybe said that that's how he trained rather than all his stupid posturing, he may have gotten off lighter than he's getting now

 

I've never said that Frank did not foul Gracie nor that he should not have been called on it. I could also see it being called a "no contest", but how it played out, I'm not saying he shouldn't have been DQ'ed. My points were that I don't think that it was either intentional or a desperation move. I do believe that Frank did expect to either KO Gracie or be able to submit him (after softening him up a bit) from any position Renzo took the fight.

As far as Gracie being able to hit harder with elbows and knees from the top, this is only true if Frank was not keeping control via the clinch from the bottom (I have actually made people tap out from the pressure of this alone, but I am quite a bit physically stronger than Frank). The knees that Frank was throwing to the body were legal and doing far more than anything Renzo was throwing from the top with the exception of the very end of the first round when he changed to a better position. This is why I don't think Frank was ever "frustrated" or "desperate".

I will know more about it this weekend, but I beleive that Frank went into this fight not just to win or even destroy Renzo Gracie, but to show that he could let him do whatever he wanted and still own him. More like Gene LeBelle used to do with the Japanese judoka who used to challenge him and how Rickson Gracie rolls with the guys at his seminars. Like I've said before, I haven't talked with Frank directly about this before the fight, but he has brought things like this up in the past. And I don't think that it's just him posturing, I think he was just that confident (arguably overconfident) of his total domination going into the fight.

 

Then why did he switch from body knees to the illegal head knees? If not desperation, what?

 

To me, if you throw the same illegal strike twice, just minutes after being warned about where you're striking (he recieved a warning in the first round about striking to the back of the head), that's intentional. Once, you can maybe excuse, but twice is too much. Should Dean have intervened after the first one? I believe so, that would've taken some off the heat off of Shamrock and most likely allowed the fight to continue, but ending a fight by deliberate illegal strikes should always lead to a DQ rather than a no contest. No contests are reserved for accidents
Taking into account how invested in his "legacy" Shamrock appears to be and that - whatever the reason - he wasn't stopping takedowns, was getting his guard passed constantly and wasn't improving his position, you can see how people can read into it that the knees were an attempt at getting out of the fight or getting an illegal advantage

 

People tapped out because you clinched them from underneath side control? Are you a python or maybe a gorilla?

 

In response to Oversoul, look at my picture in the icon (and in the photo section). Gorrilla is a comparrison that I have heard before somewhere. I squat over 800 lbs and bench close to 600.

I would rather let sleeping dogs lie, but I said I would post a follow up after I returned from San Jose. Frank was not there and no one had seen or heard from him since the fight. I don't want to try to read anything into that because I really don't know what's up. I do know that one of the guys who trains with Frank regularly mentioned that he saw it the way I did. His view was that Renzo was just holding on and since Frank was getting the better of the exchange, why change what is working? OTOH, someone very close to Frank and in his camp mentioned that he didn't think Frank looked good in that fight.

I'm pretty certain that there will be a re-match between them and if Frank utterly destroys Renzo and then, there is a rubber match and Frank let's Renzo fight his own fight and Frank takes him out (with legal techniques this time), then my view of the fight will be proven correct. If not, then it appears that I have given Frank too much credit. Time will tell.