Uncaged (22 page)

My little angel Nicolette. She softened my heart and my fists.

Enjoying retirement with Amy in Saint Tropez, France, on our cruise aboard the
Christina O
.

I continued to have a very distant relationship with my brother Ken. I wasn't in communication with our dad at all. Sometimes I would see them at an event. Sometimes Ken would say something in the media about me. It was all kind of painful.

Ken was famous for his feuds. He and the Brazilian jujitsu fighter Royce Gracie were in each other's face for decades. Royce beat Ken after a controversial decision in the very first UFC fight, UFC 1, in 1993. Ken was determined to avenge this loss and trained for a 1994 rematch, but he broke his hand while training and had to bow out. So he entered a tournament later that year and fought his way through several opponents in order to face Royce again and reclaim his dignity. When he found out Royce had dropped out of the tournament, Ken refused to come out for the finals. If he couldn't fight Royce for the championship, he didn't want to fight at all.

The following year Ken had another chance. He and Royce were going to meet in the first-ever UFC singles fight, a “Super Fight.” But there was more controversy. Right before the fight, the promoters changed the rules and instituted thirty-minute rounds because
the television distributor needed an end time for the show. This wrecked Ken's strategy and threw both of them off balance. The fight was boring, ended in a draw, and did nothing to end the feud.

Ken had also been feuding for years with Tito Ortiz. Tito had dissed him after a fight and then started coming to fights wearing provocative T-shirts. (Tito beat Lion's Den fighter Guy Mezger, then flipped off Ken and put on a shirt that said
GAY MEZGER IS MY BITCH.
Later on, Tito showed up to fight Ken wearing a shirt that said
PUNISHING HIM INTO RETIREMENT
.)

I got into the middle of one of Ken's feuds when we were all in Mobile, Alabama, for a fight in 1996. Tank Abbott was a self-described street fighter from Huntington Beach, California. He traveled with a tough posse, including a guy named Big Al who used to shadow Tank. For some reason they hated the Lion's Den guys. One night we all got back to the hotel at the same time. Our cabs pulled up to the lobby doors. Big Al got out of his cab and for some reason threw a hamburger at me. It was 4:00
AM
and he was obviously drunk. Suddenly he starts making a move on me. He's six foot eight and heavy, but he didn't look or move like a fighter. So I said to his crew, guys I had hung out with before, who were sort of egging him on, “This guy is drunk. You better get him out of here.” But they didn't. Big Al grabbed my chest and started pulling my shirt. That wasn't cool, so I hit him with a right, and then I hit him a bunch more. He got really short all of a sudden, so I kicked him in the face a few times. Then I said, “Take your guy out of here. I'm going to bed.”

The next day he came up to me with his face all bandaged up and said, “I'm sorry, man. I was really drunk.” So I thought we were all cool. But a few months later we were all in Buffalo, New York, for another fight. Tank and all his guys were there. Everybody had been drinking. I was with my girlfriend. Tank came over to me and put an arm around my shoulder. He said, “Hey, cowboy. If she doesn't go down on you tonight, I'll take you home and suck your
dick.” Security broke us up before I could hurt him. I guess that's a good thing.

I remembered what Bob Shamrock had told me all those years before about never getting into a street fight. I rarely did. I was afraid of street fights. They seemed really dangerous to me. What if the guy had a knife? What if he had a gun? What if he had ten friends in the room?

Twice, though, I got caught up in something and wound up fighting that way. The first time was when I was still with the Lion's Den. We were attending a UFC bar party. Some bar out near Modesto was showing the fight on pay-per-view. We went as a team to watch. They had a VIP section for us. We spent the evening hanging out and drinking and watching the fight.

It was really smoky inside, and after a while I went outside to get some fresh air. Out of nowhere this guy came up and started hassling me, bumping me in the chest and sort of challenging me. He was obviously wasted. I was dressed really nicely, and he was drunk, so I just ignored him and started to walk away. But he said, “Hey! Where are you going?” and came up to me. He looked like he was going to hit me. So I shot in on him, grabbed him around the waist, and pulled him to the ground. Somehow, just like a move right out of the movies, he fell into position for a rear naked choke. It was the most natural thing in the world. So I took advantage of the hold, choked him out, and put him to sleep in about two seconds.

I got up, angry because my nice clothes were all messed up. I started brushing myself off when suddenly I realize that the guy had woken up, stood up, and lunged at me. So I grabbed him as he came at me and snapped another choke hold on him. It was another movie moment. I felt like Bruce Lee! He walked right into it, and I snapped it on him. I held the choke and put him back to sleep.

I didn't think I should just drop the guy, unconscious, onto the asphalt. So I lowered him to the ground and we sort of sat down
together. When he started to wake up again, I choked him out a third time and tied his shoestrings together. Right then some security guys from the bar came out. I told them everything was cool. I brushed my butt off and untucked my shirt and went back inside as if nothing had happened.

My second street fight was many years later, when I was living in Los Angeles with Angelina. I had to go to Home Depot for just one little thing—one of those plates that covers a light switch. It was hot, so I was wearing a tank top and shorts and sandals. I got my light switch cover and went to stand in line. It was a long line with twenty-plus people. When I finally got to the front of the line and was almost at the cash register, this little Mexican dude slides up and parks his cart in front of me. I said, “Excuse me, but we're all in line here.” He ignored me. I thought that was pretty rude. But I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. So I said again, “Hey, buddy. All these people here are in line, and the end of the line is back there.”

He turned to me and said, “Fuck off.” I couldn't believe it. He was a little fat guy, and I'm there all pumped up in my gym clothes. So I said again, “Buddy, you got to get in line.” And he said, “I told you to fuck off.” I got really angry! I started talking to myself. I started talking to the other people in line. Can you believe this guy? Who does this guy think he is? What the hell is wrong with this guy?

He ignored me. So I decided I was going to take him outside and beat the living shit out of him. He paid for his giant shopping cart full of items. I was next. I paid for my one little light switch cover. I walked out. I found him, and started walking behind him. I followed him to his truck.

I composed myself. I changed my mind about killing him. When I got to his truck, I said, “Hey, man.” He turned around. I was in my interview position, hands up and palms open, very relaxed. I was just going to talk to him. I said, “What's your problem? Why would you treat another human being like that?” And he said, one
last time, “I thought I told you to fuck off.” I literally screamed, like a crazy man, and attacked him. I front-kicked him in the stomach. When his head fell forward, I grabbed his hair and kneed him in the face. Then when his head came up, I punched him in the face, really hard, with my right hand.

He went down bleeding, making these moaning noises. I figured he was done. In the time it took to look around the parking lot to see whether anyone had seen me, he got to his feet and came up with a huge eight-inch hunting knife. He said, “I'm going to kill you.”

He looked serious. So I ran. I was in my sandals, but he was fat. I figured I had a chance. I also figured he wasn't crazy enough to chase me around the Home Depot parking lot with a bloody face and an eight-inch hunting knife, but I was wrong. He
was
crazy enough. I ran and he chased me. I got near my car. I was thinking I'd jump in and lock the doors and drive away. But then I remembered I was driving my Camaro—and it was a convertible. He'd cut my throat. So I kept running.

We did two or three laps around the parking lot. He kept coming, with his bloody face and his knife in one hand and his cell phone in the other. Was he calling for backup? I don't know, but he wouldn't give up. Finally I ran back into the Home Depot itself and lost him somewhere. I made my exit through the garden shop. I got into my car and then, because I couldn't help it, drove around until I saw him. I beeped and yelled, “Hey! I just kicked your ass! There's nothing you can do about it!” Then I drove home.

I remembered Bob Shamrock telling me not to street fight. He was right.

Periodically someone would ask me about Ken, whether the two of us ever planned on fighting each other. They wanted to talk about our “relationship.” I tried to explain that I had never had a relationship
with Ken that was about anything except fighting. We've never had a serious conversation about anything else. He was my mentor. I owe my life in martial arts to him. I will always honor that. But that's pretty much it. I've never received a Christmas card from Ken. He didn't come to my wedding, or send me congratulatory notes when my children were born. We would see each other every six months or so, usually at a fight. “Hey, bro, how's it going?” I know my next-door neighbor better than I know Ken Shamrock. That's just the way it is.

By 2003, I had been away from fighting for almost three years. In March, I was scheduled to meet Bryan Pardoe at a fight in California, organized by World Extreme Cagefighting, that was billed as “Return of a Legend.” I was already a legend. We were going to fight for the WEC light heavyweight title.

Bryan Pardoe was a big heavy dude who was known as “Pain Inducer” Pardoe. He weighed about 220 pounds. I had bulked up from my usual 185 and weighed in at 205. (In truth, I weighed in wearing slacks, covering my legs, because I had three-pound leg weights on. I am not sure if this was cheating; I was trying to weigh more so that I could fight someone who was bigger than I was. I knew that the WEC 205 title was vacant and would look great on my resume. Our fight was on an Indian reservation, so I knew the commission would be lax. No one said a word about the Hugo Boss slacks I was wearing. But it boosted my weight up; I only really weighed about 194.) But Bryan was tall. He had four or five inches on me. When we met in the ring, he looked down on me—but I noticed he couldn't look me in the eyes. I felt like I had him beat before we even started. The announcer said, “We've waited years to see this. The return of Frank Shamrock…starts now.”

And it was on. I threw a kick or two. He threw a punch—and landed one, hard, that rang my bell. When I blinked my eyes to recover he rushed me into the cage and ripped my legs out from
under me so he could get on top. He held me there and tried to hit my face for a full minute, but it cost him a lot. I was hitting him hard in the side of the head, boxing his ears, and he had to spend a huge amount of energy just keeping me down and staying out of the way.

When he got tired, I was able to swing my legs up and over him, flip him over, and trap his arm in a straight arm bar—an upside-down version of the arm bar hold I had used to beat Kevin Jackson. The fight was stopped at 1:46 in the first round.

Bryan was cool about it. He congratulated me and we hugged. The announcer said, “He's ba-a-a-ack.”

By accident, I acquired a nickname. Everywhere I went, people would say, “Hey, what's up, Legend?” The title of the event, the pay-per-view title, and the title of the DVD from it was now my nickname. Before that, I was just the guy who came out, kicked your ass, and sauntered off. I didn't take a nickname out of pride; I wanted the fans to give me one, and they did after the Pardoe fight. I became Frank “Legend” Shamrock, or Frank “the Legend” Shamrock, and it stuck. It would be a while before I fought again after that win. But I was busy. For one thing, I got married.

Amy and I had put ourselves on a five-year plan. She wanted to get married and have children right away. But I was just coming off a tough marriage and bad breakup. I didn't feel ready. I was traveling the world, fighting and teaching, and I dragged her along with me. It was great, but I was still stung from my last marriage. So I suggested a five-year plan. We went into the hanging-out phase. The theory was in five years we'd get ourselves together and be ready to get married.

I knew right away that I loved her and wanted to be with her. (Here's one way I knew: at night, when I stayed over at her house, after I was already asleep, she would put toothpaste on my toothbrush for me so I wouldn't have to do it when I woke up.) I knew we were going to be together. After five years, I was ready.