Aw, this sucks, he had so much going for him!
Super explosive & athletic, strong Judo base, trained at Team Quest with some of the best wrestlers of the time, very easy to promote to fans, etc...
He was supposed to be the future of
Team Quest but sadly, after his loss to Lyoto Machida in a "undefeated phenom vs undefeated phenom" kind of fight, and yes he had a loss to Glover, but back then
nobody knew who he was, and assumed it was a massive fluke
well Sokoudjou could sadly never recapture the lightning in a bottle that were his KOs over Lil Nog & Arona.
Man, just imagine some unkown guys came out of nowhere today and knocked the fuck out of 2 top 5 LHWS in less than 2 min (Rogerio was ranked #3 and Arona #5 IIRC), that was enormous.
Obviously, Arona went on to complain that he was suffering from dengue fever at the time of the fight. BTT till the end, eh?
Poor Soko never felt the same after Minowaman cracked his chin
It might feel strange to newer fans, but Soko was massive news back in the end-of-PRIDE kinda days.
Had things played out differently, and had he beat Machida that night, things could have played out a loooot different.
'member when Karo Parisyan took advantage of Soko's sudden fame to claim that he had beaten him at a Judo tournament years before?
He even posted old ass footage on shaky cam to back his claim up, likely anticipating a rebutal from Thierry.
But nope, the predator was simply happy to see this event was filmed, and stated that he remembered losing to a smaller guy but he had no idea it was Karo until the watched their match again...
