Ken Shamrock verloor onlangs op nogal dubieuze wijze van Royce Gracie. Dat Ken daar niet blij mee was, weten we. Om Royce aan te sporen om het “juiste” te doen, heeft hij nu een open brief geschreven. Die lees je hieronder. The titel van de brief: “It needs to finish the right way”.
Royce, you are an icon in the sport of NHB and a role model and hero to people around the globe. Your legacy and the legacy of your family and its training is important to you.
As you know, our last (Trilogy) fight ended in a wrong manner that is unsettling to both me and our fans from around the world–and hopefully to you too. Due to the obvious missed illegal foul, I have challenged the outcome of our bout and I’m confident that the commission will render a ‘No Decision’ nullifying the result of our last fight.
Controversy has plagued our past fights and it’s important to how history will be written that we do not allow the wrong of a missed foul to go unchecked. It is crucially important that you and I redo our trilogy fight for the sake of our legacies and the many fans who are left dissatisfied.
In 1993, we had a similar situation where you caught me with a choke which caused me to tap. You let go, but the ref did not see the tap and told us to “fight.” You yelled at me “you tapped!” I remember how badly I wanted to say ‘no’ but I could not bring myself to lie. In my heart, I thought of my children and other children I had been mentoring at the time. I could only tell the ref “yes, I tapped.” I remembered how badly I wanted the fight to continue on, but in the end– telling the truth was the right thing to do and that’s what I did. At our recent fight, you chose to not extend common courtesy for your low-blow and give me my time to recoup. You fought on with no regard that I had stopped fighting you back.
In delivering you this message, my greatest hope is to help you see that a failure to step up and do the right thing will not play out well, going into the future, for your image or the legacy of your father’s training.
This trilogy fight was a fight between two legends and we went in to settle things once and for all. Not only did that not happen, it’s now worse off than before. Today, there is unresolved like never before and that is not right. To fix this correctly, we must redo our fight.
I am asking that you do not walk away from this great opportunity to give back to this great event and our awesome fans. You and I need to finish our business so we both can walk away (win or lose) with our heads held high and in respect for all that we have been able to accomplish in doing our part in helping build this great sport. Please, do not leave your legacy to this ugly situation caused by this controversy. It’s not right to leave a fight of this magnitude unresolved for all. I trust you will make the right decision and publically agree to fight me.
Scott Coker will do this fight if you and I both say yes to finish things the right way. I am saying yes. Let’s finish this once and for all.
DO NOT LEAVE THINGS UNRESOLVED, PLEASE.
