UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock is fighting Royce Gracie at Bellator 149 in Houston, Texas on Feb. 19. Shamrock has lost 8 of his last 10 fights, and all losses were by KO or TKO. He has not won a fight in over five years.
When UFC president Dana White was asked about the fight between the two UFC Hall of Famers, he was not impressed.
“Listen, everybody’s gotta do their own thing, but I don’t think that 50-year-olds fighting is ever a good idea,” said White. “I hope nobody gets hurt. I mean, two 50-year-old guys. That’s crazy. Crazy.”
For the record, Gracie is 48, and will be 49 by fight time. There average age howeever be over 50, as Shamrock will be 52. And CTE is a A Thing now. An irreversible thing. Shamrock has shown no overt signs of it what so ever, but it reasonably has to part of the equation for this fight.
However, Shamrock recently appeared on the ever tremendous Submission Radio, and railed against “age discrimination,” comparing it at one point to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
“It’s sad that we’re at this point,” said Shamrock. “After we’ve gone through so much in our world to get it across to people that you can do things, whatever you want to do, just as long as you’re able to stay within the rules and the guidelines and be able to do the things you need to do. That you just should never quit, should always move forward and try to do the things that you want to do, accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish.”
“And yet we’re standing here in 2015 and we are discriminating against age. I mean, when does it stop? I mean, we go in the ring and we fight just the same as anybody else does. And we passed the physicals, and we do the things that we need to do to be able to get in the ring and fight.”
“And yet we’re standing here today, after we’ve gone through the racism of black people and we’ve gone through the women’s rights and the Japanese, you know, with the world war and putting them in the work camps because they look Japanese. I mean, I thought we had gotten past all this?”
“Yet today, we’re sitting here and we’re discriminating against two individuals who have proven themselves in the world of MMA, who are at very, very high level and are in very good shape and will pass any physical they need to, to get in the ring and fight. And we’ve got a few people out there that want to use discrimination as their case?”
