If Royce Gracie was the first star to break into the mainstream, ‘Tank’ was second. Abbott got notable press attention, with Esquire doing one of the first profiles of the new sport in a major magazine. The article was called “Gentlemen, Start Your Bleeding” (subscription), and fawned on the bar room brawler.

‘Tank’ Abbott wrote the book on how far a street fighter with a 600 lb bench press could go in the early days of the sport. However, UFC Hall of Famer Pat Miletich wrote the book on mixed martial arts.

During a recent appearance on MMAjunkie Radio, Miletich talked about the time he chased ‘Tank’ all across Birmingham, Alabama, at Ultimate Ultimate 1996, trying to slap some discretion into him. Miletich was 170 and Tank 250, but the farmboy Croatian Sensation was simply tougher than the heavy drinking city boy Abbott.

Lest anyone think that the size difference is too vast, this fight ended in a draw after a single 20-minute round.

And three years earlier, Severn beat the stew out of Abbott at Ultimate Ultimate 1995. In fact, Severn had at one point somehow taken a pressure point KO with George Dillman and when he was on top of ‘Tank’ swinging away, ‘The Beast’ was thinking to himself “there has got to be one of those pressure points there somewhere.”

So while ‘Tank’ does not lack for memorable street fighting stories, he never used a pitchfork. This one was pitchfork free however.

I walked up to Tank, and he was talking to Meyrowitz, who owned the UFC at the time – Semaphore Entertainment Group, said Miletich as transcribed by Mike Bohn and Brian Garcia for MMAjunkie. Tank had been in the bar dancing with his shirt off, dancing on the dance floor, grabbing everybody’s women. So I walk up to talk to Meyrowitz. Tank’s standing right there. I go, ‘Hey Tank, good fight.’ Then he palms my face and shoved me away.

There’s a drink railing between. I’m on the dance floor side, he’s on the bar side, and I looked at him and I go, ‘You fat motherf***er. I’m knocking you out right now.’ So I started marching toward the end of the drink rail to come around. I was just going to attack him.

Well, he starts walking with me, and I’m assuming he’s going to meet me at the end of it. So we’re walking, he takes a right and goes out the door of the place. Then somebody grabs me and goes, ‘Don’t go out there.’ Then I go, ‘No, I’m knocking his fat ass out right now.’ So I’m going outside – and he and his three buddies are running down the street.

I start chasing him, but they got like a two block lead on me. So I’m chasing them like, ‘You fat son of a b****. I’m going to beat your a**.’ I get to the hotel, and he’s already got in the hotel, and I go in, and Tra Telligman’s in the lobby, and I go, ‘Tra, did you see Tank come in here?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, dude. He just sprinted up those stairs.’ So I sprinted up the stairs, and another fighter is there. I go, ‘Did you see Tank?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, he just got on the elevator.’

Miletich never did catch Abbott that night, but the Huntington Beach mean boy kept a wide berth thereafter.

From then on every time I see Tank, he literally would just go hide, said Miletich. I wanted to beat his a** so bad.