Issue 038
June 2008
Though today MMA has evolved into a professional, regulated sport, the negative imagery associated with early events still persists among certain camps. Is this what attracts ‘bad apples’ to MMA? Or is it simply the fact that they can get paid to fight? No one really knows for sure.
Whatever your point of view, we can all agree on one thing – the name of the man who was the very first, undisputed, bad boy of MMA. Born David Lee Abbott, he was known in the UFC Octagon as ‘Tank’. Regarded far and wide as the first streetfighter-turned-mixed-martial-artist, Tank Abbott was best known for his blunt and often comical attitude, both inside and outside the cage.
He holds a record of 9-14-0, his last loss coming at the hands of fellow streetfighter Kevin ‘Kimbo Slice’ Ferguson, but the Huntington Beach native never turned down a fight, regardless of the calibre of his adversary. Among his list of past opponents are the likes of Vitor Belfort (16-8-0), Pedro Rizzo (16-7-0), Frank Mir (11-3-0) and Hidehiko Yoshida (7-6-1), all men who were at some point considered top ten in their weight class.
“I never came to win,” says Abbott. “I came to fight – that’s the way it’s always gonna be. I go from the barstool to the Octagon.”
Tank may have not had the most successful MMA career, but that’s not to say that all of MMA’s bad boys share the same fate. In fact, some of them have been highly successful, thanks not only to their diehard attitudes, but also to their impressive skill sets. The most dominant example of such a fighter is Japan’s very own bad boy, Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto (17-1-0).
Immensely popular in the land of the rising sun, Kid Yamamoto is known for his thuggish attitude and tattoo adorned body, as well as his complete destruction of a number of bigger opponents (he walks around at a natural 143lb). Most memorable was his brutal win over Tetsuo Katsuta (7-5-2), where he rained down uncountable shots on his floored opponent as the referee struggled to stop the bout. The result? Multiple facial fractures, which took Katsuta out of action for over 6 months.
Though he may be an anti-hero, Yamamoto is no street fighter – in fact, the Tokyo native hails from a highly-respected wrestling family, with his father Ikuei Yamamoto representing Japan at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. His sisters Miyu and Seiko are also top athletes, having won the world championships in freestyle wrestling.
An Olympic hopeful himself, Yamamoto was reportedly forced to give up his dreams after running into a spot of trouble with the Yakuza (Japanese mafia). MMA legend and rumoured Yakuza-man Enson Inoue (11-8-0) spoke of the incident in a recent interview.
“He [Kid] was playing around with a BB gun and hit a Yakuza in the eye,” said Inoue. “The guy followed him to where he lives and those guys [the Yakuza] went in and tried to get him out of the room. He had to jump out of three stories. Apparently, from his balcony he got out from three stories and ran to a restaurant. He called me from the restaurant, telling me that there are Yakuza out there and they want to get him.”
Though Inoue managed to use his connections to save Kid from a gruesome fate, the incident nearly ended his wrestling career. “The incident got him kicked out of college,” says Inoue. “Then he got banned for one year from the wrestling association. The Olympics were the following year, so he would be out.” With his career on hold, Kid took up MMA, training in Inoue’s Purebred Gym in Tokyo. It wasn’t long before he began stacking up wins in both Shooto and K-1 Hero’s, quickly becoming a crowd favourite, and one of the world’s top pound-for-pound fighters.
On the other side of the Pacific, the South American nation of Brazil has an endless list of rogue fighters, however none of them can stand next to the recently deceased Ryan Gracie (5-2-0), a man often called the bad boy of Brazilian jiu jitsu. With several slick wins on his record, Ryan Gracie was a promising prospect – unfortunately his criminal associations, combined with the fact that he was quite prone to accidents, ultimately led to his untimely death last year. On the morning of 15 December 2007, following an orgy of drug use and crime, Gracie was found dead in a jail cell in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“He was a crazy guy,” says an acquaintance, who prefers to remain anonymous. “He always had problems with the cops. If he lived in America, the police wouldn’t tolerate it, they would just shoot him.” Gracie’s appalling criminal record was like something out of a gangster film – assault charges, attempted robberies, a stabbing, and even an incident where he accidentally shot himself in the leg. This, combined with a reputation of being a dangerous streetfighter, made him one to avoid on the streets of Rio de Janeiro.
Ryan Gracie may have died in jail, but in America, there’s a fighter who seems to live there on a near permanent basis. His name is Charles Bennett, but his fans know him simply as ‘Krazy Horse’. When he’s not fighting in EliteXC, one can usually find the Florida native behind bars. At the age of 27, Bennett has been arrested over 25 times, for everything from kidnapping to drug trafficking. “Been arrested a lot,” said Bennett in an earlier interview with
Yahoo Sports. “I need to get me a movie, because my life story is
a winner.”
Despite his run-ins with the law, Krazy Horse is not only a talented fighter but also an extraordinary showman, who regularly performs back-flips off the top of the cage following a victory. In the past, Bennett was equally popular in Japan, where his antics and unusual personality came as a shock to the more conservative MMA fans.
Though America, Japan and Brazil all have their contenders, the winner of the ultimate bad boy in MMA award can only go to one man – the UK’s very own ‘Lightning’ Lee Murray (8-2-1), a man who makes Yamamoto, Gracie, Bennett and Tank seem like altar boys by comparison.
Arguably one of the best fighters to ever come out of the UK, Murray first gained notoriety after allegedly knocking out Tito Ortiz (15-5-1) in a street fight outside a London nightclub in 2002. Pat Miletich, founder of Miletich Fighting Systems and trainer of Matt Hughes and Tim Sylvia recounts the incident: “A big brawl has broken out,” recalls Miletich. “I won’t go into why. Anyways, Tito goes after Lee Murray. Both their jackets come off, and Tito throws a left hook at Lee and misses. Right as he missed, Lee Murray counters with, like, a five-punch combo, right on the chin. Tito fell face-first down on the ground, and then Murray stomped on his face a couple of times with his boots. Tito was out cold.”
Murray has been inactive since September of 2004, his last outing being a decision loss to Anderson Silva (21-4-0) at Cage Rage 8. Though he had planned to return to competition, a near fatal stabbing in 2005 prevented his return. " I was at a nightclub
said Murray in an interview later that year. “One of my friends got involved in a fight, I tried to help him because about six or seven guys was on him.
“That’s when I got stabbed. I thought it was a punch. When I felt the blood coming down my face, I just wiped the blood and just continued to fight. Next, I looked down at my chest and blood was literally shooting out of my chest. I looked down, and I knew I had been stabbed in the heart by the way the flow of the blood was coming out of my chest. It was literally flying out of my chest like a yard in front of me. I took my shirt off and put my shirt in the hole and tried to stop the bleeding. I just ran off down the road and jumped into some car. I think there was two girls getting into the car leaving the club, and I just jumped in their car and said get me to a hospital quick, I’ve been stabbed in the heart. I didn’t know these girls, and these girls just drove off, they saved my life.”
Miraculously, the Londoner not only survived the incident, but also made a stunning recovery, despite going into a two-day coma and having to be resuscitated four times. But before Murray could make his return to MMA, he was arrested on 25 June 2006 in Morocco in connection with the infamous £53million Securitas robbery, the biggest cash robbery to ever take place in the UK.
Though his exact involvement with the heist has never been confirmed, some say Murray was in fact the mastermind behind
the entire operation, making him one of the most successful robbers in history. What’s more, a technicality in Moroccan law prevents Murray from being extradited to Britain to serve his sentence. As long as the middleweight stays in Morocco, he may never spend another night in jail; unfortunately, nor will he ever return to the cage.
