UFC 102 Preview: The Tournament Where Randy Couture Almost Fought Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

Josh Gross reminds us of the historic RINGS King of Kings 2000 tournament where Randy and Big Nog nearly met in the final round:

...the pair will meet for the first time at UFC 102 knowing they could have as easily done the same eight years ago in their primes during a historic tournament that helped shape the sport.

Four months removed from recapturing the UFC heavyweight championship in 2000 against Kevin Randleman, Couture advanced into the semifinals of Japan's RINGS 32-man "King of Kings 2000" tournament, considered at the time the best heavyweight field ever assembled, before being upset by the talented but heady Valentijn Overeem.

Defeating Nogueira in the finals would have given Couture ownership of the title as MMA's best heavyweight just when Zuffa assumed control of the UFC. Instead, when Couture tapped to a guillotine and Nogueira secured an arm-triangle against Alistair Overeem's older brother, it was the jiu-jitsu pioneering Brazilian who walked away as the sport's top heavyweight -- thus signaling years of debate about the caliber of competition between U.S. and Japanese fight organizations.

No one could have known it then, but that loss, which gnaws at Couture's competitive soul, played a major role in the growth of Japanese MMA and its reputation from 2000 through 2006 for showcasing MMA's best heavyweights.

This great piece by Shu Hirata gives more background on that tournament, and its 1999 predecessor, why it had the funky no striking to the head on the ground rules. Here's an excerpt:

K.O.K. (King of Kings) was Akira Maeda's answer to the world in regards to the rapid invasion of "The Black Ship" named Gracie Jiu-jitsu and Vale Tudo in the Japanese fight sports community. The public was definitely shifting towards "real fight." The fans were hungry, anxious to see, who truly is the strongest. And no striking to the head on the ground was Maeda's answer. The fans, especially those hardcore well-informed types, were thrilled with Maeda's invention.

This was back in 1999 when everyone was still debating, regarding both the sports and entertainment aspects, and which would be the most suitable rules for MMA. PRIDE was experimenting with different rules such as 60 minutes (Renzo vs. Kikuta) and 30 minutes (Kimo vs. Severn) matches so Maeda believers in Japan thought, hey, these K.O.K. rules could turn out to be the more interesting to see as a spectator sport!

This, also, was a historical conversion for RINGS because it meant that they had finally decided to just concentrate on the competition. The era was thirsty for real fighting, and this was no longer just indispensable. In order for them to stay competitive in the Japanese professional sports market, this decision was unavoidable.

...

RINGS started to experiment with K.O.K. rules in the "World Mega-Battle Tournament" which opened on October 28th 1999. Maeda began implementing his invention with a 5-minutes-per-round-for-2-round system in this 32-man tournament.

No striking to the head and no stalling. These two points were the backbone of K.O.K. rules. Maeda and RINGS wanted to create a sports-like MMA show without any smell of street fighting. So Maeda first got rid of elbow shots and in the next, he took out kicking to a grounded opponent. Then finally, and most importantly, Maeda took out all strikes to the head on the ground. Then he came up with something very revolutionary and that is the concept of "no stalling" which was applied to refereeing under K.O.K. rules.

In the end, RINGS lost its promotional war with PRIDE and the rules set of the K.O.K. tournies is now seen as an odd aberration in MMA history, a wrong turn if you will. But at the time it was a valid experiment in conducting sporting fights.

The 1999 and 2000 RINGS K.O.K. tournies were part of a consolidation of world-wide MMA into one top tier talent pool After half a decade of the top fighters mostly beating cans in smaller events, RINGS and PRIDE brought the best fighters in the world together in three open weight tournaments: the 1999 and 2000 RINGS K.O.K. tournies and the PRIDE 2000 GP.

The 1999 K.O.K. line-up was stellar and the 2000 was even more so. In addition to Couture, Nogueira, and Overeem (the brother of Alistair) it included Brazilian aces Renato "Babalu" Sobral, Carlao Barreto, and Roberto Traven, RINGS stars Tsuyoshi Kohsaka and Kiyoshi Tamura, Russian stars Volk Han and Mikhail Illoukhin (plus a fairly unheralded new comer named Fedor Emelianenko), American independent circuit aces Bobby Hoffman, Jeremy Horn and Dave Menne.

When Nogueira won the K.O.K. 2000, after losing in the finals of the 1999 tourny to Dan Henderson by split decision, it established him as indisputably one of the top fighters in the world. When he moved over to PRIDE and beat Mark Coleman and Heath Herring in fairly short order, he became the undisputed top heavyweight in the sport.

I'll be writing more about the K.O.K. tournaments in my MMA History series soon, but this was a timely occasion for a little preview.

Videos from the event in the full entry.

Randy Couture vs Valentijn Overeem
RINGS King of Kings 2000 Final February 24, 2001

Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira vs Valentijn Overeem
Rings King of Kings 2000 Final February 24, 2001