Photo credit: Marcelo Alonso
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A few weeks ago I was indulging in my love of 90s MMA watching
Pedro RizzoPre-UFC fights. Rizzo was my favorite fighter as a kid, and most of his early matches were at a long-defunct Brazilian promotion called Vale Tudo World Championship. In his last appearance for WVC in 1997, Rizzo had a great fight against
Richard Heard.
Now, if you look at Heard’s record, you might assume he was a solid mixed martial artist. He’s 5-1, all wins by submission and the only loss to an all-time great in Rizzo. Hell, even Rizzo took over 13 minutes to defeat him, so even there Heard probably held his own. And yet, watching him compete, a realization came to me: Heard couldn’t fight at all.
It’s not meant to be an insult or an exaggeration. He legitimately had no idea how to fight properly. His punches were wild slaps. His idea of wrestling was to push his opponent into the ropes with outstretched arms. Most ridiculous was his clinch technique, where his legs were away from the opponent’s, and he bent at the waist, his arms reaching outward to hold his enemy, only asking to be exploded with the knees, which Rizzo happily accepted. But don’t take my word for it; watch the battle for yourself:
How had Heard gone 5-0 before that? Simple, in fact. He came from a professional football background and, at 6ft 3in and 220lbs, he was a tall, strong and very tough guy. Believe it or not, just being a big, strong, tough man, even without any fighting skills, was enough to have some degree of success in MMA at the time – not enough to beat the very few fighters who could competently fight, like Rizzo, but more than enough to be successful against almost anyone. Including all “traditional” martial artists specializing in kung fu, taekwondo, ninjutsu, Japanese jiu-jitsu, aikido and yes, even karate. In fact, big, strong guys with very limited or no fighting history have done much better in the sport than any traditional martial artist. Before we get into the simple reason for their success, here are two other examples that were even more famous and successful than Heard in sports.
“Polar Bear” was one of my favorite old-school MMA characters. A 6-foot-8, 350-pound giant, he had also played American football, as had Heard. His formal fighting experience consisted of a single year of high school wrestling. It’s certainly better than nothing, but it’s still very little. After all, Tom Cruise had
at least two years of college wrestling, which makes him a martial arts master by comparison. Varelans was also introduced as a practitioner of “Trapfighting”, which he had been doing for a few months, and largely involved him preparing with a few friends for his UFC debut in 1995. At the time , the fighters were presented as masters of a style. , and “Trapfighting” sounded better than “Big Meathead We Pulled off the Street”.
Certainly, Varelans lost many fights against the best fighters of his time. He was violently mutilated by Mark Kerbrutalized with punches and kicks by Igor Vovchanchynwho was a foot shorter and 130 pounds lighter, finished with leg kicks by Marco Ruas
(funny, Rizzo’s trainer and mentor), ragdolled and submitted by
Dan Severn in less than two minutes, and even knocked out by Tank Abbott, also in less than two minutes. However, against opponents who were not legitimately qualified, and especially representatives of traditional martial arts, Varelans were an absolute terror. Whether using his massive size in the clinch or using his massive size and limited wrestling abilities to knock down an opponent and climb to the top, Varelans would finish them off with his crushing elbows down the back of the head. This is illegal these days for no less than two offenses, but back then it was allowed and caused many Varelan victims to give up or be saved by a referee. Cal Worham,
Mark Hall and
Gerry Harris, all mainstream martial artists, felt the fury of those elbows in UFC 6 and 7, each being dismantled in just over a minute. To Varelans’ credit, he even defeated a practitioner of a truly useful martial art. Joe Moreira, an eighth-degree red belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (one of the highest ranks in history) and a third-degree black belt in judo, nonetheless dropped a close decision against Varelans at UFC 8.” Polar Bear” finished with a respectable 4-4 record in the Octagon. Not bad for a guy who barely knew how to fight.
Yes, Goodridge, an MMA pioneer with many big wins over famous opponents, even great ones, was basically just a big, strong guy when he started MMA. In interviews, he mentioned boxing a little as a teenager, not even enough to have an amateur record, and that was basically it. UFC co-founder Art Davie became interested in Goodridge because of his success in a completely different sport: arm wrestling. Goodridge was a multi-time arm wrestling world champion in the mid-90s, known for a lightning-fast ‘hit’ and to this day is cited as one of the greatest of all time, with victories over the arm wrestling GOAT John Brzenk. Apparently Davie had reservations about billing Goodridge as an expert in the fearsome art of arm wrestling, so Goodridge spent about two weeks attending a Kuk Sool Won school in Canada where, to promote the martial art Korean, he received a black belt. (By the way, Davie went on to found the odd kickboxing/arm wrestling hybrid league XARM, so perhaps Goodridge convinced him of arm wrestling’s potential as a skill base for combat.)
So Goodridge, being little more than a brutally strong 6-foot-3, 260-pound man with world-class grip strength and a bit of boxing as a teenager, entered the UFC and immediately had of success with a legendary knockout of the crucifix position of unfortunate Paul Herrera. He followed that up by eliminating the smaller, but very skilled Jerry Bohlander, about which I have already written.
It took a very skilled opponent indeed, Don Frieto finally expose that Goodridge didn’t really have a fighting history.
To be crystal clear, while Goodridge was lacking in fighting skills prior to his MMA debut, he immediately got to work correcting this minor flaw. Goodridge began training seriously in kickboxing and grappling, and had a natural aptitude for both. KO of
Don Frie,
Oleg Taktarov, Dan Bobish,
Valentin Overeem and Andrew Robertamong other triumphs, testify to this.
So why were big, strong, tough guys with little or no fighting skills so successful in the 90s? Simply put, hardly anyone knew how to fight then, in any aspect of MMA. Traditional martial artists of this period certainly did not. And in a battle between two men who can’t fight, guess who wins? The biggest, strongest and toughest. So the next time you hear about kung fu and taekwondo, give that person a knowing smile and say, “Yeah? Well, the murderous style of American football crushes them easily!