Re: Jay had to know that he was given a gift. Yes! His acceptance speech basically alluded to that. He stated that he had to make some last minute adjustments, which was basically an admission that he looked bad at prejudging.
In 2008, he looked better and Dexter looked worse, yet Dexter got the W, lol.
PS - pellius, are you familiar with former UFC fighter Taylor Wily? I only ask because he is another Hawaiian guy, and is huge - 6'2" and 420-lb. He wasn't knocked out in his UFC 1 fight, but they stopped it for some reason...maybe because he lost his tooth. I guess that was before the UFC refined its rules. I have heard it was a conspiracy to allow BJJ to dominate that first contest.
Yes, Taylor is now a regular on Hawaii Five O and doing fine without having to bust up his body.
And you're right, Rorion founded the UFC because he believed it could be a viable sport as it already was in Brasil (Vale Tudo). Two guys fighting it out no rules (Vale Tudo means "anything goes") has a visceral appeal to men. And Rorion knew the state of martial arts in America and knew it was all baloney. All these breaking boards, Katas, and choreographed techniques were useless in a fight. In Brasil, they fought for real. In the streets and in the ring. Remember, he already had an open challenge to anybody -- ANYBODY -- who could beat them in a bare fisted no holds barred fight. You win, you get $10,000 dollars. You lose? Nothing. You go home in shame and maybe think about what you've been wasting your life on doing Kung Fu, Karate, and the most useless of all, Aikido, and the Gracies have another notch on their belt.
One by one all these Black Belts, Red Belts, Masters, Ninja, Foo Man Choos would come in and get their ass handle to them in minutes. It wasn't pretty. Nothing like the movies. Just brutal fist swinging, rolling on the ground, scraps. But they always won -- easily. It got to a point when the challengers had to get through Blue Belts and even then they would lose. Oddly no wrestlers showed up because at the time wrestlers never trained in submissions and strikes and didn't consider themselves fighters which is ironic as they would have given the Gracies much more of a challenge being in better shape and tougher. No college level athlete's training is more brutal than a D-1 wrestler.
So Rorion knew that no traditional martial artist at the time could hold his own even against the least skilled and least experienced and tested Gracie, scrawny Royce. So there wasn't really much "conspiracy" needed to be orchestrated for Royce to shine -- EXCEPT for Ken Shamrock. When Rorion realized Shamrock was a real fighter, Pancrase and Shooto are pretty close to a real fight and Shamrock was a champ, he did everything he could to get him out without appearing biased and obvious. Not only was Shamrock skilled but he was a real conditioned athlete. Royce was not. It was Bruce Lee who once said that you will never find more out of shape "athletes" than in traditional martial arts.
But they studied Shamrock's fights and knew the ankle lock was a favorite and he would always try it. And when someone "pulls guard" the ankle is right there. Few back then were familiar with ankle locks and it was pretty easy to get if you're in the right position. But Royce knew that as soon Shamrock sits back to lock it in he would sit right back up and end up on top of Ken.
