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Mark Coleman, known as “The Godfather of Ground and Pound,” and the first world class wrestler still in his wrestling prime to become a UFC world champion, announced his retirement on 3/5, noting he was doing so because he was undergoing a total hip replacement on 3/11.

Coleman, 48. had actually not fought in more than three years, since losing to Randy Couture via second round choke in the UFC 109 main event on February 6, 2010, ending his career with what is listed as a 16-10 record, but should really be 16-9, since one of those losses was a 1999 pro wrestling match with Nobuhiko Takada that took place on a Pride show.

Coleman was a high school wrestling and football star who went to Miami of Ohio, where he was Mid-American Conference champion in 1985 and 1986, placing fourth at 190 pounds in the 1986 NCAA tournament. He transferred to Ohio State, where he was NCAA champion at 190 in 1988.

After college, he was a three-time Pan American champion in freestyle wrestling, won the gold medal in the 1991 Pan America Games at 220 pounds, placed second that year in the world championships, and placed seven in 1992 at the Olympics. He was still a high-level competitor, going for his second Olympics in 1996, but in a loaded field in his weight class that year, which included Mark Kerr, Dan Chaid and eventual gold medalist Kurt Angle, he failed to make the team.

Shortly after the trials, he was recruited by UFC to be wrestling’s representative at UFC 10, on July 12, 1996, in Birmingham. UFC was still doing the one-night open weight class tournaments, and Coleman became an instant star, beating Moti Horenstein in 2:43, Gary Goodridge in 7:00, and finally finished Don Frye in 11:34. Coleman, who at the time was still talking about going for the 2000 Olympic team, although he’d have been 35 by then, noted that nobody could take him down, and nobody could stop his takedown.

After winning a second tournament on September 20, 1996, he defeated fellow wrestler Dan Severn in just 2:57 with a neck crank to win the UFC heavyweight championship on February 7, 1997, in Dothan, AL.

Up to that point, he had looked unbeatable, but in the Frye match, his Achilles heel showed up, but few saw it. Coleman was exhausted in the latter stages of the fight. He and Frye had both fought twice earlier in the show. He gave Frye a terrible beating early on, but Frye in those days was a guy who would never quit. By the time Coleman was out of gas, Frye had been beaten up so badly he couldn’t take advantage of it.

Coleman was supposed to have an easy fight next, a unification match with Extreme Fighting Championship heavyweight champion Maurice Smith. EFC, then UFC’s big PPV rival in the genre, had just folded allowing a champion vs. champion fight to be made. At the time, kickboxers were thought to have no chance with the wrestlers and Jiu Jitsu players who were dominating. The booking idea at the time was to build to a Coleman vs. Vitor Belfort dream match, giving both men opponents they could beat and set up a match on the last show of 1997 as the big showdown. Coleman quickly took Smith down and was pounding him. But Smith defended well on the ground, waited for Coleman to tire, and then picked apart the exhausted Coleman in the second half of the match to win a decision after 21:00 and become champion. Belfort was given an aging wrestler who it was felt couldn’t take him down early, and would get lit up standing, named Randy Couture, but instead it was Coleman and Smith who ended up headlining the year-end show going for the title. It was the first time the lesson was learned, since Coleman vs. Belfort was a heavily anticipated fight, that if a big fight presents itself, you should book it right away, instead of thinking you could hold off nearly a year and give guys wins to set it up.

Coleman lost three straight in UFC, as cable systems started pulling the events from PPV due to political pressure. A rule change that hurt him was the elimination of head-butts. Coleman could take anyone down, and then on top, whether in guard or not, would drop head-butts, busting up the guy on the bottom. Eliminating that move made his top game less effective.

Coleman got a better financial offer and signed with Pride in Japan. He was offered $50,000 to put over Takada, a pro wrestling legend who had lost a lot of his shooter luster in two submission losses to Rickson Gracie. It was Takada’s second paid-for pro wrestling match win in Pride, a move the promotion felt it had to do since Takada was the draw who was the only reason the promotion could stay alive, and he needed a big win in a shoot setting so he could still draw and keep the promotion going.

Coleman’s most well-known triumph came in 2000, when Pride presented its Open weight Grand Prix tournament. At the time Mark Kerr, a friend and sometimes training partner of Coleman, was the heavy favorite, to win, with Igor Vovchanchyn as the other favorite. There was also mystery because the tournament had Takada, Royce Gracie and Kazushi Sakuraba (at that point not yet a top star). Gracie had never lost in MMA (he had a forfeit loss but it wasn’t an actual fight, and a draw with Ken Shamrock that he would have likely lost had their been judges at the time) and the Gracies still had that aura about them.

Coleman reached the final eight by beating kickboxer Masaaki Satake with a neck crank. On the final night, on May 1, 2000, at the Tokyo Dome, a one-night eight-man tournament, he won a 15:00 decision over the much smaller Akira Shoji, got essentially a forfeit win over an injured Kazuyuki Fujita and then stopped Vovchanchyn at 3:09 of the second round with knees on the ground to win the tournament.

Coleman was considered the unofficial world heavyweight champion with the tournament win, a label he lost when he was submitted in 6:10 by the rising Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on September 24, 2001, in Osaka. Coleman was not in shape for the fight, having both personal issues, and being left reeling by 9/11, which put a damper on much of the country.

Ultimately, Coleman never fully evolved his game past wrestling and ground-and-pound. As a jacked up 250 pounder against guys who had never been in with a world class wrestler, it was good enough. But when guys learned to defend and had the confidence his gas tank would run out, and with Coleman looking less formidable at 232 pounds, he had mixed results, losing to the next generation top stars like Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko Cro Cop.

Coleman and protege Kevin Randleman also became pro wrestlers in Japan for a number of different promotions. Both men actually had a natural aptitude for the business, having good matches even with limited training, working on a number of major shows for a variety of promotions.

With the right break and training, both could have been stars on the U.S. scene, Randleman, due to his physique and great leaping ability, perhaps the more of the two.

Coleman got a last run in UFC when they were running a show in Ohio, and the promotion felt it would be a nice touch to induct him into the Hall of Fame. Coleman had tried to get back into UFC, but the feeling was he was past his prime and they weren’t interested. But timing was everything.

He again pushed for getting back, and it was felt a great storyline would be Coleman being inducted into the Hall of Fame, and then announcing a comeback to the promotion against Brock Lesnar.

It was a clever move on a lot of levels. Lesnar had one UFC match, losing to Frank Mir, which did excellent business on PPV, and in the brief match, Lesnar showed great aggression, speed and strength, but made a rookie mistake in his aggression and was submitted.

He needed to be rebuilt, because another loss would have likely destroyed his drawing power.

Coleman was the perfect opponent, a legend people hadn’t seen in UFC since 1999. It had already been shown with Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, that stars from the original era could be brought back to lose to current stars, and the fan base would believe they could win, and the fights did enormous business.

As soon as the match was announced, the fan base, with its nostalgia, was talking about how Coleman would destroy Lesnar, noting Coleman placed second at the world championships (17 years earlier) and thus was a better wrestler, as well as experienced as a UFC and Pride champion. The company knew better, as Coleman was 43 years old, had all sorts of injuries including neck problems, and Lesnar was 13 years younger, and far bigger and stronger. Coleman had never really evolved past wrestling, so he wasn’t really a submission threat, and there was little doubt Lesnar at that stage could have taken him down in a wrestling match. Unlike Mir, Coleman had never shown any skill in defending or attacking from his back.

But UFC kind of got double-crossed. Shortly after announcing the match, Coleman pulled out of the fight, citing a knee injury in training. It was a somewhat minor injury, but when he recovered, he announced he was cutting to 205, so UFC couldn’t book a match with Lesnar down the line.

Coleman did get his Tito and Wanderlei moment. He survived until the third round before losing to Mauricio “Shogun” Rua on January 17, 1999, in Dublin. The fight was unique. Both guys were exhausted, but the crowd got ridiculously behind Coleman hoping the 44-year-old would score the upset. Even though it was really, from an athletic standpoint, just an exhausted guy who wouldn’t quit, who got lucky when his opponent was also exhausted, it made for a super compelling fight. In losing, Coleman became a cult favorite.

Then, in a major upset, he used his wrestling to score a major upset at UFC 100 over Stephan Bonnar.

For years, he had claimed that the only difference between himself and Couture was timing, that he was the better wrestler of the two and would have beaten him. But Coleman, while his career had its highlights, never made the big money and had the spotlight U.S. run Couture had. He had said it for so many years that UFC tried to make a PPV main event match out of the Battle of Hall of Famers.

While what would have happened had they fought in 1997 or 2000 is a question, by 2010, it was clear immediately it no longer was. The years had been far kinder to Couture. He had fewer injuries. He had lived a cleaner lifestyle and he had progressed his entire game. At 46, Couture was years younger than Coleman was at 45. Coleman tired quickly and the fight was not competitive.

While Tito Ortiz and Coleman got into a shouting match that could have been an angle for Coleman to be brought back one last time, the feeling was, based on his performance with Couture, that he was done.

Coleman was a major figure in the evolution of the sport. While Ken Shamrock was a good wrestler as far as high school and some freestyle went, and Dan Severn was a great wrestler, but 36 when he started, Coleman came in right after the Olympic trials and won the world championship seven months into the new sport. He showed what wrestlers could do, and was thought to be unbeatable. But his subsequent losses also showed what wrestlers couldn’t do, and as the game progressed, showed that those who concentrated on one discipline, even one as valuable as wrestling, were going to be left behind.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:I still think wrestlers should be pissed they took away the headbutt.

DARTH wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:I still think wrestlers should be pissed they took away the headbutt.

=D> =D> =D> =D>

Being nordic/celtic/saxon and just a dirty fuck, I was pissed when they took away headbutting!

I was showing the boys today how to use the hrons of the forehead properly in close as a helper for O Uchi Gari after clinching with someone throwing the old 1-2.