NO HOLDS BARRED

(Frank Shamrock and Eddie Goldman, New York, July 1, 2010.)

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with MMA legend and the best MMA fighter of the 1990s, Frank Shamrock.

Now retired as a fighter, we discussed, in an interview recorded by phone Friday, what he is doing now and what his plans are.

A major focus of his life now is raising his five-year-old daughter, "five-year-old immersion" as he calls it, including all the tasks of a father from watching children's shows with her, to getting her to train in taekwondo, to explaining why so many people know him.

While he does not follow MMA much anymore, he does have an interest in the rebirth of catch wrestling. He said that both he and veteran combat sports announcer Mauro Ranallo plan to attend the Catch Wrestling Alliance International Invitational on June 7 at UCLA in Los Angeles, California.

"Catch wrestling is the basis of my fighting style. And the basis of catch wrestling is conditioning, athleticism, and continuously trying to finish," he said.

"Anybody doing that is exciting. You're in shape, you know what to do, and you're constantly moving. So It's a recipe for creating exciting action."

He did caution, "I know as soon as super-athletes come along, the game will change. But let's wait until the super-athletes come before we worry about it."

For now, he said, "This is the type of martial art and social presentation and participation that's really good for everybody."

What he does have second thoughts about are those sports where there are strikes to the head.

"If you do that for a continuous period of time, if you develop a style that eats punches, if you are not good, if you are in over your head, if you're taking shots, none of that is good for you, in any sport, no matter what you're doing. You cannot get hit in the head. You cannot mess with the computer that runs the machine," he said.

"My whole style is based around not getting hit. I don't have any memory loss. I don't have any speech problems. I've been very, very blessed. And when I started getting hit, when the game started turning to boxing and wrestling, I got out, because I didn't want to get mashed up."

As for his daughter, he said, "The brain is the most important thing. You cannot damage it. My daughter is not going into any contact sport that hits her in the head. It's not going to happen. Might be volleyball, at best."

Asked whether at the start of his fighting career he would have gone into professional grappling or real wrestling rather than MMA if the financial and career opportunities were equivalent to those in MMA, without hesitation he replied, "100 percent."

We also discussed his now mellow life as a father and "a normal house dude", how his views on violent sports have evolved over the past two decades, the "huge potential" for sports like catch wrestling, some of his favorite experiences in Pancrase and Strikeforce, the lack of a martial arts code in present-day MMA, how the martial arts changed him, his relationship with his brother Ken, and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

ONE Fighting Championship. ONE FC is Asia's largest and most prestigious mixed martial arts event. ONE FC features the best Asian fighters and has initiated the ONE Asia Partnership Network, which includes most of the major MMA promotions and MMA gyms in Asia. For more information, go to their web site, at ONEFC.com.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

Labels: brain, catch, Eddie Goldman, fatherhood, Frank Shamrock, grappling, head, injuries, MMA, No Holds Barred, trauma, violence, wrestling

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with the ex-pugilist, lifelong martial artist, former UFC and Battlecade Extreme Fighting matchmaker, TV commentator, and our senior correspondent, John Perretti.

Following up on our previous episode of No Holds Barred with Stephan Kesting of Grapplearts, on MMA, brain damage, concussions, and CTE, we continued to explore these issues. We began with the ethical considerations about participating in and supporting combat sports with striking, where head injuries and brain trauma are necessary results of way those sports are conducted.

We spoke with John Perretti by phone Monday.

"I can keep it short and simple: If you get hit, you get hurt," he said. "And that's not a belief. That's not something that is just beloved of me. That's a fact."

He stated, as he has said before, that he is no longer interested in watching fighters "getting battered," even though he was one of the founders of modern MMA, came up with the basic framework of rounds, gloves, and weight classes used today, and even was using the term "mixed martial arts" as far back as the 1970s.

While he does watch some boxing and other dangerous sports like American football at times, he has lost interest in MMA.

"I just do not care to watch that anymore," he said. MMA, he added, with the growing emphasis on striking both standing and on the ground, has become "a lot more dangerous than it was" when many of us had argued that MMA was safer than boxing. And the main appeal of MMA these days, especially in the U.S., he said, is to those who are "attracted to the violence." It is turning more into a cult or even a "religion," he added.

In fact, partially due to his influence, his two teenage sons, Lucca and Enzo Perretti, no longer train in martial arts or play football, but instead focus on Olympic weightlifting. Both are among the top-ranked weightlifters in the U.S. in their age groups and weight classes.

Although weightlifting is widely practiced and respected, the Olympic weightlifting program is far from reaching its potential as a popular sport.

"Olympic weightlifting is really something that has been neglected," he said. While other sports are plagued with injuries about which we are understanding more and more each day, he said that according to medical studies, Olympic weightlifting has "the lowest injury rate of any sport in the United States of America."

Besides discussing the future of Olympic weightlifting in the U.S. and what it needs to do to popularize itself (hint: look at wrestling's continued failures), we discussed the potential for various styles of grappling and wrestling to grow, what the future holds for combat sports where there is head trauma, why he does not like to watch martial arts films, the great dangers to kids training in MMA, and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

ONE Fighting Championship. ONE FC is Asia's largest and most prestigious mixed martial arts event. ONE FC features the best Asian fighters and has initiated the ONE Asia Partnership Network, which includes most of the major MMA promotions and MMA gyms in Asia. For more information, go to their web site, at ONEFC.com.

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American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

Labels: Battlecade Extreme Fighting, boxing, concussions, CTE, Eddie Goldman, ethics, grappling, injuries, John Perretti, kickboxing, MMA, No Holds Barred, UFC, weightlifting, wrestling

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host and producer Eddie Goldman presents the first in a series of shows on the growing number of injuries in combat sports.

About six years ago, when John Perretti, the legendary lifelong martial artist and former UFC and Extreme Fighting matchmaker, broke his back for the second time, he knew he had to seek out the best person to help with his rehab. That person was the noted fitness expert and personal trainer Karl List.

Karl List is a fitness expert with over 20 years of experience as a personal trainer, and was a natural (drug-free) bodybuilding champion. He and his wife and business partner, Jodi Friedman List, are the co-owners of List Integrated Systematic Training. Their clients are trained at the world-famous Gold's Gym in Venice, California, where Karl is the only trainer who maintains a client base of personal trainers.

To address the issue of the growing number of injuries in the combat sports, John Perretti recently spoke with Karl List. In this first interview, they discussed a wide range of topics including rehab from injuries, the need for athletes to train their entire body, bad training methods used by many boxers, the high injury rate in mixed martial arts, how the improper punching techniques common in mixed martial arts lead to injuries for the punchers, the proper use of machines in training, and more.

If you are or have ever been an athlete, or even if you are just a fan of the athletes, this series of discussions is indispensible since they will provide candid and cutting-edge information and analysis which few media outlets dare to address.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here. You can also download No Holds Barred here. If one link does not work, please try another. The show is in MP3 format, so may take some time to download.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", by Ian Carpenter.

Make sure to visit the official boxing forum for No Holds Barred, the MySpace Boxing Forum.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

BJJMart.com, your premier source for all Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gear, videos, books, and much more.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

GRACIEMAG, the most reliable source of information on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. GRACIEMAG represents Jiu-Jitsu philosophy and features news, profiles, history, photos, videos, and tips and secrets of the mother of all martial arts. Published since 1996 in Brazil, GRACIEMAG: The Jiu-Jitsu Lifestyle, is in both English and Portuguese, and is also online at GRACIEMAG.com.

FightBeat.com, for news, results, interviews, and free exclusive videos from the worlds of boxing and mixed martial arts.

Labels: Eddie Goldman, injuries, John Perretti, Karl List, No Holds Barred