After Ken left the UFC, he went and did his stint in the WWF from 1996-2000. When Don Frye finished with MMA, he also went to pro-wrestling, but he went to Japan. When both men came back into MMA, Ken happened to come back first, so he already had a couple fights under his belt. As Ken was starting to get back into things, PRIDE offered him Don Frye. Ken said he would like to fight Don but not just yet because he thought Don should fight once or twice to get back into the game like Ken did. Don took that as an insult and proceeded to talk shit and try egging Ken into a match. It worked. Don said some incendiary things about Ken and his relationships with both his father and his brother and insulted just about everything about Ken and his personal/family life. Ken was extremely pissed and agreed to that match with Frye, so Don got his way and got his fight with Ken.
I lost a little respect for Don by the way he handled that situation. He didn't need to talk endless shit to Ken just to get a match. He should've fought a warm-up match against a lower-tier fighter the way Ken fought Otsuka upon returning, because he would've fought Ken eventually, because Ken said he would like to fight him. But in the end, the fans won because we got one of the best grudge matches (IMO, THE BEST) in the history of MMA, and it ended up as my personal favorite MMA fight of all time.
As for Don saying how Ken purposefully crippled people, here's a post I made in another thread earlier today:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Bullitt68
This the heel hook video you were talking about?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpiZQtD0SCY
To answer your question, no, Ken didn't purposefully cripple people. A couple of guys got hurt fighting Ken, including Ryushi Yanagisawa and Leon Dijk (the guy in the video), but Ken is a sportsman; he is out there to fight and to win, not to hurt people. If somene were to get injured, it comes with the territory, but Ken never went out intending to end someone's career and/or cripple them. You can see it in the above video: He gets Dijk in the heel hook, twists, and when he taps and starts screaming, Ken puts up his hands and you can tell it was completely unintentional. |
OP: You said Don claimed Ken crippled 5 people, but I don't where you (or, if you got it from a Frye interview, where he himself) got that info. The only people I know of are Ryushi Yanagisawa (they fought in Pancrase, and Yanagisawa tried a last-ditch attempt to get a rope escape while Ken had him in an inverted heel hook, and he eventually tapped and sustained a torn tendon on his knee) and Leon Dijk (tried to get the rope and didn't respect Ken's leg lock, as you can see in the video included in my quoted post).
