(One of these two men is still telling this story.)

What do you do when you’re an over-the-hill fighter who has repeatedly refused to take the dignified route to retirement? Apparently you challenge another over-the-hill fighter who you faced a couple of times back when you were both still relevant to the sport. That’s the only possible explanation for why Ken Shamrock thinks it’s a good idea to call out Royce Gracie like it’s 1995 all over again:

The second time I beat him in every aspect of the fight; in fact his corner had to carry him out. Fans have been calling for a rematch ever since. After this particular fight Royce left the UFC. As a matter of fact I ran the entire Gracie family out of the UFC. His talk is cheap. Let’s settle it in the cage. I heard Royce agree to a rematch three times now, every time he has come up with a reason not to fight me. Royce and my brother Frank should get together and write a book about how to set up fights and not fight.

At least Shamrock’s smack-talking skills haven’t atrophied at the same rate as his physical ones. Where this statement goes from being the typical crazy Shamrock banter to being completely out of touch with reality is when Shamrock claims that “fans have been calling for a rematch ever since.”

Really? Fans want to see a rematch of the thirty-six minute stallfest that ended in a draw? What fans? Where do they live? Could they accurately be described as fully functioning adults?

Fightlinker claims to think it’s a good idea as long as they do it in Japan with extended rounds. If the fight does happen, it had better not be in a place with an athletic commission, and any time you admit that you could only put on a fight in a place where there is no official oversight, aren’t you basically admitting that it’s a fight that is not athletically meaningful?