The Year that Made The Predator: Don Frye's 1996 Ass Kicking Tour

The happiest news to come out of MMA this week has been the induction of Don Frye into the UFC Hall of Fame. This institution is vague, nonsensical and political: it is not an actual location and plenty of great UFC fighters like Frank Shamrock are never going to get in based on their relationships with the brass. Of course, that's what we tell ourselves until we hear the news that Don Frye is going in and then suddenly MMA fans are tripping over themselves to declare it an honor and that no one deserves it more. And I'm guilty of that too: I believe that if there's someone who deserves recognition from the old days it's The Predator.

A look down Frye's record might make it strange to add him to a hall of fame. He's beaten a who's who of 'who?' Most of Frye's victories come over guys who listed their styles as 'Pakua-Chan' and 'Moo Yea Do'. I can't believe I find myself defending the UFC Hall of Fame, but a fighter can and should be included more for their impact on the sport than for their actual record. Royce Gracie would have been a mediocre fighter in any era after his own—but he was the standard bearer for Brazilian jiu jitsu on the big stage and for that reason he is in the Hall of Fame. Every light heavyweight in the UFC today would lay a whooping on a prime Don Frye, but obviously this is not an award for the most skilled fighters ever or we would just induct the top five welterweights and lightweights and then swap them in and out to reflect the new order in a year's time. The important point is that for a time around 1996, Don Frye was considered one of the best-rounded fighters to step into the cage and an all around bad man.

There are two things you must consider about Don Frye when trying to understand his career in context. The first is that Frye fought at a time when the rules and principles of this sport were in flux. He grabbed the fence, he pounded on the backs of guys' heads and he pulled them around by their shorts, but at times he was also forbidden from punching. He could be warned for headbutting or kneeing the head of a downed opponent or applauded for these on any given night. The landscape of mixed martial arts was shifting underfoot and Frye was making use of the weapons he could as he found them.

The second consideration will really help you wrap your head around Frye. Frye's first stint in MMA, before his four-year hiatus and far less impressive second run, took place entirely through 1996. Frye burst onto the scene in February of 1996 and had his tenth and last UFC bout, winning the stupidly named Ultimate Ultimate tournament in December of the same year. Like Gustavus Adolphus, Frye forged his way to the top through battle, etched his mark on the landscape and then and left as abruptly as he arrived.

Don Frye entered UFC 8 with his old wrestling coach, Dan Severn in his corner and in his first bout Frye met the Pakua-Chan representative and undefeated veteran of two hundred fictional bareknuckle fights, Thomas Ramirez. The Predator jabbed in on his man, hooked off the jab and laid the four hundred pounder out stiff in seconds.

In his second bout of the evening Frye was already being touted as the best puncher the UFC had ever seen. He met Sam Adkins, a boxer, and promptly took him down and beat him into submission.

The two bouts took a combined total of fifty-six seconds and the small portion of the world that watched the grotty early days of the UFC knew that Frye was special. Why was Frye unique? He was a grappler, just like all of those men coming to own the MMA landscape but unlike his fellow wrestlers Severn and Shamrock, and later Coleman, Kerr and Randleman, Frye could box. A svelte two hundred and ten pounds and an active firefighter, Frye was in good shape to boot. He was light on his feet and carried hammers under his gloves. The fans had always wanted to see the knockouts but the ground fighting got in the way. Here was a man who could and would grapple but always sought the knockout.

Frye went on to win the UFC 8 tournament that night by besting Gary Goodridge in the final. Goodridge's monstrous power had allowed him to knock Paul Herrera unconscious with elbows from the crucifix and starch Jerry Bohlander with two swatting right hands while defending a kneebar, but where Goodridge had power. Frye had years of wrestling and boxing behind him. Frye would jab and duck Goodridge's return, pushing the arm wrestler to the fence and opening up with uppercuts from the single collar tie. Randy Couture would not begin fighting in mixed martial arts until 1997, so Frye was one of the first wrestlers to show just how effective clinch boxing could be.

Frye's roundedness and desire to finish fights often saw him concede bad positions but he had a strong whizzer game (which combined with his second dan in Judo to see him attempt some nice uchi-matas in his brief career) and he made use of the fence in ways that Randy Couture could only wish he was allowed to do.

Perhaps the most important point to remember in understanding Frye's career is that this was the era when men still came into the cage representing their styles. In a world of men claiming to be martial artists and attempting to prove that their school was superior, Frye was just a fighter and in that way was probably the truest martial artist of all. When opponents attempted to show what a real Karate/Taekwondo/Mee Yea Do man could do, Frye would dump them to the mat and give them a Rude Awakening.

The missed connection of Frye's career was The King of the Streets, Marco Ruas. Ruas was the other 'rounded' fighter of the day, being a competent kickboxer and grappler. Frye was scheduled to fight Ruas at UFC 9 in what could have been one of the best matches of the era, but Ruas was forced to pull out and was replaced by Amaury Bitetti. This coincided with John McCain's crusade against mixed martial arts (which you will remember petered out when his chums at Budweiser began sponsoring UFC events) and UFC 9 became a strange card wherein punches with a closed fist were forbidden but the rule was not really enforced. Big John McCarthy shouted "open your hand!" as Frye slammed in uppercut after uppercut against the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu exponent.

The sole loss of Frye's first run in mixed martial arts came at the hands of Mark Coleman. At UFC 10, The Hammer made his debut and ground through Moti Horenstein and Gary Goodridge in a combined nine minutes. Frye, meanwhile, exhausted himself in the guard of Mark Hall in his first bout, punching away at Hall's body from inside the closed guard and eventually forcing a stoppage after ten minutes of this. In his second bout of the night Frye took on Brian Johnston. Tank Abbott joked on commentary that Johnston's best strategy would be to throw in the towel because "wrestling is fighting now… it's a prerequisite". Johnston surprised everyone, however, by using his high school wrestling experience and the pounds he had on Frye to make Frye work. The finish came by way of Frye's elbows from side control in four and a half minutes but it felt like a lifetime to watch and the commentary team noted just how sloppy and tired Frye had looked.

When Coleman and Frye met in the final, Coleman mauled The Predator. Frye weighed in at two hundred and fourteen pounds, heavier than his Octagon debut, but Coleman was two hundred and forty five pounds of wrestling machine. This was Coleman at his best—not only overwhelmingly powerful but deceptively fast and technical. Coleman shot in on Frye and Frye sprawled on a front headlock. Coleman hit a drag and immediately took Frye's back, and it only got worse from there. Frye was 'well rounded' in 1996 but not enough to actually have ability off his back. The blows came in and Frye resorted to trying to stiff leg Coleman away, only to be driven back into the fence and pounded some more.

When Coleman passed Frye's guard and attempted his favourite neck crank, Frye was able to use the fence to get his hips out from under Coleman and drag himself up to his feet.

But Frye was spent. He was taken down again and beaten on. So the bout continued for eleven minutes until it was waved off.

Frye rebounded by going on to win the Ultimate Ultimate 96 tournament in December, beating Goodridge again by retirement, Hall again by submission in what is remembered as a fairly sketchy match (the two shared a manager), and finally Tank Abbott in the tournament final. The bout with Abbott was a barnburner and one of the more memorable showings of Abbott's often downplayed career. Abbott had starched two opponents earlier in the night with his incredible punching power and dropped Frye with a jab off the bat. The two then stood toe to toe, slugging it out in a loose clinch. As Frye pushed Abbott backwards, Abbott slipped. Again a grip on the fence allowed Frye to pull himself onto Abbott's back and he soon secured a choke for the finish.

In a similar move to his coach, Dan Severn, Frye then made the move to professional wrestling. In 2001, Frye returned to fight in PRIDE FC in a bout with Gilbert Yvel which saw the notoriously filthy kickboxer attempt to gouge out Frye's eyes in answer to takedown attempts. Frye had one of the most memorable bouts in PRIDE with Ken Shamrock—not for the in ring action but for the intensity of the rivalry between the two old timers. But Frye was never the force he had been in the early UFC events. Hidehiko Yoshida submitted him, then he lost a boring decision to the worn down old Mark Coleman, and then suffered an embarrassing high kick knockout by Gary Goodridge. Frye never regained his form but he did give us the incredible bout with Yoshihiro Takayama and a sad but gritty loss to James Thompson of all people.

Sure, he was only the best for a short while and he might have missed what could have been his best fighting years by making the switch to pro wrestling for four years in the middle there. But Frye had done as much as he could in a sport which was on the verge of being banned and had no money worth earning in it. While we complain about fighter pay in the modern era, compare the esteem and respect that boxer/wrestler/firefighter Stipe Miocic gets now with how boxer/wrestler/firefighter Frye was treated by society when he was competing in the early UFC events. The man fought everyone in front of him, put on the kind of fights everyone wanted to see, and actually looked like a mixed martial artist in a day before proper MMA gyms, weight classes and the unified rules. He deserves any accolade the UFC can give him and you could do much worse things with your afternoon than watching his year-long tour of kick-ass through the UFC.