"Significant place in the history books" - Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock opens up about importance of Tito Ortiz rivalry to the UFC
Ken Shamrock recently opened up about his legendary rivalry with Tito Ortiz and it's importance to the UFC after Zuffa had acquired the promotion.
The UFC Hall of Famers shared the octagon on three separate occasions; UFC 40: Vendetta, UFC 61: Bitter Rivals, and finally on a special Fight Night event on Spike TV. Although all three fights ended with the same result as 'The Huntington Beach Bad Boy' got his hand raised in dominant fashion, the rivalry was significant to the promotion's growth and generated mainstream attention.
During his appearance on MMA legend Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson's Jaxxon Podcast, the former UFC Superfight champion detailed the promotion's struggles with their pay-per-view buyrates at the time. He heaped praise for Ortiz's abilities as a fighter and noted that the promotion was unable to maximize their star value until the two agreed to fight each other. He said:
"I felt like it had a significant place in the history books...they [UFC] weren't doing well. In fact, the numbers pretty much showed it. I think Tito, tremendous fighter, probably at that point in time pound-for-pound was the best fighter in the world. I mean, he was it. Problem was there's no one for him to fight. It was literally they were bringing these guys in and I think the buyrates were 30,000. It was ridiculously low."
Ortiz vs. Shamrock proved to be a very significant rivalry for the promotion as they sparked interest and generated over 100,000 pay-per-view buys for UFC 40, greatly contributed to the 775,000 buys received for UFC 61 and drew 5.7 million viewers for their trilogy bout on Spike TV.
Ken Shamrock opens up about difficulty fighting later in his career
Ken Shamrock has received criticism for competing in the MMA longer than he should have and he opened up about the difficulties he faced when competing later in his career.
During the aforementioned appearance, the UFC Hall of Famer admitted that injuries had taken a toll on his body and mentioned that it resulted in not being able to properly prepare for fights. He said:
"You start knowing you're slowing down...When I got towards it [the end], I had bad knees, bad neck, bad shoulders, and I'm going in there and I'm like literally just trying to fight that creepiness going in there of that doubt because you know you didn't train completely the way you wanted to."