And then just to close some loops (I know some of these have been answered, but just to collect them all in one place):
Vitor Belfort. The birth of The Phenom.
Guy Mezger. An early UFC tournament champ. It's too bad he suffered a stroke right before he was going to have his rubber match with Tito at UFC 50.
Wanderlei Silva. Too aggressive for his own good, walked right on Vitor's straight left at the same time as Blatnick was saying on the commentary that Wanderlei might not want to move forward so much against Vitor...
Pedro Rizzo. That fight with Arlovski is such an underrated fight from one of the best early UFC cards.
Ricco Rodriguez. I've long maintained that the Ricco Rodriguez that stormed through the UFC HW division and took the belt at UFC 39 is one of the greatest fighters of all-time and the only fighter other than the Cro Cop that annihilated Wand and Barnett in the OWGP who I'd pick to realistically beat a prime Fedor. His fight with Randy at UFC 39 is one of the greatest fights of all-time.
Evan Tanner. One of the old school self-taught fighters who first started training after wrestling in high school by watching old "Gracie in Action" VHS tapes.
There's been some confusion with this one, so, to clarify: At UFC 3, the tournament got COMPLETELY fucked. After Keith Hackney won his opening bout, he was forced to withdraw from the tournament. (He broke his hand on Emmanuel Yarborough's head.) So after Ken Shamrock beat Christophe Leininger, instead of fighting Keith Hackney - a GREAT old school bout that we missed out on - he fought the replacement Felix Mitchell. Meanwhile, after Royce Gracie beat Kimo in his opening bout, his family tried to get him to fight Harold Howard in the semifinals, but he was so exhausted and out of it that he made his family call the fight off, resulting in a technical loss and in Howard advancing to the finals. Finally, Ken Shamrock had injured his leg against Mitchell, and when he learned that Royce had withdrawn from the tournament, he opted not to risk further injury - he cared more about Pancrase than the UFC at this time, and he literally
only returned to the UFC to get revenge on Royce, he didn't give a fuck about Harold Howard or the UFC 3 tournament championship - and withdrew as well. This left Harold Howard with no one to fight in the finals, so another alternate, Steve Jennum, replaced Ken, fought Howard in the finals, beat him, and became the UFC 3 tournament champion.
To this day, I hate that Ken was so stubborn. He would've so easily mauled Harold Howard, he should've just gone out, tapped him, and gotten his UFC tournament championship. But he wasn't thinking about his legacy in that moment, he was just pissed that he wasn't going to get to fight Royce so he packed his shit up and went back to Japan where he'd win the King of Pancrase tournament and become the first ever Pancrase champion. A very Barry Sanders move that stings for me as much as it stings football fans that Barry never broke Walter Payton's record.
Mark Kerr, aka The Rock's next dramatic role
See above
