Controversial End Greets Showtime’s MMA Debut

SOUTHAVEN, Miss., Feb. 10 — Frank Shamrock fancies himself the best middleweight in mixed martial arts history. The rest of us were supposed to have the veil of uncertainty lifted from our eyes tonight when the former UFC champion dismantled veteran Renzo Gracie.

Instead of becoming a star in his coming out party on premium cable, Shamrock turned into an excuse-making blowhard after being disqualified Saturday for an illegal knee to the head while the middleweights were on the floor.

Afterwards, Shamrock suggested that Renzo had somehow lost the will to compete, seemingly forgetting the fact that he had been controlled during their round and a half in the cage.

“He held my head to set up for the knee,” Gracie said at 4 a.m. after being discharged from Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto. “He knew that I was dominating him and he wanted a way out.”

“Listening to his breath and hearing the way he was grunting when I was hitting him, he was ready to give up and he was ready to get knocked out,” Shamrock, 34, said in his locker room after the fight. “I was telling him I was going to knock him out. He was about 30 seconds away from going to sleep, and I think — this is my personal opinion — I have a lot of respect for Renzo: he took the easy way out.”

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