Issue 055
October 2009
Across an incredible 13-year career, Don ‘The Predator’ Frye has consistently demonstrated that he is among the toughest and most determined fighters to ever step in the cage.
As ‘old school’ as they come, Frye made his bare-knuckle debut at UFC 8 and immediately set a record for his eight-second knockout of Thomas Ramirez, before charging through his remaining two opponents in a combined time of only three minutes and two seconds.
“Hell, that was fun!” Frye laughed as he remembered his tournament debut back in 1996. “Anybody can fight once in a night, it’s easy… If you get up there to do it three times, you’ve got to have a pair of balls, win or lose, just to show up for it. You’ve got to have some personality just to pull your shirt off and walk out there.”
Noting a significant difference between the original UFC fighters and MMA competitors of the present day, Don continued with another hearty chuckle. “I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man, but I just don’t think that fighters nowadays are mentally tough enough to do a tournament. I’d like to think I’m wrong, I’d like to think there are some tough fighters out there but pretty much everyone is interested in being on TV, they’re not interested in fighting.”
Far from impressed by the explosion of mixed martial arts around the globe, Frye looks back on the days of ‘no holds barred’ competition with genuine fondness. “I like the old style better. Back when I fought in the tournaments, it was no biting and no eye gouging, so it was real simple not to break a rule, there were only two of them! Now, shit, I don’t even know what the rules are anymore. If they add any more rules, they are going to have to call it tennis and send everybody out there in a white skirt and makeup!”
Leading a true tough-guy lifestyle with a cheerfully macho sense of humor, the Arizona-based brawler can appear almost cartoonish in his sheer ruggedness. With Frye, there is no pretentiousness; what you see is what you get. Demonstrating his bullet-proof fighting spirit against Gilbert Yvel in 2001, he even refused to complain when the enthusiastic rule-breaker repeatedly gouged his eyes. “Hell, he had his fingers in to his second knuckles into my eyeballs, he meant to do it, but, doggone, it’s a fight! Crap goes on in other sports; I bet they do rotten shit in ping-pong too! Whenever a fighter starts complaining, it’s over, he’s out of the fight, that’s why I kept my mouth shut and kept going. God bless him man, because he came to fight, he came running at me.”
Frye’s sense of humor is disarming in everyday conversation, but it had the opposite affect on Ken Shamrock when the pair crossed paths in the preparations for their fight at Pride 19. A few wisecracks from Don at the press conference added up to a couple of nasty cracks in his ankles as his furious opponent applied a pair of vicious heel hooks during the course of the bout.
“I talked so much trash, there was no way that I’d be able to quit,” Frye said, gulping down his bitter medicine. “It’s only a 20-minute fight, you can put up with that shit for 20 minutes, it ain’t gonna kill you. It’s going to hurt, but it ain’t gonna kill you! It’s after the fight when the pain starts coming in.”
Unfortunately, the pain caused by this injury led Frye into a dark period of his life. “It took a couple of months [to heal] and it ended up slowing me up for a couple of years, actually. I got a little dependent on the pain medication and that screwed me up too, took me out of the game for a while.”
You can’t keep a good man down – especially if he has a good woman beside him. “My wife got me one night, I’d run out of medication. Boy, I was bouncing on the bed and howling at the moon! She said, ‘Alright boy, there’s something wrong with you. What’s more important to you, the pain medication or your family?’ That will force you to make a decision, right there!”
Even during this difficult recuperation period, Frye was able to put in some incredible performances, not least in his hit-and-hold extravaganza with man-mountain Yoshihiro Takayama. During this classic encounter, the two fighters took control of their opponent’s head with one hand and simultaneously wailed away with punches. “Takayama was the man of the fight,” Don said with a gentle back-handed compliment, “Hell, he was taking all the abuse! It’s not me, it’s him! Anybody can kick a puppy, but it’s harder to kick an alligator when it’s biting back at you. He was the tough one of that fight, I got lucky!”
Fight fans will undoubtedly be discussing his bouts for years to come, but Frye laughed-off the idea that he will live on in his fans’ minds. “I don’t care if nobody remembers me. The only people that are important are my family, my daughters and my wife – everybody else can kiss my ass!”
Career Snapshot
1990
In his first year of NHB competition, Frye reaches the final of three 8-man tournaments, winning two of them.
2001
En route to a victory by DQ, Frye is repeatedly eye-gouged by Dutch scrapper Gilbert Yvel.
2002
Don is armbarred by Japanese judo ace, Hidehiko Yoshida, and refuses to tap out. “That was pretty damn uncomfortable, partner, I’ll tell you that.”
2006
Frye submits gargantuan sumo wrestler ‘Akebono’ with a guillotine choke.
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