Issue 143

July 2016

UFC pioneer and Pride legend Don Frye explains why the old-school stars were a different breed to today’s fighters.

1. No holds barred – Amaury Bitetti, UFC 9 (05/17/1996)

Early UFC events’ limited rules led to some brutal fights. Frye explains: “That guy was a machine. He came to fight that night and there was no killing the guy. That guy almost died. Cal Worsham punctured his lung in his fight that night and he had to be taken to the hospital and as he was leaving the hospital he said he saw Amaury Bitetti laying in the ICU with tubes sticking out of his head, trying to relieve the pressure and swelling on his brain from our fight. There is no quit in that guy. They had to stop that fight. I was trying to kill him.“

2. To the gallows – Mark Coleman, UFC 10 (07/12/1996)

“That fight pretty much sealed my status as a fighter. I was beat up from the Brian Johnston fight earlier in the night. Walking out to fight Coleman was like walking to the gallows. But I wasn’t going to quit. ‘Big’ John McCarthy finally stopped it and Becky Levi came over to get me and I said, ‘Get me the hell out of here. I don’t want to fall down in front of everybody.’ We went back to the locker room and they were saying they were going to take me to the hospital. I was totally dehydrated. They were going to try to bring a gurney in. My agent at the time said, ‘No. He will walk out.’ So we walked out. We got within five feet of the ambulance and I fell (laughs). I dropped like a rock. I woke up that morning feeling like crap and it got worse as the day went on!”

3. Stand up and fight – Tank Abbott, UFC Ultimate Ultimate 96 (12/7/1996)

“We knew it was going to be a tough tournament. Right before the fight my brother made me swear not to go toe-to-toe with Tank. He said, ‘Be smart. You used to be a wrestler. Take him down.’ As soon as we started fighting my brother turned to the other cornermen and said, ‘God damn it I told that dumbass not to punch with him!” I have such selfish tunnel vision I don’t even know what’s going on around me. The whole world could explode around me and I wouldn’t even know it. I’m just concerned about the fight and nothing else.” 

4. Evil eye gouge – Gilbert Yvel, Pride 16 (09/24/2001)

An abductor injury before a return to MMA after four years would have stopped most men, but not ‘The Predator’. “They probably shot it up (with Novocain) 45 minutes to an hour before the fight,” he says. “The first takedown – boom. My corner said they could hear it explode. I couldn’t move after that. God bless Gilbert Yvel. He came to fight. All he would have had to do was stick and move. I would have never been able to catch him. I couldn’t move sideways. He decided to take both of my eyeballs home with him as a souvenir. Right when the referee stopped it the first time he asked if I was OK. I told him I couldn’t see. Over my shoulder my corner said, ‘Shut up, Frye! Don’t complain. Get after it.’ When a fighter complains he’s done, he’s out of the fight. I said, ‘OK. I’m good. Let’s go.’ It was great. It was quite a welcome back to the fight world. He poked each eyeball three times. The eyes heal quickly. I was only blind throughout the fight. It was blurry the rest of the night but they healed up within a week or so.” 

5. Brawl for all time – Yoshihiro Takayama, Pride 21 (06/23/2002)

“I trained my ass off for that fight because it was supposed to be my rematch against Coleman. I trained hard but I had a bum shoulder. They then said Takayama stepped in. When it comes down to it, the reason I grabbed the back of his head and clinched and punched the way I punched was because my shoulder was so messed up that I couldn’t stand back and rotate my shoulder. So I had that injury along with my back. The fight before Takayama – the (Ken) Shamrock fight – my back really started going bad on me. When Takayama and I were standing there exchanging punches I was trying to figure out what in the hell was keeping this monster up. When they broke us apart the first time my cornerman told me to put my hands up in the air to breathe better, to get more air to my lungs. I told him I couldn’t even lift my arm.” 

Good old days: The pitfalls of no-holds-barred fighting

“When I first started it was no holds barred. There were no rules. They said no biting and no eye gouging. S**t, that stuff went on. Yvel tried to gauge out my eyeballs. Gerard Gordeau bit Royce Gracie. You saw Keith Hackney whacking Joe Son in the balls. Goodridge actually moved a guy’s cup to hit him in the balls. It was a different animal back then. It was a fight.”