Adopted and quasi-estranged brothers Frank and Ken Shamrock have apparently signed a contract to meet inside the cage once and for all sometime in 2009, according to a recent ESPN.com article.
The brothers have had somewhat of a behind the scenes feud going on for years. And a fight between the two has been talked about for a while and now … so take this latest announcement with a grain of salt.
Frank is a master promoter, which means that he could be using all the high profile attention Ken received for not fighting Kimbo Slice at Elite XC: “Heat” on October 4. In the past, he’s referred to fighting his brother as, “the biggest fight in mixed martial arts history.”
Here is his most recent take on the match up:
“We’ve both signed a contract to fight each other. Ken is down with it. We talked about it two years ago, and we’ve agreed materially to fight. The fight has a cool hook, brothers beating each other up. Everyone wants to see that.”
Frank has not competed since losing his Strikeforce middleweight title to Cung Le earlier this year. He could not answer the bell for the fourth round in a thrilling affair because his forearm was shattered during the fight.
He is also on the CBS “Saturday Night Fights” television announcer crew. And when Ken pulled out of the Slice fight because of a cut sustained hours for the bout, Frank — who has not been training for a fight and competes at 185 pounds — volunteered to fight the much larger Slice on two hours notice.
However, CBS executives reportedly nixed the idea and opted to go with Seth Petruzelli instead. The rest, as “they” say is history.
So since that horse left the barn, Frank switched public relations gears and now apparently is already beating his drum for a showdown with his 44-year old brother. For his part, Ken is equally game.
Here’s a snip from him:
“Will the fight happen? Absolutely. He’s got a buttkicking coming to him. Everything I’ve learned, everything I have bottled up in me, is going to come out on him. I’ve still got love for Frank, but I’m angry at him. He feels he’s better than me, but I always spanked him in the gym. Now he wants to show me. I figured he’d wait until I was 50 years old, but I guess he’s waiting until I turn 45.”
Ken is a mixed martial arts pioneer who has not won a professional fight in more than four years. In fact, he has lost eight of his last 10 fights dating back to 2001 and he’s on a five-fight losing skid.
A UFC Hall of Fame inductee, Ken dropped his first and most recent bout under the ProElite banner, losing to Robert “Buzz” Berry via first knockout at Cage Rage 25: “Bring it On” earlier this year.
That, too, was supposed to be a warm-up for the “World’s Most Dangerous Man” to groom him for a big money match down the road against either Slice, or his younger brother, Frank.
He didn’t deliver … and he rarely does these days.
But that may not matter Elite XC Head of Fight Operations Jeremy Lappen appears warm to the idea.
Here’s what he had to say:
“They’re talking about doing it and we’re interested in the fight. It’s a storyline everyone can relate to, Cain versus Abel.”
It’s interesting that Elite XC is open to working with Ken after everything that happened as a result of him being scratched from the Slice fight.
He put them in a terrible spot. And then everything that has transpired since that night, including allegations of fight influencing, put the already struggling promotion in a much deeper whole of which to climb out.
Furthermore, is this really a fight that fight fans want to see or is it a fight that Frank and Ken think the fans want to see? Let is know what you think in the comments section below.
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