Dana White recently commented on Bellator's upcoming bout between "two 50-year-olds" in Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie, saying that he just hopes no one gets hurt. Shamrock has since responded to the UFC President, somehow managed to relate those comments to discrimination, racism, and women's rights.
"It’s sad that we’re at this point," Shamrock told Submission Radio. "After we’ve gone through so much in our world to get it across to people that you can do things, whatever you want to do, just as long as you’re able to stay within the rules and the guidelines and be able to do the things you need to do. That you just should never quit, should always move forward and try to do the things that you want to do, accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish."
"And yet we’re standing here in 2015 and we are discriminating against age. I mean, when does it stop?" he said. "I mean, we go in the ring and we fight just the same as anybody else does. And we passed the physicals, and we do the things that we need to do to be able to get in the ring and fight."
"And yet we’re standing here today, after we’ve gone through the racism of black people and we’ve gone through the women’s rights and the Japanese, you know, with the world war and putting them in the work camps because they look Japanese. I mean, I thought we had gotten past all this?"
"Yet today, we’re sitting here and we’re discriminating against two individuals who have proven themselves in the world of MMA, who are at very, very high level and are in very good shape and will pass any physical they need to, to get in the ring and fight," he continued. "And we’ve got a few people out there that want to use discrimination as their case?"
Shamrock will be 52-years-old by the time he steps foot inside the Bellator cage, and both he and Gracie are decades away from their fighting primes. Just in the past decade, Ken has lost 8 of his last 10 bouts, all of which came by knockout or technical knockout.
While I'm all for freakshow matches -- and especially glad they're not fighting much younger men, those presenting some concern for their safety aren't really showing 'discrimination'. It's just human nature.
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