MMA legend Ken Shamrock isn’t a fan of the BMF concept in today’s generation.
At UFC 244, Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz did battle inside Madison Square Garden in New York City. The welterweight clash was contested for the one-time-only BMF championship. Masvidal scored the third-round TKO victory via doctor’s stoppage.
Ken Shamrock Not A Fan Of Modern MMA Fighters Using BMF Tag
Shamrock appeared on ESPN’s Ariel Helwani MMA Show and gave his take on fighters these days calling themselves the BMF (via MMAFighting.com).
“It’s funny to hear these guys talk about toughness and being tough and being bad,” Shamrock told Ariel Helwani of ESPN recently. “It’s like, man, if they only knew what went through in those beginning days, with no training, there was no map of how to train. There were guys that would go to the park and get in fights with people in order to get training, real training in. You’ve seen a lot of guys that would just do a road tour. They’d drive from one end of California to the other end and they would stop at different places and do fights on these different promotions in the beginning days when there was promotions everywhere. They would drive across country just hitting every stop and fighting at them, just to get the training in.”
“The World’s Most Dangerous Man” went on to question the legitimacy of fighters who call themselves the “BMF” due to their light schedule in comparison to competitors from his generation.
There was no map,” Shamrock said. “There was no way of real training. Obviously, early on we were able to develop a way to do that but for most guys you used to hear stories like that all the time about how guys would go to the park and fight or they’d take fights anywhere just so they can actually get in and get a fight somewhere where they really knew what they were doing because back in the day when I was over in Japan, before they even started the UFC, I couldn’t get anybody to train with me. I would go into karate schools and boxing schools, they were striking and you’d take them down and they’d be like ‘No, what are you talking about’ or I’d get a wrestler and say ‘Shoot on me, I’m not gonna knock you out but I’m gonna punch you.’ There was nobody to do that so I had to open a gym and slowly start training people.
“So for them to start talking about being a Bad MF, I just kinda laugh and go, oh my gosh, you guys are wearing four-ounce gloves, you fight one time a night, every six months to a year. Really? [Laughs] Come on.”
