The Tank Abbott Tournament: Crowning a cursed competitor

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CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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.

A commitment to being large, angry, and visibly out of shape
A commitment to using violence over technique even when you probably shouldn't
A commitment to overachieving by somehow getting further than you probably should
A commitment to underachieving by never, ever winning the big one

One day, if a Tank Abbott wins a championship, the curse will break and a Tank Abbott can officially be anything they want. Here, now, all they can be is the best Tank Abbott they can.

Let us begin.

# ¿ May 21, 2023 18:23

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 06:43

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 21, 2023 18:23

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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.

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.

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.)

# ¿ May 22, 2023 00:45

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Tai Tuivasa, the Successful Abbott, has been eliminated. Match two begins this afternoon.

# ¿ May 23, 2023 10:28

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

(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?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 23, 2023 18:25

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

LobsterMobster posted:

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

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.

# ¿ May 23, 2023 19:07

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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.

# ¿ May 24, 2023 05:34

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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.

# ¿ May 25, 2023 00:22

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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

hey, Cavauro, a guy in the next vote held a knife to his opponent's throat that one time

# ¿ May 25, 2023 09:04

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

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?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 25, 2023 19:06

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

ilmucche posted:

that's kind of what i was trying to get at with my post too. dada fought, he wanted to fight. tank really seemed like he was there to hurt people

To be fair to Dada 5000, there's a whole lot of video footage of him very clearly enjoying beating the poo poo out of untrained people on the street. I don't think there's actually that much air separating the degree to which they ENJOYED beating people up, I think Tank just had the benefit of both being slightly better at beating up actual trained fighters and, most importantly, coming in at a time where other people had no loving idea what they were doing and would get scared shitless of this weird grizzly bear wrestler man trying to break their skull.

Like, it's one thing when Tank Abbott is fighting John Matua or Steve Nelmark; if you watch Tank vs Cabbage, or Mo Smith, or basically anyone he knows is actually decent, he visibly shifts out of 'I LUST FOR VIOLENCE AND AM COMING FOR YOUR HEAD' mode and into 'alright i'm gonna jab and clinch and boy i sure wish you would stop kicking my leg' mode. They're similar in that way, it's just for Tank "anyone I know is better than me" was the upper grade of professional heavyweights and for Dada it was just, y'know, almost everybody who had actually bothered to train.

# ¿ May 26, 2023 08:02

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

ilmucche posted:

Would you consider chuck the successful tank?

Also I missed this question initially and I think it's an interesting one, because honestly, I don't think Chuck was really much of a brawler at all. Chuck gets lumped in with brawlers because he was a knockout artist with weird, lumpy-looking technique, but his striking offense was actually pretty ahead of its time--at a point in the sport where most people were still bullrushing and sticking to specific striking styles, he was actually pretty patient and good at mixing up his game and using his weirdly square footwork to frame people for counters. The whole "Chuck is so powerful he knocks people out going backwards" meme has always been kind of incorrect; it's not that he was brutally powerful, it's that he was accurate as hell. If you go back and watch those knockouts now, he's remarkably good at timing his strikes, and that plus getting people to chase him earned him a ton of success.

But his defense was absolute garbage and he only ever made that offense work because he was fast enough to skirt out of the way and had enough of a chin to take lumps when he hosed up, so the moment his reflexes started slowing down and he started feeling the effects of ten years of fighting and/or cocaine, he just sort of collapsed. Either way I'd say his fighting was too focused on timing and accuracy to qualify for the singleminded violence required for Abbotdom.

# ¿ May 26, 2023 08:55

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

LobsterMobster posted:

When I wrote for Uproxx, I had written up the announcement of Dada's Barge Fights, and then one of the sports editors asked me if I wanted to go to Miami (where I knew no one) and then get on a barge that was going to international waters to cover the bouts live

Since I didn't want to be murdered, I politely declined the opportunity

Also, for Uproxx, I did a breakdown of Tank's novel, "Befor There Were Rules". I am still waiting for the 2nd and 3rd installments that are obviously never coming.

This has been my contribution to this matchup

My friend, you need wait no longer.

Published in 2019 and 2021 respectively, and on sale on Amazon for the low, low price of $20 per paperback copy or free with your kindle unlimited membership.

# ¿ May 26, 2023 19:24

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Dada 5000, the Revenant Abbott, has been eliminated. Match four begins this afternoon.

CarlCX fucked around with this message at 10:19 on May 27, 2023

# ¿ May 27, 2023 10:17

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

ALEXANDRU LUNGU vs CHRIS BARNETT

IN THE RED CORNER:

ALEXANDRU "SANDU" LUNGU
6'0" / 352 lbs
Active at 21-5
Winning ratio: 81%
Victory method ratio: 48% KO, 52% SUB, 0% DEC
Once disqualified in a kickboxing match for shooting a takedown and throwing ground and pound
Best win: Tom Erikson
Worst loss: Tomasz Czerwiński
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Jimmy Ambriz, lost to Chris Barnett

A recurring theme of Tank Abbotts is a core competency in martial arts of their youth. Alexandru "Sandu" Lungu was, for a time, one of Romania's best judoka. He won twelve championships across multiple countries and even three world championships, and for most of it, he competed around 210-220 pounds, at which weight he was already a broad, imposing figure. By the time he had his final official judo competitions in 2004, he was competing in openweight, anything-goes contests. By the time he made his 2005 mixed martial arts debut in Pride, he weighed 368 pounds. His flexibility, his throws and his stamina were gone, and in their place he had learned how to swing his entire mass behind his fists.

The very first punch of Alexandru Lungu's career was a big giant right hand, and it made James Thompson faceplant on the canvas. Of course, Lungu still lost by TKO. He didn't really get knocked out--he just swung one last big right hand with so much force that it spun him a full 180 degrees, decided he was done, and simply put his head outside of the ring and waited until the referee stopped the fight, and thus, a legend was born. Lungu blazed a trail across the Romanian regional circuit, but his 81% success rate looks less impressive when you realize the combined records of everyone he beat measures out to 65-75--and 29 of those wins come from exactly two people. As you can see from his submission record, a surprising number of Lungu's fights have ended on the ground--but he doesn't really take people down, he just fights the calibre of competition that tends to sort of get tired and fall over because the alternative is Alexandru Lungu bolo-punching them in the face. His most common submission method is, in fact, the Smother Choke, where he just buries people under his bulk until they give up.

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

CHRIS "BEASTBOY" BARNETT
5'9" / 268 lbs
Active at 23-8
Winning ratio: 74%
Victory method ratio: 78% KO, 0% SUB, 22% DEC
Won and defended the Island Fights Super Heavyweight Championship, managed to actually miss the UFC heavyweight weight limit
Best win: Walt Harris
Worst loss: Hyun Man Myung
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Johnathan Ivey and Alexandru Lungu

Before he was Beastboy, Chris Barnett was an unsigned regional superheavyweight champion known mainly as Huggy Bear. His past reads like a martial arts movie: He was raised and trained by a married pair of Taekwondo black belts, he excelled enough at wrestling to earn a college scholarship for it, and his entry into the world of mixed martial arts came not from an intentional attempt to seek it out, but from a friend seeing Barnett's surprising agility in a college dance battle and inviting him to train. Just a couple years later Barnett was tearing up the regional scene, and just six years after that, he was 13-1 and had victories over successful UFC fighters.

And he couldn't get into the UFC. Because he didn't fight at a weight class the UFC offered. For most of his regional career, Chris Barnett was one of the world's greatest superheavyweight fighters. He tilted the scales at 300-340 pounds--and that helped make him a star, because in what seemed like a physical impossibility, 5'9", 340-pound Chris Barnett would dance his way to the Inoki Genome Fight ring, brutalize people with spinning hook kicks, do a cartwheel for funsies, and leave. It was a fantastic act! And it kept him severely limited, because by god, if he had to fight for more than a few minutes every one of those 300+ pounds made their presence clear on his cardio. In 2019 he decided to get serious about making it to the big show before he retired, he successfully dropped to the heavyweight limit, and a couple years later he was wheelkicking people in the UFC.

And, y'know, becoming the first UFC fighter to ever miss the weight limit for heavyweight. It would be easy to cite that as a monolithic achievement in itself, but it turns out a big part of his renewed weight struggle was grief over the death of his wife, so let it instead stand quietly as a testament to love.

In direct spite of our randomly-selected matchups, this is the statistically unlikely case where two of our Tank Abbott candidates have actually fought one another. Beastboy and Sandu did battle for South Korea's Road FC back in 2018, and like many of Lungu's opponents Barnett fell over--because, of course, he threw a spinning wheel kick--and nearly got smothered for it, but he managed to buck Lungu off his back, sit on him and punch him until it became clear that while he wasn't in an enormous amount of trouble, Alexandru Lungu had made the command decision not to even bother trying to get back up.

So there is no question about which of the two is a better fighter. But does that mean Barnett is the better Tank Abbott?

Alexandru Lungu is definitely the most classically accurate of the two. He has grappling expertise he chooses to barely use, he swings giant hamhock fists at people with little regard for strategy, his cultivation of mass both enables his punching power and places a strict time limit on his ability to use it, and he violently crushes the world's half-trained scrubs but generally-speaking gets crushed by fighters who actually know what they're doing. He even brought his talents to the Romanian kickboxing scene and is, as of now, 15-2! And almost all of those wins are against people who hadn't really kickboxed before. And one of his two losses came from getting disqualified after he got tired of kickboxing and decided to just throw his opponent down and start punching him on the floor.

Disqualifying, as a kickboxer. In character, as an Abbott.

Chris Barnett, by contrast, is another Tank with a twist, except the twist is literal and it's the way he kicks people. We've already discussed the way technique and the practice thereof can interfere with the traditionally blunt-force-trauma-centric ways of the Tank, but I posit Barnett is an interesting case study in how obsession with a specific kind of violence, and a dedication to being out of shape, can pen a fighter into a reputation they would otherwise easily escape. Chris Barnett is, genuinely, an extremely talented fighter. He hits like a truck, he moves remarkably quickly for a heavyweight let alone a superheavyweight, he's got a rock-solid chin and his ability to mix his attacks together is notable for a division that still relies on 1-2s as much as trashweight does. He's even a solid offensive wrestler who has, demonstrably, suplexed the poo poo out of people.

He could be a champion. But he's not. Because he cannot ever stop himself from fighting like Chris Barnett. He will throw 360-degree double-jump spinning heel kicks where a jab would have sufficed. He will exhaust himself attempting low-percentage attacks because those are what make fighting interesting for his heart. And he will absolutely refuse to manage his cardio well enough to let him actually get away with it.

Lungu is clearly the stylistically more violent fighter. Barnett is clearly the fighter more hurt by his conditioning. The only question marks are achievement. Lungu has more wins, but they're predominantly over all the rookies Romania has to offer: Does that mean rather than overachieving or underachieving, he's simply fighting on par with expectations? Barnett has better wins and more knockouts, even if they come from fancy technique, but he's 50-50 in the UFC despite being able to spinning kick a 6'2" man in the face: Does that mean he's overachieving given his size and shape, or underachieving by being so bent on said fancy techniques that he'll lose fights because of them?

Do wheel kicks disqualify you from being Tank Abbott? Or does losing to everyone with a winning record?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 27, 2023 19:47

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

I think different personal standpoints on who does or doesn't qualify as a Tank Abbott is kind of the fun. Tank Abbottdom lives in the philosophical gray area where there are both objective and subjective measurements for defining it, and that's how you get to questions like if a leglock specialist or a guy who does jumping tornado kicks can still be a Tank Abbott.

Also for the first time the poll is a perfectly even 50/50.

# ¿ May 28, 2023 04:26

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

The Twirling Abbott has been eliminated. Match five begins this afternoon.

# ¿ May 29, 2023 10:59

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

WESLEY "CABBAGE' CORREIRA VS AORIGELE

IN THE RED CORNER:

WESLEY "CABBAGE" CORREIRA
6'3" / 253 lbs
Retired at 21-16
Winning ratio: 57%
Victory method ratio: 80% KO, 10% SUB, 5% DEC, 5% DQ
Icon Sport heavyweight champion, Superbrawl 24 quarterfinalist
Best win: Travis Wiuff
Worst loss: Kazuhiro Hamanaka
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Tank Abbott, Lost to Tank Abbott, Beat Butterbean in kickboxing

Wesley Correira might actually be the most well-rounded Abbott in this competition. Before he ever stepped into a cage he had already trained in boxing, wrestling, judo and karate, and within the first couple fights of his career, as a part of the then-small Hawaiian mixed martial arts community, he was training with BJ Penn, Falaniko Vitale and the Inoue brothers. His gym nicknamed him "Cabbage" thanks to the way his bald head and soft features reminded them of Cabbage Patch dolls, and armed with a solid martial background and a silly moniker he was loosed on the Hawaiian fight circuit, where he utilized his many skills by ignoring them almost entirely in favor of wild brawling.

Fighters, generally speaking, are known less for the fullness of their nature than the most singularly memorable parts of their careers. For some, this is a particular knockout or submission; for others, a run of competition or even a title reign. Cabbage is entrenched in memory for one of the worst possible reasons: An impossibly solid chin. He was famous for being so ludicrously tough and addicted to brawling that he would take dozens of knockout punches to the face without dropping, all in the name of getting a chance to swing back and catch opponents who thought they had him where they wanted him. Against the 1-0 and 11-14 fighters of the world, it worked fantastically! Against people who were actually good, most famously Tim Sylvia, it got him outstruck 155-26 and forced his corner to throw in the towel so he didn't die.

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

AORIGELE
6'2" / 360 lbs
Retired (?) at 8-3 (1)
Winning ratio: 66.7%
Victory method ratio: 100% KO, 0% SUB, 0% DEC
Once kicked in the groin so hard he was hospitalized
Best win: Kazuyuki Fujita
Worst loss: Hong Man Choi
Record against other Abbotts: None

Like, just look at him. Aori-goddamn-gele. The "Heavyweight Supernova" was one of China's absolute best superheavyweights, which is, in fairness, a category he had more or less all to himself--the Chinese heavyweight scene is about a dozen people wide and one of them, inexplicably, is former UFC middleweight Jeremy May--but that did not stop Aorigele from still making an international accounting for himself. His Sanda background made him an instant favorite in China's Kung-Fu Championships, but his actual notoreity came from South Korea's Road FC, which had started making regular journeys to China in an attempt to broaden its fanbase. And China knew exactly who to send them.

I would like to tell you that Aorigele got famous for his fighting. It wouldn't be inaccurate; he was a numerically successful fighter and had victories over famous fighters like Bob Sapp and Kazuyuki Fujita who, respectfully, extremely should not have been fighting anymore. I would like to tell you that Aorigele got famous for being a big, powerful brawler. That wouldn't be wrong, either, exactly; he was a huge power puncher who would turn all of his mass into a mess of hooks, and it earned him knockouts in every one of his victories. But truthfully: What made Aorigele internet-famous was that time one of his fights ended nine seconds in when Hyun Man Myung kicked him in the dick so hard he had to be rushed to the hospital.

We may be in B-league Tank territory, here, but both men have solid arguments for inclusion.

Most brawlers are noted more for their ability to dish out punishment than take it, and Cabbage is cursed by the degree to which he did, in fact, take it, but that overshadows his talents as a pugilist. He got the poo poo kicked out of him by Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia, but he also threw back so violently and frequently that he wobbled both champions even while they were dropping bombs on him. Looking back through his career, that's the real testament to Cabbage's love of wildly brawling violence: Not how frequently he got hit, but how frequently, rather than covering up or running away, he responded to getting hit by swinging back as hard as he loving could. Even his two submission victories are a misnomer--one of them was just an opponent tapping out because he was tired of Cabbage sitting on him.

Aorigele might have gone on to become the canonical Tank Abbott of China if his career had lasted longer. He ticks all the boxes--prolific knockout artist, genuinely talented, grappling chops he ignored in favor of swinging haymakers, conspicuous cultivation of mass--to the point that the likeness is almost uncanny. But he retired in his mid-twenties after just four and a half years of competition and a dozen fights, and it leaves one wondering what his longterm legacy in the sport could have been. He left enough of an impression to be known across an MMA fandom that largely had no idea how to even watch the events on which he competed, and given how few Road FC fighters got successful international breaks, it's hard not to parse that as overachieving. But at the apex of his career, he stopped.

So does this match go to the Tank who lived between blows, or the Tank that almost was?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 29, 2023 20:28

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Aorigele, the Tormented Abbott, has been eliminated. Match six begins this afternoon.

# ¿ May 31, 2023 09:42

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

ROY NELSON vs BUTTERBEAN

IN THE RED CORNER:

ROY "BIG COUNTRY" NELSON
6'0" / 264 lbs
Active at 24-19
Winning ratio: 59%
Victory method ratio: 67% KO, 17% SUB, 17% DEC
Won and defended the International Fight League Heavyweight Championship, won TUF 10, eliminated in first round of 2018 Bellator Heavyweight GP
Best win: Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Worst loss: Matt Mitrione
Record against other Abbotts: Lost to Mark Hunt and Derrick Lewis

Roy Nelson, ladies and gentlemen. Roy Nelson was a childhood student of Kung Fu and Karate, but it wasn't until he started doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that he found his way to mixed martial arts. Roy's success in the IFL once marked him as one of the best heavyweights outside the UFC, but the release of former stars like Andrei Arlovski and Jeff Monson saw his heat die down considerably, and it forced him to enter the big show through the side door that was The Ultimate Fighter. It's easy to forget now, but season ten of TUF was completely and wholly programmed around streetfighting celebrity Kimbo Slice, whom the UFC had mocked for years and was now, finally, attempting to bring in and market. And then Roy Nelson sat on him and punched him in the face until he gave up. And Dana White never, ever forgave him.

Roy Nelson was Dana White's least favorite fighter for loving years. Some of it was Kimbo, some of it was Nelson knocking out marketably preferable fighters like Cro-Cop, Cheick Kongo and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, but mostly, it annoyed the poo poo out of Dana that Roy Nelson was a big fat guy. Even though Nelson was going the distance with some of the best heavyweights on the planet, he saw it as disappointing and even disrespectful, and after eight years, Dana had enough. Nelson was released and allowed to run off to Bellator in 2018, where he proceeded to lose five fights in a row and look like absolute poo poo in the process. And now he's fighting in bareknuckle MMA. Maybe it was always destined to be so.

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

ERIC "BUTTERBEAN" ESCH
5'11" / 378 lbs
Retired at 17-10-1
Winning ratio: 61%
Victory method ratio: 47% KO, 53% SUB, 0% DEC
Multiple-time boxing superheavyweight champion, Elite-1 MMA Superheavyweight champion
Best win: James Thompson
Worst loss: Jeff Kugel
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Zuluzinho and Wesley Correia, lost to Correia in kickboxing

Butterbean was famous for his size long before he was the world's toughest fat man. He was huge even from childhood, he was big and strong enough to work as a floorer as a teenager, and even his nickname is a tribute to it--because he had to eat a diet of lima beans, known elsewhere as butterbeans, to cut down to the 400-pound limit for Toughman boxing. He was an immediate hit, and if you watched sports television in the 1990s you would, inevitably, see Butterbean violently destroying one of the 77 under-trained semi-pro boxers in his way. He was all power and ferocity, he very rarely saw a decision, and he was, indisputably, the king of the Toughman circuit.

But boxing wasn't big enough to hold him. Butterbean became a pop culture phenomenon: He knocked out Bart Gunn at Wrestlemania 15, he fought Johnny Knoxville in a department store for Jackass: The Movie, he did video games, he did television shows, he had a reality show about being a celebrity sheriff, and, of course, he crossed into the greater world of combat sports. Butterbean brought his talents to K-1, became a deeply unsuccessful kickboxer, and slid over to MMA where he, somehow, got more submissions than he did knockouts. He'd still swing away, and he dropped his fair share of people--but as a case in point, in his four big Japanese MMA fights he only actually scored one knockout, and it was against former WWE, WCW and NJPW wrestler Sean O'Haire--and that was after he simply grabbed O'Haire's skull with one hand and punched him in the back of the head with the other until he fell over.

This is, to my mind, one of the stiffest matchups of the entire bracket. Both of these men have a strong argument as true representatives of the Tank Abbott spirit--big, mean motherfuckers who swung haymakers as hard as they possibly could in an attempt to use every pound of mass they kept in abundance. They were happiest when they were brawling. It's why Roy Nelson moved on to bareknuckle fighting and it's why Eric Esch expanded past boxing. That and, y'know, money.

I think the real winner in this fight comes down to your interpretation of intent and achievement. As similar as they are on the surface, these men took very different approaches to their actual fighting style.

Roy Nelson, it is worth reiterating, is a legitimately talented grappler. He's a Renzo Gracie black belt, which is extremely difficult to get, and a multiple-time Pan-Am champion, and yet the vast majority of his victories came through horrifically violent knockouts. He'd shoot takedowns and clinch against the fence here and there--never more than against Derrick Lewis, understandably--but for the most part he actively eschewed his own grappling advantages in the name of hitting people with haymakers. He famously trained to fight the 7' Stefan Struve not by working on his takedowns and grappling, but by having his trainers stand on chairs with gloves and shoes strapped to poles while he tried to weave between them and hit them. And it worked. For a long time the concern was Roy may be TOO successful to qualify as a Tank Abbott, but fortunately, his late-career slide took care of that for him--over the last decade he's gone 5-12, and where once he was crushing world champions, now he's struggling with Javy Ayala.

But Butterbean--I mean, he's Butterbean. You knew exactly what you were getting with a Butterbean fight, and whether he was destroying an untrained competitor in a Toughman bout, knocking James Thompson senseless or getting submitted by a 200-pounds-lighter Genki Sudo, it never really changed. He was an endlessly reliable brawler and a constant purveyor of wild, violent punching, and nothing could make him stop. He was not compromised by his size, he excelled precisely because of it: It made him stronger and it made dozens of opponents underestimate him. There was nothing held back in his style and no secret wellspring of skill he was choosing to ignore; he fought with absolutely everything he had, and that meant beating most of the worst fighters on the planet and getting crushed by almost everyone he met that could be considered good.

So take your stance on achievement. Is Butterbean the better, more consistent and more traditional Abbott, for having no adulterating influences and overachieving by making the crossover to mixed martial arts in the first place, or does his inexplicable reliance on submissions cost him? Or is Roy Nelson the proper Abbott for ignoring his best skill, being unwilling to lose weight for his career, and ultimately underachieving his genuine championship potential by refusing to get out of his own way, or is he disqualified for the crime of actually being good for awhile?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ May 31, 2023 18:57

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

With a bit over a day of voting left, the two are separated by a single vote. The forest falls around us for a battle of giants.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 08:38

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

CarlCX posted:

With a bit over a day of voting left, the two are separated by a single vote. The forest falls around us for a battle of giants.

Many hours and a score of votes later, what clarity have we reached?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 22:58

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

After the closest vote we've had, with by far the most votes tallied:

Roy Nelson, the Self-Denying Abbott, has been eliminated. Match seven begins this afternoon.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2023 10:31

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

MARK HUNT vs JAN "THE GIANT" NORTJE

IN THE RED CORNER:

MARK "THE SUPER SAMOAN" HUNT
5'10" / 265 lbs
Retired at 13-14-1 (1)
Winning ratio: 45%
Victory method ratio: 77% KO, 0% SUB, 23% DEC
Won the 2001 K-1 World Grand Prix, Unsuccessfully fought for the Pride and UFC heavyweight championships
Best win: Frank Mir
Worst loss: Hidehiko Yoshida
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Roy Nelson, beat Derrick Lewis

What can you say about Mark Hunt that has not already been said? The dude came from horrible circumstances and channeled his childhood trauma into life as a street tough, and after a bouncer saw him singlehandedly knock out multiple punks outside a bar he was inducted into the world of kickboxing. A week later he scored his first knockout as a professional fighter and was paid in beer, a standard that fueled his early days as an unknown brawler out of Sydney; a few years later, he won the 2001 K-1 World Grand Prix. A few years after that, he was an instant celebrity in the world of Japanese mixed martial arts and one of the world's favorite heavyweights in Pride.

...and a few years after that Pride had folded and Mark Hunt was 5-6 and getting shithoused in seconds by middleweights. After several years of attempting to simply buy him out of his contract Hunt finally wore the UFC down and talked them into letting him fight--and he lost, immediately. But a funny thing happened after that: He started knocking motherfuckers out again. His huge punches, his great timing and his ability to force people into high-pressure exchanges paid dividends, and by 2014, he was fighting for the (interim) heavyweight championship. Which, y'know, he lost. He still, ultimately, mostly lost. But he also sued the poo poo out of the UFC, which is respectable. He retired from MMA in 2018, but he's made appearances for a couple celebrity boxing matches.

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

JAN "THE GIANT" NORTJE
6'11" / 333 lbs
Retired at 2-6
Winning ratio: 25%
Victory method ratio: 100% KO, 0% SUB, 0% DEC
Two-sport jobber with a 9-16 K-1 record, SUPER HULK participant
Best win: Bob Sapp
Worst loss: Shinsuke Nakamura
Record against other Abbotts: None

Here's the thing about Jan Nortje: He was very large. Nortje was born in Cape Town and was already a big, big dude by the time he was a teenager, and it came as a surprise to absolutely no one in his family when he took up boxing. Despite turning towards the pugilistic arts, he wound up participating in kickboxing first--this was the golden age of K-1, when their kickboxing talent scouts were all over the world, and thanks to Nortje serving as a training partner to international superstar Mike Bernardo he got on K-1's radar, and by god, you could not stop Japan from booking gigantic gaijin on their combat sports cards.

But, unfortunately, he just wasn't very good. Nortje didn't really ever get used to kicking, or jabbing, or lasting longer than a couple of rounds. He was a 6'11" man with no idea how to use it--all he wanted to do was swing. Whether from the hip or around the shoulder, Jan Nortje wanted to push people into a corner and act out his anger issues by flattening them with wide, wild punches. When it worked, it was terrifying. Most of the time, it didn't. His crossover into mixed martial arts didn't go any better--he only won two MMA fights, and they were, respectively, an almost 40 year-old Tadao Yasuda who had no idea how to fight and was only doing it because Inoki promised him an NJPW push and a circa-2008 Bob Sapp who was just entering the "pin me, pay me" period of his career. Ultimately, Nortje wound up with a 9-16 kickboxing record and a 2-6 MMA record.

I've tried to stay rooted in the dark-horse nature of some of these matchups and given you reasons why, say, a Dada 5000 could compete with a Tank Abbott, but in the spirit of that honesty: Every mixed martial arts tournament inevitably includes someone getting a much easier opponent than everyone else, and objectively, I think the RNG picked a squash match, here.

Look: It's Jan Nortje vs Mark loving Hunt. Hunt is an absolute monster in this tournament: A literal street fighter with professionally diagnosed anger issues who took them out on the fighters of the world by beating their goddamn heads in. He overachieved by becoming a K-1 champion only to immediately underachieve, squandering his career on crystal meth and Counter-Strike. Even his career highs come with massive caveats. He won the 2001 K-1 World Grand Prix, but he actually lost all three of his qualifying matches--he made it into the tournament anyway thanks to injuries and his popularity, and had the benefit of a tournament bracket whose defending champion, the best heavyweight kickboxer of all time, had to bow out after the first round. He got a shot at Fedor Emelianenko, but only after getting manhandled with ease by Josh Barnett. He fought for a UFC championship! But he was, at the time, on a one-fight winning streak and had just fought to a draw with Bigfoot Silva and gotten kicked senseless by Junior dos Santos. His career is a masterclass in Tank Abbottdom and if he doesn't make it to the tournament finals I'll be shocked.

Jan Nortje is just sort of a guy. He qualifies as an Abbott--he's all mass, anger and haymakers, with decades of technique under his belt he never really used, and when you see the way he could hit people you also see the way he used that size as a bludgeon--but he never overachieved or underachieved, he was never enormously notable, he was just kind of a two-sport jobber. He was technically undefeated as a boxer, but almost everyone he fought was a fellow rookie. Aside from that it's just losing, constantly. Jan Nortje lost a kickboxing match to Tom Erikson, a wrestler with a lifetime kickboxing record of 1-4. Jan Nortje got outgrappled by violent punchman Gary Goodridge. Jan Nortje submitted to strikes against Shinsuke loving Nakamura.

I added Jan Nortje to this tournament as a representative of the low-tier Abbotts and an interesting counter to the Johnathan Iveys and Aorigeles and Dada 5000s of the bracket. The RNG chose to serve him up as a sacrificial lamb instead. Unless you hold it strongly against Hunt that he brushed the top of combat sports--and I personally don't think you should, because a) Tank Abbott got a title shot and b) Hunt failed miserably--I don't know that there's a great argument for Nortje here. If anyone's got one, now's the time.

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 2, 2023 19:22

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Jan Nortje, the Giant Abbott, has been eliminated. Match eight, the final match of the first round, begins this afternoon or possibly early evening because I am eating dinner at two thirty in the morning.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2023 10:32

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

DERRICK LEWIS vs ZULUZINHO

IN THE RED CORNER:

DERRICK "THE BLACK BEAST" LEWIS
6'3" / 265 lbs
Active at 26-11 (1)
Winning ratio: 68%
Victory method ratio: 81% KO, 4% SUB, 15% DEC
Won and defended the Legacy FC heavyweight championship, unsuccessfully challenged for the UFC heavyweight championship twice
Best win: Francis Ngannou
Worst loss: Matt Mitrione
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Roy Nelson, lost to Tai Tuivasa and Mark Hunt

Derrick Lewis has accrued enough of a legend as one of the greatest knockout artists the sport has ever seen that most folks don't realize his origin story is, somehow, even closer to the stuff of myth. Lewis grew up street fighting in New Orleans, moved to Texas, finished high school, and was almost immediately arrested for assault--after beating the poo poo out of an armed member of the Ku Klux Klan with his bare hands. He spent three and a half years in prison, learned to be even tougher, got out and became a truck driver so he could pay for formal boxing training--under George Foreman. George goddamn Foreman wanted Lewis to become a professional boxer. But Derrick Lewis knew what flavor of violence spoke to him.

And the only thing more incredible than his power is his inconsistency. Derrick Lewis is the all-time knockout leader in UFC heavyweight history--and he's tied for the all-time, all-division record with violence elemental Matt Brown--and he's knocked out incredibly tough men like Alexander Volkov and Marcin Tybura. And he was also went to a decision against Ilir Latifi, a man who got knocked out by Ryan Bader. He fought for the UFC title twice and was completely wrecked in both attempts. He put on some of the most violent fights the heavyweight division has ever seen and somehow also has one of the single worst fights in mixed martial arts history. In short, Derrick Lewis is a land of contrasts.

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

W�GNER DA CONCEI��O MARTINS, AKA ZULUZINHO
6'7" / 400 lbs
Active at 14-12 (1)
Winning ratio: 52%
Victory method ratio: 86% KO, 7% SUB, 7% DEC
Eliminated in opening round of 2006 Pride Heavyweight Grand Prix
Best win: Ikuhisa Minowa
Worst loss: Fedor Emelianenko
Record against other Abbotts: Beat Henry Miller, lost to Butterbean

Mixed martial arts, even now, is a sufficiently young sport that second-generation competitors outside of the Gracie family itself are rare. It's fitting, then, that our final competitor isn't just a second-generation superstar, but one who owes any awareness of that lineage--and, indeed, his own notoriety--to the Gracies. Casemiro Nascimento Martins was a Brazilian fighter best known as Rei Zulu. He definitely had underground fights in those pre-legalization days, but his self-stated figure of being an undefeated 200-0 is marketing gone wild--and it made him easy pickings for fellow huckster Rickson Gracie, who, on grainy, poorly-restored video you can still find on Youtube, fought and choked Zulu out twice in the eighties. Zulu would come to be known primarily for losing almost every fight anyone actually saw, but his visible abilities and his tough appearance made him a celebrity in the Brazilian fight scene, and laid the groundwork for his son, W�gner da Concei��o Martins, to take the stage as Zuluzinho--Little Zulu--and pick up where his father left off.

Which is to say: He fought rookies for a year before beating a contender in Cage Warriors and then Pride flew over the giant 6'7", 400-pound guy with a pre-existing beef with Rickson Gracie because their hearts could not stand the idea of not booking the Miller High Life of freakshow fights. Zuluzinho was a giant whose only real goal in any given fight was to force his opponents into a corner or onto their backs so he could hammerfist them with every erg of force his giant frame could conjure up, and it worked, roughly, half of the time. The vast majority of people who know Zuluzinho know him for exactly one fight: The time Pride put a 5-0 superheavyweight against Fedor Emelianenko, the best heavyweight in the world, and Zuluzinho managed to get dropped twice and tap out to strikes in just twenty-six seconds.

I think this matchup hinges on your opinion of Derrick Lewis's success as a fighter.

Derrick Lewis is an exceptional case study in the modern mold of a Tank Abbott. The backstory is similar--street tough who did time for a random act of violence (although Lewis was, uh, a lot more justified), well-honed martial background too often ignored in favor of wild brawling and an unpredecented reputation for destruction. It's the underachievement where things get problematic. He's the all-time heavyweight knockout king. He's been a top contender twice. However weird the fight might have been, he's one of the three men in MMA with a victory over Francis goddamn Ngannou. He's unquestionably had a hall-of-fame career.

But he's always buffeted down by the fact that when he loses, he loses badly. The last time Derrick Lewis lost a fight by a well-contested decision was 2011. Every single loss since then has involved getting manhandled. If you go back to his early UFC days you'll get some middling losses in the form of Shawn Jordan and Matt Mitrione, but nearly every loss since then--Mark Hunt, Daniel Cormier, Junior dos Santos, Ciryl Gane, Tai Tuivasa, Sergei Pavlovich--has come against either a current/former champion or a top contender. His last loss to Sergey Spivak this past February marked his first defeat by someone outside of the top ten in eight years.

It's comparatively much easier to define Zuluzinho's career by his losses as opposed to his wins, because almost everyone he beat was a nobody. His victories are the things padded records are made of--my favorite bit, by far, is his scoring a first round knockout of a debuting, 0-0 Serbian fighter named Aleksandar Aleksic in March of 2019 and having a rematch with him nine months later in December of 2019, by which point Aleksic was 0-5--and the best victories of his life were the one that got him to Pride, an exhausting battering of Rafał Dąbrowski in Cage Warriors, and his TKO of middleweight madman Ikuhisa Minowa, whom he outweighed by roughly two hundred pounds.

And it's the line between appearance and efficacy that really propels Zuluzinho into Abbottdom. During that aforementioned Dąbrowski fight one of the Cage Warriors commentators murmurs about the way Zuluzinho feels like he throws every punch with a pure hatred for its target, and it makes it even better that most of his victories came from just crushing people under his mass and punching them until they wanted out. All, oddly, but his one victory in Pride. Zuluzinho went 1-3 at the big show, including, somehow, getting keylocked by Butterbean, but his one victory came over Henry "Sentoryu" Miller when the referees called a TKO after ninety seconds despite Sentoryu visibly moving and defending himself--and it became clear, and was even noted by the commentators, that the real problem appeared to be Zuluzinho's trunks repeatedly falling down and threatening to show his rear end on national television, which Pride desperately wanted to avoid.

Derrick Lewis is unquestionably the more classically accurate Abbott. His boxing-and-wrestling style, his vicious power and his desire to use it to violently harm people while talking periodically about the temperature of his balls all fit the mold perfectly. But he was a top heavyweight perpetually on the doorstep of contendership for most of the past decade, and it's only within the last year that he's finally beginning to crack.

Zuluzinho is a Tank in spirit. He fights furiously, he wings every punch, he makes a mockery of fighters who are too visibly untrained to compete at any kind of serious level and he's made to look similarly silly by anyone who actually knows what they're doing. He thrashed middleweights, got the poo poo beaten out of him by an actual champion, and has a TKO victory by Pants Fell Down.

It is a question of your heart. Is Derrick Lewis too good to be a Tank? Or is Zuluzinho too bad?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 4, 2023 21:58

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Personally, I think the malleability of a Tank is how we can have the spread of talent we do in the field, and Lewis is in a lot of ways an extremely traditional Tank, he's just Better At It. The question of how SUCCESSFUL a Tank can be while still being considered a Tank is the controversial one, to me.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2023 20:32

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

CommonShore posted:

I also like that this entire discussion is about Lewis and not about Zulu.

Aside from the aforementioned point about Zulu's Tank vs Gimmick issue, I think this happens when you have stature mismatches. Roy Nelson vs Butterbean was a great example of an even playing field; even most Pride fans could only name one Zuluzinho fight, and unless you are a tortured human you have not seen more than three or four of his fights tops, whereas Derrick Lewis has been one of the world's favorite heavyweights for like seven years.

For the record, there are eightish hours to go and Lewis is only up by three votes.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 02:03

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Zuluzinho, the Hereditary Abbott, has been eliminated. This concludes the first round of the tournament. The quarterfinal round will begin on Thursday after some additional preparation; during the break we'll be promoting a special exhibition bout, which will go up at the usual time this afternoon.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 10:33

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

C. Everett Koop posted:

Give us Hong Man Choi vs Manny Yarborough as halftime entertainment.

So, funny story:

While our competitors rest, recuperate and ready themselves for the second round of the tournament, we have arranged an intermission bout:

THE TALLEST BOY CAR CRASH

Featuring, from left to right:

CHOI HONG-MAN, THE TECHNO GOLIATH
This 7'2" South Korean kickboxer channeled his acromegaly into a technically successful 13-9 career as a kickboxer, a less successful 4-5 career as a mixed martial artist, and a series of cameo appearances on Korean television shows, my favorite of which is Bring It On, Ghost. He fought Fedor once! It didn't go very well, but he tried. Career highlight: Defeating two sumo wrestlers and a 5'11" welterweight to win the K-1 Seoul GP of 2005. Career lowlight: Losing by TKO after Chinese huckster Yi Long kicked him in the groin. Highest achievement in comedy: Beating up Jose Canseco in the first round of the SUPER HULK Grand Prix.

PAULO C�SAR DA SILVA, GIANT SILVA
A 7'2" basketball player out of Brazil who was recruited into the WWF as a part of freakshow stable The Oddities before moving onto NJPW, where Pride gleefully gobbled him up and booked him against a top five heavyweight despite his having essentially no actual training as a fighter. He smiled and looked nervous and then Heath Herring beat him senseless for fifteen minutes. Career highlight: Somehow submitting Henry "Sentoryu" Miller. Career lowlight: Getting wrestled to death by GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion Takashi Sugiura. Highest achievement in comedy: Defeating fellow what-am-I-doing-here yokozuna, professional wrestler, kickboxer and martial artist Akebono in a real fight.

JAN NORTJE, THE GIANT
The 6'11" kickboxer out of South Africa who couldn't manage to win in kickboxing, mixed martial arts OR the Tank Abbott Tournament. He is here for revenge, and he is praying his height, his shades, and his enormous Nikes are enough to win your heart this time around. Career highlight: Knocking out his training partner and the man who got him into the sport, Mike Bernardo. Career lowlight: Getting taken down, controlled and submitted by future Royal Rumble winner Shinsuke Nakamura. Highest achievement in comedy: Making a "come on, hit me" face at the greatest kickboxer of all time, Ernesto Hoost, only to make an "ow, why'd you hit me" face after he immediately kicked him in the leg as hard as he could.

NATHAN JONES, THE COLOSSUS OF BOGGO ROAD
After getting arrested for armed robbery, the 6'11" strongman turned to powerlifting, won a bunch of titles, took a bunch of steroids, and became a martial artist and professional wrestler. He had only one professional combat sports bout: An extremely fixed MMA match against Koji Kitao at the very first Pride event, where he jumped around the ring, threw a jumping spinning heel kick, and more or less took himself down and pretended to be submitted by a keylock. Career highlight: Playing Rictus Erectus in Mad Max: Fury Road. Career lowlight: Everything else that ever happened to him. Highest achievement in comedy: Joining the WWE, working eight televised matches, and quitting in mid-tour because he didn't want to leave Australia again.

There is no golden rule or standard by which these men are being judged. Only one of them can be the man who gets to wreck the car. Let your heart tell you which you think most deserves the honor of punching a pixelated sedan and pick as your instincts demand.

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 19:28

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlczHHBqRFI

Already emotionally vulnerable after his one-sided loss in the tournament, Jan Nortje was devastated by his inability to earn a single vote. Needing to relive the high point of his career, he vowed to fight Bob Sapp over and over until he felt better. The Professional Fighters League is promoting Nortje vs Sapp 27 this November. Sapp has vowed to make it out of the first minute this time.

Giant Silva's career was bolstered by his strong showing in the Tallest Boy Car Crash, and with Vince McMahon and his need for tall people once again in control of the WWE, Silva was rehired on the spot. He went on to win the Royal Rumble, defeat Dominik Mysterio, and pin Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania, all without ever once bending his knees. He has a line of designer sweatpants coming out in the summer.

Unable to cope with having come so close to victory only to fail by a single vote, Nathan Jones disappeared back into the dark depths of the Boggo Road Gaol, vowing to seek his revenge on all the cars of the world. No one knows his whereabouts or how he can be sated, but there's a saying in Australia: If you are driving down the road, and you see Nathan Jones behind you, you need to drive slightly faster, and he will give up and go home.

Choi Hong-Man destroyed the car.

Regular programming resumes tomorrow.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2023 06:59

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

HENRY "SENTORYU" MILLER vs WESLEY "CABBAGE" CORREIRA

IN THE RED CORNER:

The easiest measures of the distances between these men are intent and success.

Henry Miller was not a particularly successful practitioner of combat sports. The Tank Abbott success baseline is a modest 40%: Sentoryu's 26% is well below that bar, and moreover, some of those losses came against, without hyperbole, some of the worst fighters in the sport. His victories were few and farbetween, and while his competition varied in quality, an argument could be made that he failed to rise to the overachieving mark of an Abbott and settled instead for being a particularly memorable jobber.

But there isn't a single shred of doubt about the Abbottness of his methodology. If you were in the ring with Henry Miller, you knew, without hesitation, that he was going to try his hardest to gently caress you up. He didn't want to kick you, he didn't want to jab you, he wanted to barrel haymakers into your face until you fell over, and if you made it two minutes in and you were still upright, you were almost certainly going to win. Sentoryu didn't have much gas and he didn't have much strategy, so he threw everything into fearsome berserker punching rage.

Wesley Correira was never an angry fighter. His exceedingly chill nature, if anything, only further emphasized his toughness--it's one thing to take a dozen punches to the face and stay upright, it's another entirely when you don't even appear particularly bothered and your only concern is throwing back. Cabbage would all but invite opponents to tee off on him if it meant getting to stick a hand to their chin or a knee to their sternum. Which is his most defining feature as a fighter--but the one that most delineates him from Tankdom. Violence is to be inflicted, never received.

His career, however, is an extremely solid analogue. Fighting in early-days MMA tournaments out in SuperBrawl, cleaning house on the lower tier of heavyweights, getting just far enough to meet the best of the best a couple of times and, of course, getting absolutely crushed by them. He even fought Tank Abbott himself twice, and the experience serves as even more of a Schr�dinger's Abbott situation: He beat Tank in the UFC after battering him bloody only to have Tank punch him into the fetal position in a Hawaiian rematch two years later.

So who, in round two, is the truer Tank: A man who fought a dead ringer for his style and failed miserably, or a man who carved his own path and unintentionally found himself in the jungles of Abbott?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 8, 2023 19:04

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Halloween Jack posted:

I'm heartily sorry to have missed this thread until now. It's a reminder to actually look at subforums instead of just posting in the same bookmarked threads.

I'm sad not to see Bob Sapp in the tournament. I can think of a few good reasons to disqualify him and a few to include him. I don't know why I like talking about him so much, I just find his career fascinating. It's easy to hate him for the poo poo he pulled, but now I see him as a desperate and largely unwitting tool of the gangsters running K-1.

It says a lot about Giant Silva that he's billed at 7'2", 380 lbs. and losing to him is considered an embarrassment.

I think in his prime Sapp was a great Tank analogue; he was huge and powerful and mean and didn't have a great idea of what he was doing but he knew he had to do it within five minutes or he was boned, and the only real controversy about his Tankdom would be if Tanks have to LOOK like they're in bad shape as opposed to Sapp's steroids-for-lunch aesthetic.

But at this point in his it's-been-five-years-since-his-last-non-Fight-Circus-fight-so-I-hope-he's-retired career, it's hard to avoid that he spent about five years being a scary guy and about ten years being a comedy jobber who more or less admitted to throwing fights as fast as possible because he wanted to make money to offset the debts he incurred. I think he transitioned fully away from Tank status and into Jobber status by the end of his career.

I may have another text file in my folder about a King of the Jobbers tournament with his name on it, though.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 18:59

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Henry "Sentoryu" Miller, the Sumo Abbott, has been eliminated. Quarterfinal #2 begins this afternoon.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 10:01

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

TANK ABBOTT vs MARK HUNT

IN THE RED CORNER:

Yeah, we're just loving getting into it, right here. When I wrote out the initial sixteen candidates, Tank Abbott was the obvious number one: Mark Hunt was number two. I had this fight pegged as one of the possible finals for this tournament, but the random number generator did not want to wait, and we must abide by its wishes.

I think, in an awful lot of ways, these two are fantastic mirrors of one another.

Both had a highly-trained martial skill, Tank as one of the best wrestlers in the country, Hunt as a well-honed kickboxer, they regularly ignored in favor of brawling
Both fell into martial arts as a result of beating the absolute crap out of some poor fuckers in street fights and spent time in jail over their proclivities
Both got a single shot at the UFC heavyweight championship despite being 1 for their last 3; both were utterly destroyed and never sniffed contendership again
Both were internationally feared heavyweights who were competitive with the peers of their generation, no match for the best, and resoundingly crushed by the next generation
Both were internationally feared heavyweights who got completely and thoroughly humiliated by middleweights twice

It's why, in my mind, this was a potential championship match. These two, for their stylistic differences, are very, very similar. So we have to talk about those differences, and just how different they are.

The primary knock on Mark Hunt is his sense of control over his violence. Hunt could be a patient, thoughtful striker and he could be a violent, wild-eyed brawler, battering some men into dirt and finding one-hit, walk-off knockouts sufficient for others. He absolutely had the Abbott brawling streak in him--but the ability to switch it on and off, the ability to put away the violence for strategy and simplicity, is decidedly un-Tanklike, and having the chance to inflict more violence and choosing not to is EXTREMELY un-Tanklike.

At least, it seems like it should be. Here's the thing about Tank Abbott: When you actually watch his entire career, you start to notice deviations from his all-brawling reputation. He throws caution to the wind and swings wildly--until he has a good reason not to. Against Scott Ferrozzo, upon realizing he was getting hit as often as he was throwing, he started aggressively cage-clinching. Against Maurice Smith, knowing he was dealing with a superior striker, Tank starts pumping a jab and trying to work takedowns. Even against Yoji goddamn Anjo Tank gasses almost immediately, switches tactics, and spends the entire fight taking Anjo down and laying in his guard.

In other words: Tank, too, had a violence switch. But where Mark Hunt flipped it when he wanted to, Tank Abbott flipped it when he needed to.

But that gets us to even deeper epistemological debate. Tank would grind people out, but he was still roughing them up and punching them in the face. Is that more defensible in its commitment to violence than Mark Hunt's occasionally patient striking tactics? Hunt actually had a higher knockout rate than Tank Abbott and never successfully submitted anyone. Does that make him a more ardent supporter of the punching arts? Does Mark Hunt centering himself in striking technique rather than Tank's dirty wrestling technique make him more or less of an Abbott?

And of course, while he never got to the top of the mountain in mixed martial arts, Mark Hunt did win the K-1 World Grand Prix in 2001. Is that success ameliorated by his getting in despite losing both of his qualifying matches AND losing in the first round only to jump forward thanks to an injury? Or does his moment in the sun make him too high of an achiever?

For all of their similarities and all of their mirroring failures, is Mark Hunt an acceptable Tank Abbott 2.0? Or is the original mold still better?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 18:26

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Mark Hunt, the Walk-off Abbott, has been eliminated. Quarterfinal #3 begins at some point today depending on appointment timing.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 10:49

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

JIMMY AMBRIZ vs ALEXANDRU LUNGU

IN THE RED 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 was the first victorious competitor in the tournament, and said victory was not only an impressive two-to-one beating, but a philosophical statement about the true nature of a Tank, as his journeyman, road-warrior ways won out over the massively more successful Tai Tuivasa, who was deemed, ultimately, just too good to be here. Ambriz's giant body, his awkward victories and his No Doubt hair made him an unexpected favorite.

That favoritism now must carry him through a smaller, tighter bracket. Ambriz slew a giant to get here, but now he faces something worse than giants: Survivors. His unassuming record, his numerous knockouts and his sheer dedication to Moat Fighting got him to the dance, but will they help him dance with the eight true Abbotts?

IN THE BLUE CORNER:

These were two of our least assuming entries in the round of sixteen, so it's oddly appropriate that they have wound up matched against one another.

These men are both extremely close to the Tank Abbott spirit. Ambriz is a fearless wrestle-brawler who, like the man himself, is most at home chucking his prey to the floor and punching them into dust, and oddly enough this has given him a higher knockout ratio than Lungu, the consummate striker, who tends to wind up on the ground more because his opponents fall over than because of his well-intentioned attempts to get them there.

But that gets us to the real differentiating factor between them: Their success vs their strength of schedule. Alexandru Lungu is, clearly, a far more numerically successful fighter. He, in fact, is the most numerically successful fighter left in the entire tournament. But that comes with a considerable caveat: The vast, vast majority of people Lungu beat were rookies and bums. Almost 40% of his victories came over fighters who'd never won a fight--and most of them hadn't fought before at all--and only two of his victories came over fighters who could at any point have been considered relevant. Lungu, in fact, has a fight booked at the end of this month against Dejan Bubic, who is 0-4 in MMA, 0-1 in kickboxing and 2-7 in boxing, which is particularly impressive when you realize he's only been fighting for two years.

Jimmy Ambriz, by contrast, spent his career mostly fighting and losing to actual fighters. A full 1/3 of Ambriz's losses came against people who were at one point top heavyweights, like Josh Barnett, Ricco Rodriguez, Sergei Kharitonov and Jeff Monson, and even more came to big-league veterans like Tommy Sauer and Chris Tuchscherer. He had his share of can-crushing, and even some of his better victories were against rookies who would go on to later become relevant, but he was consistently attempting to fight quality opponents.

There is, however, an elephant in the room, and if you paid attention to the stats, you've already seen it. These men fought each other in a midcard MMA match at a K-1 event in 2010, and Lungu won. It wasn't the definitive ending you'd hope for--the ringside doctor called the fight after the second round thanks to an eye injury--but it doesn't change the fact that they threw punches and Lungu came out on top. Jimmy Ambriz could not best him.

Which adds a dose of literalism to this exercise in abstraction. Alexandru Lungu is the more traditionally aggressive brawler, but does his positively un-Abbottlike winning ratio hurt him? Does his proclivity for fighting nobodies make him more or less of a threat to this bracket? How much credit does Jimmy Ambriz get for, like Tank, at least attempting to fight his actual peers?

Does Lungu beating him make him the superior Tank, or, in beating him, has he made himself too much better?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 18:36

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Alexandru Lungu, the Judo Abbott, has been eliminated. The final match of the round will be up later today.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 10:12

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

DERRICK LEWIS vs BUTTERBEAN

IN THE RED CORNER:

We're closing out the quarterfinals with another big one. Despite both men just barely scraping by in the first round both have a solid argument for being two of the most Tanklike competitors remaining, which makes it only fitting that only one may survive. They've both got an excellent argument for the title, but both arguments come with inevitable asterisks.

Having a Tank Abbott tournament without Derrick Lewis in it would be missing the point. In some ways, Derrick is a great modern analogue for Tank: He's a big, heavy-handed wrestle-boxer who punches with the force of an eighteen-wheeler hurtling off the side of a cliff and landing on an orphanage, and his backup skill, rarely exercised, is the traditional double-leg takedown. He was perpetually not quite in great shape, the "Derrick Lewis took his cardio super seriously for this fight" stories have been an annual fixture for years only to continually reinforce that he, in fact, did not, and his most famous knockout only happened after four and a half rounds of getting the poo poo kicked out of him.

But the question that has plagued all the top seeds in this tournament plagues Lewis: Where do you set the line for an unacceptable level of success? Tai Tuivasa was clearly over it, and his two-round dusting of Lewis bears that out; Mark Hunt was questionable, and he, too, beat Lewis. But there's an argument to be made that Lewis is more successful than either of them. Unlike Tai, Derrick Lewis made it to heavyweight championship contention, and unlike Hunt, Lewis did it twice. Unlike either, Derrick Lewis has been a top ten contender in the heavyweight division for seven straight years--even now, 1 for his last 5, he's #11--and you have to go all the way back to 2015 to find an embarrassing loss on his record. Has his success outstripped his Tank classification?

And then there's Butterbean. Eric Esch is unquestionably a Tank. He is, inarguably, Tank as gently caress. He's a huge, messy guy who operates through a mixture of mass and rage; a boxer who started winging haymakers in 1994 and was still fighting the same exact way twenty years later. He was never in shape, he was never technical, he subsisted on a diet of punching people in their goddamn head as quickly and angrily as possible. He has a knockout victory in Pride by way of vicious, repeated and totally unpunished rabbit punching. His commitment to harming men with his fists is greater than that of the near-total history of the human race.

But most of that happened in boxing. His mostly unsuccessful mixed martial arts career is, oddly, marked by more submissions than knockouts. He would get effortlessly worked by fighters who knew what they were doing--he was submitted by the middleweight Ikuhisa Minowa and, most famously, the lightweight dance sensation Genki Sudo--but against fellow superheavyweights and the othersuch large men of the world, he became surprisingly adept at using his mass to control men on the ground and tap them out. His fight with fellow gargantuan brawler Zuluzinho ended not in an exchange of fisticuffs or a well-aimed haymaker, but in a takedown reversal, a belly-to-belly sweep, and an Americana. Does eschewing the boxing arts in favor of submissions take him out of Tank contention?

As has happened so often in this tournament, it's a question of style and accomplishment. On the mass spectrum of fighters who were too good to be Tank Abbotts, is Derrick Lewis above or below the line? Does Butterbean's dedication to submissions take away from his history of violence or bring him closer to the real Tank's wrestle-boxing ways?

:siren:

CAST YOUR VOTE :siren:

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 20:20

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 06:43

CarlCX: Dec 14, 2003

Butterbean, the Toughman Abbott, has been eliminated. We'll be rolling right into the semifinal round this afternoon.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2023 10:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Hammer House: Stinger Splash Zone > The Tank Abbott Tournament: Crowning a cursed competitor

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