LAS VEGAS – Ken Shamrock has seen it all.
A trailblazer of mixed martial arts and the UFC, Shamrock was honored Dec. 14 with a lifetime achievement award at the 15th Annual World MMA Awards at Sahara Theater.
The honor came one month after the UFC celebrated the 30th anniversary of its first event in which Shamrock competed. While the six living UFC 1 tournament members were not present at the awards, the promotion organized a reunion dinner for them earlier this year.
Shamrock had the opportunity to reminisce with Royce Gracie, Art Jimmerson, Gerard Gordeau, Taylor Wily (Teila Tuli), and Zane Frazier.
“When you’re fighting, there’s grudges. There’s anger. There’s some times where you feel like you get messed over,” Shamrock told MMA Junkie on the red carpet. “So when you get to go and actually meet with these guys years later, and you don’t have that fight instinct in you, you’re not training for anything, you get to really let down and get to know one another, that’s what we got to do there. (They’re) just a bunch of great guys. I was very blessed to be a part of that.
“… I’ve seen them in places but never really got a chance to talk to them. It was really cool to just be able to sit down and chop it up. Again, to be there, to be with those guys who literally stepped in there with no idea what was going to happen, but we did it anyway, man? It was just an honor sitting there with those guys.”
Shamrock, 59, is seven years removed from what he calls his final combat sports outing, a controversial loss to Gracie at Bellator 149 in 2016. In addition to his lifetime achievement award, Shamrock was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2003.
When asked if he thought the sport, and in particular the UFC, could do a better job of recognizing the sport’s legends outside of these two ceremonies, Shamrock expressed hope but also understands the difficulties.
“It’s difficult because there was two different owners, SEG (Semaphore Entertainment) and then you had Zuffa,” Shamrock said. “There was a lot of different stages of ownership, so I guess just trying to break the ice. Hopefully they let all those boundaries down and just recognize the sport for what it is, not how it started and who created what, but just about the guys who were a part of it in the beginning and everything that transitioned up until now. It’ll come together.”
