Great Strawman there. I can win an argument like that too Me: There is no proof the UFC was biased or rigged Please reality: Yes there is Me: then what is it Please reality: Look it up Me: why cant you just tell me Please reality: because your google fu is weak Everyone: Just tell us your thoughts Please reality Please reality: ok, it was arranged by the gracies and they set the times, brackets and refs etc Everyone: how did that make it biased Please reality: Aliens and govermnent conspiracies and the fact that noone beleives in the mysterious force that warns me psychicly about danger (puts on tinfoil hat Everyone : Ok then....... See Thats how it REALLY went down
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but your making an assumption i haven't fought before, granted i was never a professional, but i hate to break it to you, it's not exactly physically draining if you dominate a person, if anything you feel almost euphoric, sadly enough, granted, you might experience things differently to regular people, given your wise background in...re niinpo...and all it's rigorous competitive qualities. I'm saying that your making an assumption that jet lag made sure that shamrock was psychologically doomed to fail, and i said that if that was the case then Gordeau would, by that logic also be doomed to fail, then you brought the previous fight in japan up, because you clearly meant both when you were only stating one so you can continue to support the idea that Shamrock and Shamrock alone was psychologically doomed to fail, but to protect that idea, you also state that it is foolish of me to assume the man who came second in the competition wasn't also partially doomed to fail more than all the fighters who were beaten in the first round, because that protects the notion that the entire competition was rigged for one winner, further more, Shamrock has a habit of remembering stories to make himself look good, listen to his side of the story about his feud with the nasty boys and tell me the guy doesn't have a habit of trying to exonerate himself to look like a victim of circumstance. I don't think Rorion changed the brackets, he really didn't care very much about them, although he did suggest to Art Davie he'd like Royce to fight the boxer first, he was so absolutely confident in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that he felt Royce could beat anyone Davie was able to afford, but beyond that, he didn't really do anything else, and your theory for the Referees doesn't hold weight, not only didn't they do anything during Royce's fights until after the opponents tapped out, but they were reprimanded for stopping fights once people were prone, like the Gordeau-Tuli fight, they were there because they had refereed vale tudo before, and no other reason. For your positions to be true, you're telling me that the Gracies purposefully decided to rig the tournament so Royce would have to fight the only grappler in the second round, while the judges, who couldn't call fouls and were instructed only to intervene in case of a knockout, a submission or the towel being thrown in, were somehow in a position to subtly influence the outcomes of Gracie's fights, it's not a matter of choice, i just can't see how you can see this being set up to give Royce an advantage.
Funny, seems like you guys are reading someone else's posts. The article that Hannibal posted and the chapter in the book I mentioned(along with the chapter) talked about the changing of the brackets by Rorion, it wasn't Shamrock. Please get your facts straight. Having referees that are your students automatically makes it hard to claim that your competition will be unbiased. Perhaps you are not familiar with the terminology, but it's hard to understand how you could claim that a competition is fair and unbiased given the facts. Of course you have yet to demonstrate how it was, you just come up with results to try to justify the means(no the ends don't justify the means, they just show what transpired). You can't claim Rorion didn't mean to give GJJ an advantage just because the matches were over quickly. Wow, really.:dunno: I gave you the information(as did Hannibal) about the changing of the brackets and other pertinent facts. Yes, it took my a while because I didn't remember, and obviously you could've looked it up(as Hannibal did). So, don't blame your ignorance on others not hand feeding you information. You have it now, but haven't heard a single word of refutation of it. The sakki test has nothing to do with this conversation. How does Rorion changing the brackets, making the time unlimited, choosing the refs, etc., not make it biased? Explain that if you will. Not based on the results, but assuming you knew his behind the scenes dealings before the first match happened. Try to use logic if you please.
Wow, so you've fought.:happy: Welcome to the club. You are merely dealing with the time he spent in the ring, I am dealing with the entire experience, getting ready to fight, fighting, and the aftermath. That is what Shamrock discussed in his interview, and having fought before as well, I could see where he's coming from. It has nothing to do with the duration of his fight, nor what transpired in it(although you can often see people who aren't emotionally prepared to deal with a quick win/loss by their behaviour in the ring). You said that Gordeau wasn't affected by his flight, my question is simply how do you know? Did you read or watch an interview where he said such, or are you assuming such? I never said the event was rigged, please quote me if you are going to make such silly claims. I also never said Shamrock was doomed to lose, you are misquoting again. You don't think that Rorion changed the brackets, fine that is your right. However, there are people who have written books and articles claiming he did. So, your thoughts on the matter don't really mean much unless you have something to back them up with(wasn't that what you guys were preaching to me?). How you see having the refs as your students as fundamentally unbiased is beyond me, regardless of the outcome of the matches. If you set up a tournament and have your students refereeing it, why would anyone automatically assume that they would be fair and reasonable? For my position to be valid, the claims I made have to be true. Unless you can show them to be otherwise, you really aren't dealing with reality.
Firstly everyone has refuted it but, i will say it again for you. Rorion changing the brackets didnt make it biased, because the changes didnt help Royce in any way in the tournament. It made it harder for him in some ways. The round time limits didnt effect things as they all finished in around 3 minutes anways. The refs could only stop for the two fouls, and neither of them favoured BJJ, so that means nothing. There refuted I mentioned the Sakki test because you categorised me in your insulting strawman rant as a BBJ leg humper who only beleived in the UFC. I have NEVER done a BJJ class. I dont think its the ultimate. I just dont agree with you So if you are going to make me out to be something insulting, I thought I would return the favour.
So, 1) You're admitting Rorion changed the brackets. That is exactly what I claimed. Him doing so did not make it harder for his brother, the boxer was scared backstage by a certain soon to be markee UFC referee. The fact that he could and did change the brackets means that he could personally influence how the tournament was run. That is what bias means. 2) He set up the time limits to mimic the Gracie Challenge, this happened before the matches were held. So the question you have to ask yourself is would having longer match times benefit all arts equally or would it benefit GJJ? When you think of how most martial arts competitions at the time were run, people who ended up being GJJ's competition were not used to long drawn out matches. Most rounds would be 2-3 minutes, not 5 minute unlimited round matches. It ended up not being an issue because the matches didn't last that long, that is irrelevant to why Rorion set it up to be the way it was. I know it may be difficult to understand, but you don't justify the means by the ends, you have to look at the way it was set up and why. 3) You still haven't explained how having your students being the referees makes it fair and unbiased for all the competitors involved. The rest of your post is not productive so I will ignore it. Try to keep things on topic, if you want to engage in name calling, you can feel free to PM me and get your emotions out there.
For starters, no need to be flippant, but more to the point, i am telling you, from the experience of having trained for a fight, fought, and having dealt with the aftermath, the experience of having beaten someone quickly and effectively doesn't lead to a massive physical drain, you've used almost no energy and achieved the most desired result, you haven't had to push yourself to achieve anything and you feel euphoric, which is probably why shamrock still fought that night in Denver, he wasn't physically drained, he went for a leg and got caught doing it, he was if anything betrayed by overconfidence. I said he didn't appear to be, which i back up with his coming second in the tournament, how can you say a man who knocked out two people in a combined total of less than 90 seconds was at a disadvantage relative to the rest of the field? I already brought a book up as a counter, i cannot present relevant pages as a free to access copy is not on the internet, i even named the book (Is This Legal, by Art Davie, Ch.10 pg.198), which is more than i can say for your self. If my students were instructed to do nothing until someone was unconscious, submitted or their corner threw in the towel, i cannot see how it could be at all biased, they are basically there to make sure the competitors know when to stop the fight and nothing more. You are the only one going around saying they are true, my kool aid might kill me, but yours smells like cyanide.
Sorry Charlie, I named the book several times(once again for the cheap seats, Total MMA - Inside Ultimate Fighting by Jonathon Snowden) and the chapter titled The War of the Worlds (p.30 talks about the bracket change). Hannibal even posted a quote saying pretty much the same thing. So the information is easily accessible. Everyone deals with fighting differently, even the same person can experience different things depending on a whole host of variables. You don't know how Shamrock felt, you are just assuming that he was making excuses for losing. Again though, that is your assumption. If you had your own students refereeing a tournament that was anything beyond inner dojo, you would have no basis for claiming there wouldn't be bias. It might turn out that they were unbiased, but that would have to be proven. The fact that they were your students would make anyone question any claims of fairness(of course if they were authorised and licence bearing referees it would be a bit different). Not quite sure how you can miss such an obvious point.:dunno:
1. WRONG. Biased would be if the style, condition, etc favoured Royce, they didnt, and as for the psyching out thing, well if you cant stand up to that you shouldnt be in the ring. 2. The fact that they didnt go that long IS relevent, whether you want it to be or not, because the matches finished in 2-3 minutes , and he won due to submission, not due to timeout, he would have won if they were shorter thus making this advantage null and void. 3. Just because his family picked the refs if doesnt mean you can prove they WERE biased and unfair, to do that you would have to tell us how they could have helped Royce in the matches, the few rules mean they simply couldnt As for your last post, dont throw stones if you live in a glass house. You characterised your critics as, and I quote "fingers in Ears, Wanting to beleive, BJJ RULEZ" morons. So dont be surprised if we do the same thing for you and make you out to be a Ninjutsu fantacist. And as for your cool-aid remarks. well as you put it, Try to keep things on topic, if you want to engage in name calling, you can feel free to PM me and get your emotions out there
Name's qazaqwe, use it please, Mr. reality I shall seek out the book and contrast it, but the question remains if it is not a first hand account, how is it more viable as a source over mine? It is an easy assumption to make, If he was honestly so drained from his fight beforehand, how did he manage to defeat Pat Smith, a denver native who was acclimatized to the altitude, he can retroactively blame his psyche for what happened but watching the fight back, Royce shoots, Ken rolls him into half guard, then gives his back up diving for a leg, Royce then takes it home with a choke, all in less than a minute, pretty much until the very end, Ken was in control of the fight, and showed no fatigue, he just didn't expect the choke. It's not a case of missing a point, their was no room for bias to exist in the referee's assigned duties, thus by default, there was no bias.
He changed ONE MATCH. And the boxer was - on paper - the more difficult test. "Bias" within the context you are using it means a more favourable outcome; that is NOT why Rorion asked for the boxer first. Everyone, almost without exception, leading up to teh event was convinced the boxer would prevail easily. So Rorion was actually asking for the more difficult match Hindsight being 20/20 we know that is not the case The Gracies withdrew from the UFC in subsequent events BECAUSE of the time limits; these were not actually Rorions idea Because they will enforce one of the 3 rules and stop you being seriously injured - there is no bias involved in that and the extremely liberal ruleset means their role is as a safety measure If you think that it was unfair you clearly didn't watch the Gracie Shanmrock match where the ref MISSED the tap....harldy a bias
PR, the whole idea of biased rules is all relative. Most striking rule sets are biased against ground fighting. UFC rules were less biased against ground fighting. If they were biased to ground fighting, they could have disallowed the use of standup fighting all together. What the rules did demonstrate is that the striking arts had become watered down. Assumptions were made around rule sets in striking for safety reasons, but in the end they only caused the striking arts to become watered down. You have to ask, did it work because of the rule set, or did it work because of a lack of a rule set. There are cases for both, but if most of the stuff only works because of a rule set, you really need to think if it isn't becoming a watered down version of the original as a result.
No need to be formal, you can call me please. Your source is Art Davie IIRC, does he go over the bracket changing at all? If not he isn't a source on that particular subject. The Shamrock issue is neither here nor there, it's a matter of whether you believe what he says or not(although one could make an argument that allowing the gi to be used as a weapon whereas shoes couldn't wasn't fair and unbiased). If the referees role couldn't make them biased, then it wasn't necessary to get two of their own students to referee. Gene LeBell would've been an obvious choice, living in California(where Rorion was based) and being a very well known name. Alternatively, why have a ref? To assume that nobody else would've done it or could've done it because they didn't know jujutsu is strange logic.
1) Is only wrong if you can show that his changing the brackets didn't change the outcome. Obviously, it was unfair to the other fighters who thought they were fighting a certain opponent, only to be told later they weren't(so it doesn't only affect Royce's fight, but one other set of fights). The fact that he could change brackets is bizarre, especially if that wasn't his role(according to Davie's book supposedly). An unbiased tournament would not allow the brother of a fighter to change any of the brackets of a fight. Nice try about the psyching out thing as you call it. Your sentiments aside, how does that show some neutral good sportsmanlike side? 2) That is ludicrous. The question is whether or not Rorion set up the time limits to benefit his art or not. The outcome of the fights AFTER THE FACT have no bearing on his decisions before the fact. This is how logic works, you don't look at the results and then try to go back and justify or explain the way things were designed. 3) Again, having your students as refs when you could've found third party individuals is laughable. Any excuse to why a neutral source couldn't be found would have to be explained, not the other way around. You don't assume a student of the family style of the creator and his brother(who you happen to be refereeing for) would be an unbiased referee, you would assume that the creators of the tournament would pick someone where this wasn't even an issue. I thought we dealt with this in my last post, but you are still on again about the personal remarks. Do you feel better now?
Rorion changed brackets, that affects two fights. Bias means that he, the guy trying to advertise his family art, can affect how the tournament is run for his own purposes. Everyone thought the boxer would be the strongest opponent, however he wasn't. He also wasn't a belt holding professional boxer, but a "journeyman" in need of the cash who was scared out of his wits at the prospect of not being able to take his next boxing match. Hardly the best test of the arts. It is funny because we go from the Gracie's challenging world champion boxers to Royce fighting a more or less nobody(well okay he was a Golden Gloves Champion so that's something). Him changing the brackets did not give Royce one of the harder fights(as it turns out), nor is there any proof that Rorion thought that he would've been. Rorion claimed that he got out because of the rounds and time limits being imposed, which shows that he thought that these "restrictions" were negative(not favourable to his art). So clearly his gambit of choosing GJJ students as refs was not such a great idea in the first place. I never said the refs cheated, I said that hiring your students as refs when you could find unbiased third parties with no dog in the race was not a sign of a fair/balanced/unbiased/on the up and up event.
The same thing we both provided as proof (i.e. the book) offers the rationale - it was considered the harder fight and everyone talked about the boxer winning We agree - EVERYONE thought he would be the harder opponent....including Rorion. None of the other aspects (Big John, being scared, being crap etc..) are relevant when the initial consideration was picking the hardest fight
In Art Davie's book, he states, much like he is quoted with stating in the Jonathan Snowden book that he, and he alone was the only was the match maker in the first UFC, with Rorion being pretty unconcerned with the bracket as he felt Royce would win regardless of the competition, in neither book does a specific request from Rorion to have Royce fight the boxer eventuate, however is is speculated upon by Snowden, with no sources to back up the statement. I don't really as his recorded physical behaviors in the cage that night didn't look to be diminished, but on the subject of the gi, i'd offer a counter argument that as a grappler, Ken had more control of Royce via the gi, than Royce would have over Shamrock in just speedos. I think the reason they were called in had little to do with their background in BJJ and was more due to the fact that both men were stated to have both competed and refereed vale tudo fights before, so they were probably more qualified than Gene Lebell given his participation in only 1 nhb fight, and his refereeing of another fight that, while mma in nature, turned out to be plagued with rules, another issue in the Gene Lebell angle is that (I.T.L, Davie, ch. 9, pg. 167) while making ends meet in the early 80's Rorion worked as a stunt man and extra, where he met Gene Lebell, and shortly there after had an argument with him over a related matter, things were said and both men apparently still don't speak highly of one another. As for their not being a need for a referee, as i stated before, they were there to ensure the fights stopped and no one took unnecessary damage once they tapped out, fell unconscious or had their corner throw in the towel, i am sure someone else could have done it with such few responsibilities, but as it stood, Rorion was able to reach out and find people who'd both competed in and officiated such bouts before, which was probably a more responsible thing to do then have someone officiating an event they had never seen before.
