The 10 Most Notorious Breaking Points in MMA History

Fighting for a living is a lot like teasing a really mean dog: you can’t do it forever without something bad happening to you.  Even the great ones get to a point where their drive becomes sluggish and their bellies are too full for them to stay hungry, and that’s usually when a particularly bad beating takes what remaining fire they have and douses it with the fury of a God pissing on your dreams.  It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll quit right then, even if they should, but it does mean that they’ll never be the same again.  Here now, in chronological order, are the most notorious breaking points in MMA history.

IGOR ZINOVIEV vs. FRANK SHAMROCK at UFC 16, 3/13/98

It’s hard to say that Igor Zinoviev was really on his way to being a legend of the sport, because he got stopped almost before he really got started.  The former Soviet Army commando was one of the first fighters in the early days of MMA to beat a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt when he TKO’d Mario Sperry, and he took out Enson Inoue the next year.  All this came after years of fighting underground brawls in Brooklyn warehouses following the fall of the Soviet Union, so his toughness was never in question.

When he joined the UFC the future was, as they say, wide open.  Then he came up against Frank Shamrock, who wasted no time in scooping him up and slamming him down so viciously that it shattered his collarbone and knocked him out cold.  It was Zinoviev's first career loss, and he would never fight again after that.  We’re not saying the devastating finish served as the catalyst for Shamrock’s out of control ego over the next 10+ years, but we’re not saying it helped, either.

KEN SHAMROCK vs. TITO ORTIZ at UFC 40, 11/22/02

No, Ken Shamrock wasn't always a broken-down wreck. The World's Most Dangerous Man actually lived up to his nickname for the first three years of his career, racking up a record of 23-5-2, and scoring submission wins over Bas Rutten (twice), Maurice Smith, and Dan Severn. But when he returned to the sport after a three-year stint in the WWE, he didn't look nearly as dangerous. Losses to Kazuyuki Fujita (at PRIDE 10) and Don Frye (at PRIDE 19) suggested that he might not be able to compete at the highest levels of the sport anymore; the absolute thrashing he took at the hands of Tito Ortiz at UFC 40 proved it.

Set up as the culmination of a feud between Ortiz and the Lion's Den camp, the Huntington Beach Bad Boy put on a ground-and-pound clinic that night, turning Shamrock's face into burger with elbows and punches. Ken had nothing for Tito in the second and third rounds, and his corner mercifully threw in the towel before the fourth frame started. Shamrock went on to beat fellow throwback Kimo Leopoldo in his next appearance, but it was clear that the game had passed him by, and Shamrock spent his next five fights suffering first-round knockouts against Rich Franklin, Kazushi Sakuraba, Ortiz (two more times in inhumane rematches), and Robert Berry. The veteran warrior looked completely shot in each bout, his will to fight nowhere to be seen. Even when he managed to defeat the late Ross Clifton at a WarGods show in February, it was discovered that Shamrock was pharmaceutically enhanced — an embarrassing epilogue to a career that should have ended seven years earlier.

ROYCE GRACIE vs. MATT HUGHES at UFC 60, 5/27/06 

MMA legend Royce Gracie was thirty-nine years old when he stepped in for a catchweight bout against UFC welterweight champ Matt Hughes.  It was a bout based purely on nostalgia and paychecks, but the UFC made a somewhat insincere effort to cast it as a contest between greats of yesterday and today.  As expected, Gracie got destroyed by a stronger, younger, and more athletic Hughes, proving what we all knew already: the game has changed quite a bit since 1994.

It was the last time Gracie fought in the Octagon, though he did compete a year later in an ill-fated K-1 Hero’s fight that saw him edge out Kazushi Sakuraba via plodding decision, and then test positive for steroids.  Of course he denied being on the juice, but he has mercifully stayed out of MMA action since then, resisting further opportunities to tarnish his legend status.

MARK KERR vs. MIKE WHITEHEAD at IFL Semifinals, 11/2/06

Though you could argue that Kerr was really broken by a crippling pain-killer addiction years earlier, a fat, bald version of the old “Smashing Machine” showed up in Portland, Oregon that November night with one last chance to get it right.  He hadn’t competed in MMA in two-and-a-half years, and he hadn’t actually won a fight in six years.

But hey, this was Mike Whitehead he was fighting.  The guy wasn’t exactly a svelte giant-slayer himself, so it seemed like there was a chance that Kerr could have gotten his life together and gotten back in the gym.  As soon as he took off his shirt, we should have known what a disaster it would be.  Not only was Kerr sluggish and ineffective, he seemed disinterested.  Every time Whitehead hit him he looked like he was wondering whether or not to go down and let that be the end of it.  The barrage that finally did stop the fight wasn’t exactly brutal, but it was proof enough that Kerr no longer had the fire in his belly.  In its place, nothing but cheesesteaks and regret.

WANDERLEI SILVA vs. DAN HENDERSON at PRIDE 33, 2/24/07

After a five-year stretch in the organization that saw him go 20 fights without a loss, Wanderlei Silva's dominant run in PRIDE began to wind down on New Year's Eve 2004, when his streak was broken in a split-decision against Mark Hunt. A year later, Silva dropped another tough decision to Ricardo Arona, and a year after that he was violently knocked out of the PRIDE Open Weight GP semi-finals by Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic. But it was his next fight against Dan Henderson at PRIDE 33 that signaled the true end of the Axe Murderer era. Not only was it the first time that he'd suffered back to back losses, but both those losses came via skull-shattering KO.

Had he lost a step? Was nobody afraid of him anymore? Whatever the explanation, the timing couldn't have been worse. PRIDE was dissolved shortly after, and Wandy found himself in the unfamiliar surroundings of the UFC, where he couldn't find his groove. Since the Henderson fight, he has gone 1-3 in the Octagon, dropped out of the light-heavyweight top ten, and suffered a knockout loss against his old punching bag Quinton Jackson. Live by the axe, die by the axe.

KAZUSHI SAKURABA vs. MELVIN MANHOEF at DREAM 4, 6/15/08

Kazushi Sakuraba is both the most beloved and the most soccer-kicked into a living death fighter in Japanese MMA history. Who knows why PRIDE would want to see their hero suffer defeat after defeat against larger foreigners — it's a kind of sadomasochism that us Westerners will simply never understand — but what made Saku so legendary was his refusal to quit, even in the face of horrific brutality. Try as they might, they never broke him. Getting torn to shreds by Wanderlei Silva in three separate fights was not his breaking point. Enduring the ugliest beating in MMA history against Ricardo Arona was not his breaking point. Losing his rematch to Royce Gracie at K-1 Dynamite!! USA was not his breaking point.

And maybe, in Kazushi's mind, Melvin Manhoef didn't break him either. But to us, his fight against Marvelous last June represented the exact moment where it officially stopped being fun to watch Sakuraba get his ass kicked. Forty years old, with his legs taped up like a mummy, the IQ Wrestler was nothing more than a sacrifice to the altar of Insane Strikers. That moment at the 2:44 mark in the above video where Manhoef drags him back into the ring to pound on him some more — yeah, it's pretty awesome, until you realize that the guy in the orange shorts is a sentient creature, worthy of human dignity. When your performances shift from beautiful brilliance to torture porn, it's time to call it a career.

TIM SYLVIA vs. FEDOR EMELIANENKO at AFFLICTION: BANNED, 7/19/08

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Tim Sylvia - Watch more Funny Videos

Some people will say that Big Tim’s lowest moment came at the hands of former boxing champ Ray Mercer, who knocked him out with one punch just seconds after countering a low kick with one of the best ‘Bitch, please’ faces ever seen in combat sports.  But really, Sylvia’s spirit was broken by Fedor Emelianenko in the summer of 2008, and anybody who heard him talk about the near-death experience of being punched in the face by “The Last Emperor” knows it. 

Sylvia was a shell of a man after being pummeled and then submitted by Emelianenko, and he was so thoroughly dominated in that brief fight that he could never again approach a bout with the same misguided confidence in himself.  That might explain why he wanted a fight with Mercer to begin with, and why he tried to get a spot on “Bully Beatdown,” making him perhaps the only fighter to ever openly plead for a guest role on that show.  Don’t call Mayhem, buddy.  Mayhem will call you.

CHUCK LIDDELL vs. RASHAD EVANS at UFC 88, 9/6/08

Rashad Evans's walkoff-homerun-esque knockout of Chuck Liddell was about as dramatic a changing of the guard as the sport had ever seen. Though Chuck's losses to Quinton Jackson and Keith Jardine the previous year suggested that his days as a champion were over, his thriller against Wanderlei Silva at UFC 79 showed that he still had a ton of fight left in him. And then Sugar came along and buried his ass. In one punch, Evans went from boring wrestler to world-beater, and Liddell found himself one more loss away from being forcibly retired by his employer.

As so often happens in MMA, the old legend was simply figured out by his younger challengers. Before the fight, Jardine had told Evans to watch out for a face that Liddell makes before he throws, and get off first. That's all it took for Rashad to earn the most ferocious knockout of the year. In his next fight against Mauricio Rua, Chuck looked noticeably slow and creaky, and once again took a nap in the center of the Octagon. The Iceman may be one of the UFC's all-time greats, but we're glad he's moved on to something that doesn't require him to take as many blows to the head.

ANDREI ARLOVSKI vs. FEDOR EMELIANENKO at AFFLICTION: DAY OF RECKONING, 1/24/09

Because of his earlier KO/TKO losses to guys like Pedro Rizzo and Tim Sylvia, Andrei Arlovski had often been thought of as fighter who can dish out the abuse a lot better than he can take it. When he came into his fateful match against Fedor Emelianenko at "Day of Reckoning," he was riding a five-fight win streak that included victories over top heavyweight contenders like Fabricio Werdum, Ben Rothwell, and Roy Nelson. But would his questionable chin be his downfall against the bunker-busting power punches of the Last Emperor?

Well, yes and no. Andrei got knocked out, but the punch that did him in was a blindly-thrown overhand right that only seemed to glance off Arlovski's face, as he was attempting an ill-advised flying knee. That slight bit of impact to the jaw was enough to put the Pitbull to sleep. While there's no shame in losing to Fedor Emelianenko, many fighters never fully recover from stepping into a ring with him. That's how it was for Arlovski, who woke up as a Knockout Victim, always and forever. His next fight against Brett Rogers ended in just 22 seconds — but at least he won the follow-up game of Russian Roulette.

MIRKO "CRO COP" FILIPOVIC vs. JUNIOR DOS SANTOS at UFC 103, 9/19/09

Cro Cop’s skills and desire had become question marks well before he stepped in against the hungry young Brazilian at UFC 103, but all his talk about getting the title or dying trying gave the optimists among us reason to hope for a head-kicking Renaissance.  Instead, what we got was more like a Cro Copalypse (Cro Copageddon? ah, screw it). 

Physically, he looked like the old Mirko, but when his straight lefts didn’t land and his kicks missed by a country mile, he folded under the pressure put forth by the one guy in the cage who actually wanted to be there that night.  Afterwards Cro Cop was forced to admit that going into a fight with dreams of a nice little fishing trip in the forefront of his mind was probably not the best idea.

Honorable Mentions:

- Corey Hill, against Dale Hartt at UFC: Fight for the Troops, 12/10/08. Hill suffered a gruesome leg break during the fight, but hopes to return to competition next year.

- Mikey Burnett, against The Wall on The Ultimate Fighter 4. After being lured out of a seven-year hiatus to compete on "The Comeback," Burnett lost his first fight against Din Thomas, then wrecked his neck trying to run through a wall. Due to the lingering injury, Mikey never fought again.