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 I love combat sports. I've watched thousands of fights, I have seen fighters trained across an incredible variety of disciplines perform acts of amazing physical and technical acuity. But before any of that happened--before I knew the difference between leg kicks and oblique kicks, before I knew what 50/50 guard was or that 'gogoplata' was a real word--I was an unsupervised kid in a Blockbuster Video looking at a tape of a thing I'd been told was like professional wrestling if it was real.  And the very first fight on that video cassette, and thus the very first mixed martial arts bout of my life?  I would eventually fall in love with technique, precision and discipline. But this awkwardly brawling rear end in a top hat who knocked out some guy wearing sweatpants and then mocked his unconscious, concussed body? He was my introduction to mixed martial arts. And I could do nothing but accept it.  I learned, that day, that mixed martial arts is and will always be as much about the best fighters and fighting arts on the planet as it is about violent spectacle and people who are extremely fortunate to have it as a career option because their alternatives would almost certainly have seen them wind up in jail. When Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa fought each other back in February of 2022, I wrote about the Tank Abbott Curse. CarlCX posted:Tank Abbott was one of the UFC's first fan favorites. He was a big, pudgy, bearded brawler who had just enough technical skill to know he didn't want to use a single bit of it because his greatest success came from focusing on just punching people in the mouth as hard as he could. His adulation earned him a heavyweight title shot, which he lost badly. In doing so, he placed a curse on the UFC's heavyweight division. No matter how the sport grows, no matter how technical or accomplished the fighters, each heavyweight generation must have a pudgy brawler--each generation must have a Tank Abbott--and the curse cannot be lifted until one of them wins the belt. But it wasn't just the UFC. There have been dozens of Tank Abbotts, all across the globe, in every corner of mixed martial arts. They all share the curse. They all share the shame and the glory. Over the next couple weeks, we're going to go through them. If you're an old, ardent fan you'll get to enjoy a trip down memory lane as we visit some of the sport's biggest punchers and freakshows; if you're a new fan, you'll get some real silly mixed martial arts history lessons and learn about some of the sport's least successful yet oddly memorable facepunchers. And when it is done, we will crown the Tank Abbottiest of them. THE RULES I have collected sixteen of the fighters I feel most accurately represent the Tank Abbott spirit. For fairness and equality's sake they were thrown into a random number generator that arbitrarily paired them off into our initial round of sixteen. Each bout will be put to a poll, the thread will have a couple days to debate and vote, and the winner moves on. The quarterfinals and semifinals will each get an additional randomized shuffle, and eventually, we will crown the King of Tank Abbotts. Here's the golden rule, though: THIS IS NOT JUST A TOURNAMENT TO DETERMINE WHO THE BEST FIGHTER IS. Quality matters. Successfully knocking people out matters. But being Tank Abbott has never been about just being the best. Being Tank Abott is about commitment.
Let us begin.
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May 21, 2023 18:23
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 TAI TUIVASA vs JIMMY AMBRIZ IN THE RED CORNER:  TAI "BAM BAM" TUIVASA 6'2" / 265 lbs Active at 14-5 Winning ratio: 74% Victory method ratio: 93% KO, 0% SUB, 7% DEC Won and defended the Australian Fighting Championship Heavyweight title Best win: Derrick Lewis Worst loss: Blagoy Ivanov Record against other Abbotts: Beat Derrick Lewis It's fitting that our first fighter is Tai Tuivasa, the first man since Mark Hunt to threaten to break the Tank Abbott Curse. A former rugby player, Tai was plucked from the Australian fight scene as the country's heavyweight champion (as well as a two-time Frank Bianco Cup finalist in boxing, the highest of honors) but his UFC career nearly ended before it could truly start, as a three-fight losing streak almost cost him his contract. But his charisma, his wild brawling and his irrepressible need to chug beer out of shoes made him a fan favorite, and a five-fight knockout streak made him a contender. Had he won just one more time, Tai Tuivasa would have been fighting Jon Jones for the UFC heavyweight championship, which is one of the funniest combinations of words conceivable. Unfortunately, he got completely loving wrecked. Actual Kickboxer Ciryl Gane dismantled him, and then Actual Knockout Artist Sergei Pavlovich turned his lights out in under a minute. The dream of world champion Tai Tuivasa is, for the forseeable future, over. But his sacrifice in keeping the curse alive maintained his own status as a Tank Abbott candidate. IN THE BLUE CORNER:  JIMMY AMBRIZ 6'0" / 286 lbs Retired at 17-21-1 Winning ratio: 44% Victory method ratio: 65% KO, 29% SUB, 6% DEC King of the Cage super heavyweight champion, International Sport Combat Federation champion Best win: Rich Hale Worst loss: Pawel Nastula Record against other Abbotts: Beat Johnathan Ivey, loss to Alexandru Lungu Jimmy Ambriz is one of our lesser-known contestants, which is tragic, because he's been around longer than nearly all our contestants. "The Titan" has been fighting in combat sports since 2001 and his career has taken him absolutely loving everywhere, from King of the Cage championship bouts to losing for the first time against Josh Barnett at Antonio Inoki's completely insane NJPW Ultimate Crush card. He fought Jerome LeBanner in K-1 HERO'S, he pulled undercards in the WEC, he battled Ikuhisa Minowa in DREAM--he even fought in India's Super Fight League. Even in retirement, he's not truly retired: He now competes in the king of all sports, Ganryujima, where he loses fights by getting repeatedly chucked into a moat. And he did, as you can see, lose most of his fights. Jimmy Ambriz was big and strong and crazy enough to outwrestle Josh Barnett and trade punches with Jerome LeBanner, but he, in true Tank Abbott fashion, had gas for about three minutes of fighting. He could swing for the fences, he could bully people around with his mass, and he knew exactly one submission hold and that was more than enough. He not only never won the big one, he was never even close to the big one. But for twenty years, you could not find a bigger, brawlier, gassier man.  Not gonna lie: This was a tough draw for ol' Jimmy. Tai Tuivasa is one of the most beloved fighters in the sport today, and as his knockout ratio shows he's even more committed to the fistic arts than Ambriz. He punches out almost everyone he meets, he ritualistically guzzles post-fight shoe-beers and in more than a dozen UFC fights he's never even attempted a submission. It would be silly to deny that Tai is one of the top seeds to win this whole tournament and Jimmy is a relative unknown to all but the most degenerate of longterm MMA fans. The only real factor working to Jimmy's advantage here, paradoxically, is Tai's success. Tai, statistically, is a more successful knockout artist than the real Tank Abbott. Failure and underachieving are central tenets of Tank Abbottdom, and Tai, it could be argued, is the most successful fighter on this entire roster. The only five men to defeat Tai have been heavyweight champions across the globe, all five were in the top ten, and two of them have claims on being the #1 heavyweight at their peak. Tai Tuivasa is one of the top heavyweights in the UFC, has a very successful record, and is, even now, just a couple wins away from being right back in title contention. Jimmy Ambriz has submission losses to middleweights, somehow got beaten twice by Jeff Monson in back-to-back fights, and was last seen getting thrown into a moat by a disgraced sumo wrestler who was forced to resign for smoking marijuana. So who is the true Tank Abbott: The guy who wins, or the guy who loses?  CAST YOUR VOTE
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May 21, 2023 18:23
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If you GIS Jimmy Ambriz you'll never vote for anyone else.
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May 21, 2023 18:35
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I believe Fatherdog described Tank as "Better than anyone fatter, fatter than anyone better" Also, Jimmy Ambriz was the mysterious, masked Fighter X at the NYE Ganryu-jima and I instantly knew it was him, for no other man carries such a bulk.
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May 21, 2023 20:08
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Definitely feel like Tai's wins are holding him back here, but at the same time he hasn't been around long enough. There's no question in my mind that he's only gonna get Tankier as the years go by, and he'll definitely get both more, and funnier losses. Batting less than .500 is a pretty major feather in Jimmy's cap here too, although having multiple submissions might balance that out (unless those submissions are "press fat guy stomach against grounded opponent until tap"). Being above the weight limit to compete in most heavyweight divisions is also very powerful. Tough call here, but my heart tells me to go with the bloated, roided but still hefty, bleached haired beauty that is Jimmy.
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May 21, 2023 20:53
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I'm a professional wrestling nerd who wandered into this thread because I saw Tank Abbott, so I'm judging the contestants against the slightly different standard of Abbott's WCW run. And if you didn't keep up with 2000s WCW, that run sucked for two main reasons. 1) Tank didn't care about the kind of theatricality you need to actually work in professional wrestling. 2) He was pushed way harder than he should have been, because the booker thought he was way cooler than he was and considered him top-level talent. So, I voted for Jimmy Ambriz here. Tai is someone who seems like he knows how to play to a crowd, and he's still a big enough deal that he'd fit at the top of a card. But Jimmy? That man feels like a beefy midcard guy that someone will convince themselves could be in the main event because he's an established MMA guy.
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May 21, 2023 21:19
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This is glorious. I recognize all but like four or five of these guys and stoked for their matchups.
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May 21, 2023 22:26
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Can we realistically crown the Tank Abbottiest fighter when Tank Abbott is in the tournament? Can anyone be more Tank Abbott than Tank Abbott himself? If so, then what does that say about Tank Abbott??
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May 21, 2023 22:43
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I was wondering who would be revealed as a competitor and was iffy if butterbean would be there. More to say about him when his time comes I guess. Will say I don't recognise everyone in those pictures but am curious of a few names are there I feel like tai actually had a bit more technical skill than brawling to him? Which is weird to say when Jimmy has submission wins, but looking at his corner photo I feel like this elvis impersonator has more of the "gently caress it I'll figure it out" side to him
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May 21, 2023 23:03
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I wanna say that as of right now Jimmy is the favourite to win this thing, but I get the sense there are going to be far, far Tank-ier dudes coming up...
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May 21, 2023 23:47
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Bookmarking another great thread
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May 22, 2023 00:32
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Points for Tuivasa: - He drinks the nasty shoe Points for Ambriz: - He sucks rear end - He looks like a cartoon - He won a belt in King of the Cage - He's fought Warpath Wait did Warpath not make the cut!?!?!? Anyway Ambriz wins in a walk, Tuivasa is kind of good and therefore he can never be A Proper Tank Abbott
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May 22, 2023 00:38
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Ambriz is a large lad, absolute unit. Never heard of half of the roster here so keen to see the analysis as the thread goes on.
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May 22, 2023 00:42
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Pb and Jellyfish posted:Definitely feel like Tai's wins are holding him back here, but at the same time he hasn't been around long enough. There's no question in my mind that he's only gonna get Tankier as the years go by, and he'll definitely get both more, and funnier losses. This is extremely true, and when we one day must do the Tank Abbott 2, I would not be shocked if he's down to about a 50% success rate. Lurks With Wolves posted:I'm a professional wrestling nerd who wandered into this thread because I saw Tank Abbott, so I'm judging the contestants against the slightly different standard of Abbott's WCW run. And if you didn't keep up with 2000s WCW, that run sucked for two main reasons. 1) Tank didn't care about the kind of theatricality you need to actually work in professional wrestling. 2) He was pushed way harder than he should have been, because the booker thought he was way cooler than he was and considered him top-level talent. Welcome, wrestling friend. Even as someone who was there for the extremely loving bizarre Russo choice of making Tank Abbott a boy band enthusiast and saw how it went, I'm still perplexed there haven't been more MMA/wrestling crossovers with the Abbotts of the world. It seems like such an easy and untapped wellspring of big, scary dudes. AndyElusive posted:Can we realistically crown the Tank Abbottiest fighter when Tank Abbott is in the tournament? Can anyone be more Tank Abbott than Tank Abbott himself? If so, then what does that say about Tank Abbott?? The ultimate goal of every good parent is to be dethroned by their progeny. Boco_T posted:Wait did Warpath not make the cut!?!?!? I had a big fight with myself over if Johnathan Ivey, Warpath or Paul Buentello were getting in, and ultimately decided Buentello had disqualified himself by actually getting in shape for his run at 205 and Warpath, on closer inspection, wasn't actually in that bad shape, he was just a kind of middling fighter who looked worse than he did because he fought in a singlet. (I had initially thought about Ross Clifton before deciding that was way too morbid.)
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May 22, 2023 00:45
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let me know if any of the fighters have held a knife to their opponents' throats before each vote please
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May 22, 2023 01:22
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Boco_T posted:Wait did Warpath not make the cut!?!?!? CarlCX posted:and Warpath, on closer inspection, wasn't actually in that bad shape, he was just a kind of middling fighter who looked worse than he did because he fought in a singlet. Agreed -- I dare say in the realm of regular people, Warpath is pretty in shape. He'd need at least another 40lbs to be knock on the doors here.
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May 22, 2023 02:20
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Cavauro posted:let me know if any of the fighters have held a knife to their opponents' throats before each vote please Please Tank was just trying to drum up business for his barbering hustle.
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May 22, 2023 02:32
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Oh man, glad I caught onto this thread before missing the first vote. Not really familiar with Ambriz but couldn't in good conscience vote for Tai because he's been far too successful to really be Tank.
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May 22, 2023 02:51
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Even if I didn't think Tai had too good a record, Jimmy is the pick here. No man with that little muscle definition and sporting a neon green mullet could not have a place in this fight. Plus, tell me this isn't a Tank Abbot Moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Df3qn0vIIo
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May 22, 2023 04:49
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Liquid Communism posted:Even if I didn't think Tai had too good a record, Jimmy is the pick here. No man with that little muscle definition and sporting a neon green mullet could not have a place in this fight. That was neither the fastest nor the most hilarious. Jimmy looks like a gta3 character in this video
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May 22, 2023 08:35
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Before I forget huge thanks to Carl for starting this thread, learning about these powering punching meat clowns is exactly the boost in spirits I needed right now. I laughed so hard when you first posted about the Tank Abbott curse and I can't wait to find out about the careers and highlights of these beauties.
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May 22, 2023 20:55
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ilmucche posted:That was neither the fastest nor the most hilarious. The thing that struck me most is that his traps are so blown up that I don't think he bent his upper back or neck that entire fight, even when ground and pounding to confirm the finish. It's wild.
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May 23, 2023 04:58
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  Tai Tuivasa, the Successful Abbott, has been eliminated. Match two begins this afternoon.
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May 23, 2023 10:28
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Wrestling fan here. Just wanted to post these gifs from Tank Abbott's run in WCW:   That is all.
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May 23, 2023 11:19
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 Tai, too much of a winner and lost.
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May 23, 2023 15:32
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 (for the record, johnathan ivey has two hands) JOHNATHAN IVEY vs HENRY "SENTORYU" MILLER IN THE RED CORNER:  JOHNATHAN IVEY 5'9" / 273 lbs Retired at 41-58 (1) Winning ratio: 41.4% Victory method ratio: 17% KO, 78% SUB, 5% DEC Landed a people's elbow in a professional fight, unsuccessfully did a Dark Souls roll to Ken Shamrock Best win: "Dirty" Harry Moskowitz Worst loss: Adonis Nunn Record against other Abbotts: Losses to Jimmy Ambriz, Chris Barnett If the regional circuits mattered to the big picture of mixed martial arts, Johnathan Ivey would be a star. "The Leg Lock Monster" is goddamn near an OG of the sport, having gotten his start in Indiana's legendary HOOKnSHOOT promotion all the way back in 1998. Unlike everyone else on this list: He never really got any further. In a career that spanned an astonishing one hundred professional fights, outside of a single undercard appearance on a Pancrase show in 2017 and a main event on Jorge Masvidal's bareknuckle MMA promotion, Ivey spent his entire tenure as a mainstay of Wild Bill's Fight Nights and H.B. Dick Promotions, where he almost solely beat up rookies and lost--badly--to everyone else. So why, aside from mass, is he here? Put simply: He is the jester spirit that lives in the heart of the Abbott. Just as Tank himself spent the most visible years of his career as a comical entertainer in World Championship Wrestling, Ivey spent his entire career trying to be memorably bizarre. He was a 5'9" superheavyweight whose fighting specialty was leglocks. He spent an entire pre-fight readout staring at Jimmy Ambriz's crotch. He fought Ken Shamrock and, unable to muster offense on the 46 year-old, began desperately doing Dark Souls dodge rolls in the hopes of catching his feet. He once paused in the middle of knocking out Joe Nameth to hit the ropes and drop the People's Elbow on him. For twenty-three years, he was large, active, and cared less about winning than being profoundly loving weird. IN THE BLUE CORNER:  HENRY "SENTORYU" MILLER 5'9" / 280 lbs Retired at 6-16 (1) Winning ratio: 26% Victory method ratio: 83% KO, 17% SUB, 0% DEC First mainland American to reach Makuuchi in Sumo, beat Asashōryū once Best win: Min-Soo Kim Worst loss: Giant Silva Record against other Abbotts: Loss to Zuluzinho Despite having a career that spanned almost ten years and two dozen fights, Henry Miller is one of the few fighters who was probably better respected in his original sport. Miller is half-Japanese and was born in Tokyo before moving back to St. Louis as a child, and long before his tenure as a mixed martial artist he competed in sumo under the shikona Sentoryū, where he spent more than fifteen years struggling as a 5'9" foreigner to achieve his childhood dreams of becoming Yokozuna. On one hand: He became the first non-Hawaiian American to reach the Maegashira ranks! On the other: It took him 72 tournaments, longer than any other foreigner in history. Constant injuries and his own advancing age led him to call it quits in 2003, and fortunately, Pride Fighting Championships was constantly salivating for sumo wrestlers. But by the time he made his mixed martial arts debut in 2004 Henry was already in his mid-thirties, and he was a 5'9" superheavyweight, and he had a decade and a half of sumo injuries. He could barely wrestle, he only vaguely knew what grappling was, and he had enough gas for roughly three minutes of fighting. So he swung for the god damned fences. His hands almost never left his hips and that meant every punch he threw was a knockout shot--and if they didn't work, he was toast. He fought like he had a chip on his shoulder, and in some ways, he did. His entire career--his extremely unsuccessful, 6-16 career--was built on leftover celebrity from the sport he actually loved and ultimately failed to conquer. You'd be mad, too. This is, unequivocally, a battle of odd men out. Johnathan Ivey has almost five times more submissions than knockouts, and even by Tank Abbott underachiever standards Sentoryu is closer to an out-and-out jobber than a journeyman. If you were a WWF fan back in the Attitude era, you may remember a stable of dancing circus freaks named The Oddities that were backed up by a 7'2" man named Giant Silva who was seemingly incapable of bending his knees. That man--six years later--submitted Henry Miller. He only went to a decision once in his life, and it was against a welterweight, and he lost. Johnathan Ivey has a much better record and submitted dozens of people, but you have never heard of a single one of them. So we must instead ask where the line of esoterica begins and ends with a Tank Abbott. Johnathan Ivey was so singlemindedly focused on violently tearing knees apart that he would roll his almost 300-pound body into a ball and fling himself at his enemies. Can a Tank Abbott be a grappler, or does a love of violence have to come from the fists? Sentoryu is the very image of a traditional Abbott, wanting only to angrily wing haymakers until he or his opponent fell over while at best possessing only basic wrestling offense, but does his traditionalism make up for his lack of success? Is Ivey the better Tank-level achiever for his scores of victories in the face of his inability to beat a single person with a winning record, or is Miller an over/underachieving inspiration for fighting through two incredibly difficult combat sports through sheer physicality only to ultimately be rejected from both? Is Johnathan Ivey the joy in Tank Abbott's heart, or is Henry Miller the determination? CAST YOUR VOTE
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May 23, 2023 18:25
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If Ivey didnt have a tattoo of noted child predator and bigot Travis Fulton, this would be a much tougher choice That being said, gotta go with Sentoryu e: Though, in Tank's book, he does name his self insert character's dog Adolph, so maybe racism is part and parcel of being a Tank Abbott LobsterMobster fucked around with this message at 18:43 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 18:38
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I can't not vote for the guy who was at one point among the 30 or so best sumo wrestlers and also lost to Giant Silva.
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May 23, 2023 18:52
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LobsterMobster posted:If Ivey didnt have a tattoo of noted child predator and bigot Travis Fulton, this would be a much tougher choice I went back and forth about whether to talk about Travis Fulton. On one hand: Relevant to Ivey's story and rise. On the other: Travis Fulton is such a shithead it kind of overshadows things, and also, gently caress Travis Fulton. For wrestling and othersuch fans unfamiliar: Travis Fulton was MMA's most prolific fighter, between MMA and boxing he had 400+ professional bouts, and even though he wasn't all that great, he was a sort of icon of activity and perseverance. Johnathan Ivey idolized Fulton as a legend, got a tattoo of Fulton on his leg, and once fought and almost knocked out Fulton but Ivey forfeited in mid-fight because he didn't want to hit him anymore. And then Fulton turned out to be an almost comically racist bigot. And then Fulton got in trouble for repeated cases of domestic abuse. And then Fulton turned out to be a pedophile who got arrested for trying to make child pornography! And then Fulton hung himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial. gently caress Travis Fulton.
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May 23, 2023 19:07
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I spent almost 20 abysmal minutes watching motherfucking Johnathan Ivey "fight" Ken Shamrock in one of the worst MMA matches I've ever watched, which is pretty par for the course when it comes to anything involving Ken Shamrock. The fight had Ivey commentary over it but I had that poo poo on mute because what could he possibly be saying that would add anything interesting to the bout? All so I could see Ivey do the Dark Souls roll.
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May 23, 2023 19:50
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Was struggling to decide who to vote for since they were both so bizarre, but that Fulton story made it an easy pick to vote for Miller. The man lost to Giant Silva 
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May 23, 2023 20:12
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Jonathan Ivey also once faked a heart attack to try to sucker his opponent in. Do we have any 2023 pics of his tats? Does he still have the Fulton one? And to what extent should "Scumbag" disqualify a guy here? I'd say the most important note against Ivey is that he has won more fights by submission than by KO.
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May 24, 2023 05:05
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CommonShore posted:Jonathan Ivey also once faked a heart attack to try to sucker his opponent in. For the record, I also thought this until doing the research for this thread; it turns out that's just one of those memes that the MMA internet adopted. This was actually IN the Travis Fulton fight, Fulton hits Ivey with a body kick and the crowd oohed, so Ivey played up the body kick hurting because he thought it would pop the crowd, then ran forward punching. Sadly, Ivey's only fought once since Fulton's downfall and he wore long shorts so who knows about the tattoo. He has no personal social media and he had a youtube channel but it was mostly reviews of horror movies and the occasional mukbang and hasn't been updated in several years.
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May 24, 2023 05:34
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Well I was all team Miller until I heardCarlCX posted:he had a youtube channel but it was mostly reviews of horror movies and the occasional mukbang and hasn't been updated in several years. But I think the large number of subs hurts him, and honestly sumo is not only the best sport, but thinking it will transfer well to professional beat-a-guy-to-death sport is an excellent mindset.
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May 24, 2023 20:30
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Oh, I forgot to note in things I discovered doing research: We were robbed of one of the funniest things that could have happened, as Johnathan Ivey was supposed to fight UFC vet and career welterweight Shonie Carter in an openweight fight before Carter decided to just fuckin' retire instead.
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May 25, 2023 00:22
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  Johnathan Ivey, the Leglock Abbott, has been eliminated. Match three begins this morning/afternoon. Oh, also: Cavauro posted:let me know if any of the fighters have held a knife to their opponents' throats before each vote please
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May 25, 2023 09:04
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I forgot to vote but am happy sentoryu won. Ivey trying to be goofy does not seem at all in the tank abbott spirit
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May 25, 2023 09:34
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 TANK ABBOTT vs DADA 5000 IN THE RED CORNER:  DAVID "TANK" ABBOTT 6'0" / 250 lbs Retired at 10-15 Winning ratio: 40% Victory method ratio: 70% KO, 20% SUB, 10% DEC Unsuccessfully fought for the UFC Heavyweight Championship and the King of the Cage Superfight Championship, held a knife to a man's throat on a WCW pay-per-view Best win: Paul Varelans Worst loss: Ruben Villareal Record against other Abbotts: Both won and lost against Wesley Correira We've arrived at the reason for the season. Before his nickname and his fame, he was just David Abbott, the surprisingly accomplished amateur boxer and wrestler who was, at one point, ranked as one of the eight best Junior College wrestlers in America. He might have missed his chance at legend and gone on to an entirely respectable athletic career were it not for his part-time job as a liquor store clerk, where he received a six-month prison sentence after beating the poo poo out of a customer for the crime of, quote, "being a smart-rear end." His street-fighting reputation preceded him, and while he says the Gracies were too afraid of him to let him into UFC 1, by UFC 6 he was ready to leave an impact on the sport. The event still stands as an almost canonical explanation of the place of Tank Abbotts: He laid quick, brutal beatings on his first two opponents, then got outworked and submitted by the first fighter he met who actually knew what he was doing. For a year, Tank's primary contributions to the sport came in the form of unwittingly giving it a taste of rules. The first stand-up in UFC history came from an exhausted Tank laying in full guard for ten minutes. Fish-hooking was made illegal because Tank wouldn't stop putting his thumbs in his opponents' mouths. In a rule that really shouldn't have been necessary, the UFC adopted a "don't throw fighters out of the cage" policy after Tank attempted to chuck Cal Worsham into the audience. His love of wild fisticuffs, and the visible pleasure he took in hurting people, made him one of the first stars of the sport--so much so that the UFC gave him a heavyweight title match on a two-fight losing streak because he had become enough of a celebrity to be featured on a UFC-themed episode of Friends. Of course, he lost that match. The first successful defense of the UFC Heavyweight Championship comes from Tank Abbott's failure. He lost most of his matches, and won just two of the eleven fights in the last fifteen years of his career. But that's fine. Tank Abbott's failure is why we are here today. IN THE BLUE CORNER:  DHAFIR "DADA 5000" HARRIS 6'3" / 265 lbs Retired at 2-0 (1) Winning ratio: 66.7% Victory method ratio: 100% KO, 0% SUB, 0% DEC Banned from professional fighting over health concerns Best win: Tim Papp Worst loss: Technically none, but Kimbo Slice Record against other Abbotts: None While Tank Abbott was the brawling legend of early mixed martial arts, the turn of the century and the advent of streaming video introduced the world to a street fighter named Kimbo Slice. Kimbo was such an icon of fighting that he was one of the world's most recognized combat sports figures years before he ever actually competed. Much like Tank himself, that fame drew imitators--and no imitator was more widely known than Dada 5000, thanks in no small part to a documentary named Dawg Fight that chronicled his rise from the world's greatest street fighter to mixed martial arts star. Dada was shown in no uncertain terms to be an amazing fighter, a wonderful person, and a genuine threat to everyone who dared to step in the cage with him. None of which, of course, was particularly true. Dada 5000 winged a lot of haymakers at people in his time, but arguably, he's never completed a true professional fight in his life. Dada 5000 made his mixed martial arts debut at 2010's ACTION FIGHT LEAGUE ROCK-N-RUMBLE 2 against the 0-4 Cedric James, and he was, in fact, getting the crap beaten out of him until the referee inexplicably stood James up while he had Dada 5000 mounted and was punching him in the face, at which point an exhausted James got knocked out. Dada 5000 took on the debuting Tim Papp next, whom he also dropped in under a minute; Papp would retire three years later at 1-10. Dada 5000 would fight only one more time: A climactic, Bellator-promoted battle against his idol and rival, Kimbo Slice, in 2015, which would go down in history as one of the most disgraceful MMA fights of all time. But hold onto that fight for a moment. We'll be coming back to it. I was excited when the random number generator picked this fight. It's very, very hard to imagine who could possibly contend with Tank Abbott in a tournament predicated on who is the most like Tank Abbott, because he is, in fact, Tank Abbott. The trope is his. His commitment to giving people three to five minutes of breathless violence was so unusually complete that it made him a celebrity and carried him from heavyweight championship matches to sitcom appearances to almost winning the WCW title. His brand of angry scumbag violence was so instantaneously identifiable that twenty years after his last UFC appearance he's still brought up as the patron saint of brawlers. Dada 5000, unquestionably, cannot compete on record. Tank Abbott competed across the UFC, Pride and Strikeforce alike, faced (and lost to) some of the greatest fighters in history, and knocked several people out so viciously people still remember it decades later. Dada 5000 had three fights: One of them was a screwjob, one of them was a jobber squash, and the third was a worst-fight-of-all-time contender that saw him get knocked out by Kimbo Slice only to have the decision overturned thanks to the stunning revelation that Kimbo was on steroids. He can't even compete on style: He was a wild-armed brawler, but he wasn't very good at it. So why are we here? How could there possibly be any question about who wins this match? Here's the thing about that Kimbo Slice fight I asked you to hold onto: Dada 5000 loving died. Dada 5000 didn't lose by TKO because he got hit, he just sort of fell over and the fight was waved off. This is because he was so out of shape, and so unprepared for a real fight, that after eleven and a half minutes he punched himself all the way into cardiac arrest. He had to be stretchered out of the arena, hospitalized and resuscitated after suffering another heart attack during his treatment. Dada 5000 started a bareknuckle fighting organization and he himself cannot fight in it because the state of Florida, which currently permits bowhunting people for sport, took one look at the medical records from the Kimbo fight and told Dada 5000 that he will never, ever be licensed to compete again. It may not be possible to be more Tank Abbott than Tank Abbott. Tank Abbott is unquestionably a better Tank Abbott than Dada 5000 by any objective measurement. But there has never been--and god willing, never again will be--a fighter so dedicated to the singular art of being angrily out of shape that it temporarily killed him in mid-fight. Does Tank Abbott continue to be Tank Abbott by the obvious virtue of being an all-around better Tank Abbott? Or does Dada 5000 win by virtue of reaching unrivaled perfection in one specific field of the Abbott arts? CAST YOUR VOTE
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May 25, 2023 19:06
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Tank all the way, Shoot Flair Flop Gang
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May 25, 2023 19:16
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the point most in favour of Dada imo is the Trigon barge fight incident: tl;dr Dada tried to start a "fisticuffs" promotion which was like a weird hybrid ruleset that i think involved grappling but immediate standups, or something, and the fights would take place in an equilaterial triangle cage called the Trigon. And then when they couldn't get licensed he was going to have the fights on a barge in international waters. It didn't happen and the failure of the scheme almost gets my vote (where success wouldn't have gotten it). The argument against Dada imo is that he was less of a Tank and more of a Tank cosplayer, having not fought any real fights. A secondary point in Dada's favour though, is that if anyone is worthy of specifically pushing Abbot out of hte tournament and thus allowing us to crown someone else, it might be in this matchup. Tough choice.
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May 25, 2023 19:25
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