



There is a generation of pioneers in mixed martial arts who tend to fall under the radar when we reflect on the early years. While Royce Gracie, Mark Coleman and Ken Shamrock are being affectionately remembered and inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, a few good men still do not get the praise they are due.

The fight I want to talk about today was everything in the young sport of mixed martial arts when it took place under the PRIDE banner in September 1999. And even after it had happened, the score had not been settled. This bout rang with controversy and left one fighter with a target on his back, and the other with a chip on his shoulder.

Today we remember the fight at PRIDE 7 between Ice Cold Igor Vovchanchyn, and The Smashing Machine, Mark Kerr.

The Ukraine Freight Train

In 1995, a Ukrainian kickboxer named Igor Vovchanchyn made the move to the new sport of No Holds Barred (NHB) fighting. There was no uniformity in the rules, nor in the arenas. There were cages, rings, and even oversized, open mats.

Vovchanchyn fought seven times in his first year, going 5-2, predictably (as a kickboxer moving to mixed martial arts) picking up two losses by submission. One, curiously, by “chin in the eye”, which gives you a clue of just how different an era we're talking about!

In 1996, however, Vovchanchyn began on something unbelievable. A thirty-two fight winning streak. Vovchanchyn punched, kicked, stomped, groin kicked and headbutted his way through thirty different men and even used his forehead to “nut” Nick Nutter into submission. What made it more impressive was that he entered numerous eight man, one night tournaments.

There was a great deal about Igor which didn't gel with the established norms of No Holds Barred competition. Firstly, he was a striker, yet he fought his way up to be considered one of the top two heavyweights in the world. This was a time when grapplers dominated the landscape, and nobody had anything even resembling a fully rounded skill set.

Secondly, despite being just 5'8, and about 190lbs when he started his MMA career, Vovchanchyn fought as a heavyweight. Competing in one-night tournaments, Vovchanchyn was often fighting several men who outweighed him by a hundred pounds, and battering them. In fact, one of the noticeable trends of Vovchanchyn's career was that—though he always turned up in shape to compete—he loved his food as much as his fighting. Vovchanchyn was fighting at a heavyweight, even when PRIDE introduced a 205lbs class, so he just kept eating and getting rounder.



Giving up over a hundred pounds to Paul Varelans.

Despite his undersized frame, Vovchanchyn could throw a punch like no-one you've seen before. In the same way that Rocky Marciano's short reach allowed him to wing his full weight into swings, Vovchanchyn swung almost straight armed and still produced incredible speed from chamber to target.

Vovchanchyn threw his hooks not palm down, but almost palm outward—as if looking at his watch. One of the advantages of this method is that you can throw at the extent of your reach and still hit with the knuckles, rather then the fingers or thumb. The downside is that if you connect wrong, you mess your hands up. Vovchanchyn, today, has metal plates in his arms and is still troubled by his injuries, which ultimately forced him out of the fight game.

The Smashing Machine

While Vovchanchyn was fighting giants in Ukrainian promotions, an American wrestler named Mark Kerr was causing quite a stir on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Making his professional debut in Brazil in 1997, Kerr ground his way through three opponents in one night to take the World Vale Tudo Championships 3 Heavyweight Tournament Title.

Ground and pound is a term which I am sure you are all familiar with, and you can undertake it with a dozen different surfaces, but there are really only two types you need to worry about. Firstly, there is transitional ground and pound—which benefits from a great understanding of grappling—where you land shots as you pass guard, as they recover guard, and you constantly look to improve your striking position by moving to the mount or the mounted crucifix, or knee on belly—somewhere where you can get some weight behind your punches. That is the style of Fedor Emelianenko, Cain Velasquez, Daniel Cormier—it thrives on movement.

Then there is static ground and pound. Which focuses on holding position and hitting however you can from there. That is what Mark Kerr and his friend, Mark Coleman excelled at. Kerr would get his man down, maybe try an elementary guard pass, then hold and hit from there. But with his incredible strength, and the rules of the day, Kerr could do as much damage from there as anyone.

Just in the WVC 3 tournament, Kerr displayed a full variety of headbutts, palm strikes and knees on the ground which left Paul Varelans a bloody mess, forced Mestre Hulk to flee from the ring, and allowed Kerr to dominate the great Brazilian jiu jitsu master, Fabio Gurgel. The Gurgel fight went half an hour as Gurgel held his closed guard but could do nothing to stop the headbutts.

Following that fight, Kerr accumulated another eight wins in the UFC and PRIDE. No-one went the distance with Kerr, and he only went past the first round once, against an opponent who was crawling out of the ring and spitting his mouth piece out just to postpone the actual fighting! Kerr even found time to compete in the ADCC grappling championships—winning the 99kg + in 1999, and the 99kg+ and openweight divisions in 2000. Kerr even submitted Metamoris' now heavyweight champion, Josh Barnett.



This was the era when traditional martial arts purists were still having a bash in the UFC against actual athletes like Kerr... it didn't end well.

Having captured the UFC 14 and 15 tournament titles, and mopped up so far in PRIDE, Kerr was considered the man to beat at heavyweight. With both Kerr and Vovchanchyn beating everyone PRIDE placed in front of them, a meeting between the two was inevitable.

PRIDE 7

PRIDE was still young in 1999—PRIDE 7 drew just 10,000 spectators, which barely compares to the days in 2006 when they were able to sell out Saitama Super Arena and the Tokyo Dome. But the card featured some big names and up and comers. Wanderlei Silva made his PRIDE debut at PRIDE 7, Maurice Smith picked up a submission win over the first K-1 champion, Branko Cikatic, and Kazushi Sakuraba was still steadily putting together his curriculum vitae as the best pound for pound fighter on the planet.

When the bell rang on the Kerr—Vovchanchyn match, Kerr immediately dashed across the ring and moved to the clinch. The ropes saved Igor from a lateral drop, and Kerr opened a gash over the snowflake-skinned Ukrainian's eye with the same knees from the clinch which had finished the overmatched Ranger Stott at UFC 15.



Great technique, terrible ring awareness.

Kerr threw a body kick and Vovchanchyn immediately caught it and sent Kerr to the canvas with an overhand right. Kerr bounced up and immediately dived on the takedown. He couldn't afford to test his striking against Vovchanchyn, it was time to go to his bread and butter.

Here was where the fight slowed down drastically. Kerr couldn't butt, PRIDE rules prohibited it. That had been the trouble against Hugo Duarte when Duarte was desperately stalling. And Vovchanchyn was doing a great job, for the most part, of tying Kerr up with an overhook. If Kerr postured up, Vovchanchyn would immediately slide in a knee shield and kick Kerr out to standing. It was ugly, and he obviously wasn't a respectable threat in the guard, but he did exactly what one is always told one should do on the bottom. Keep them too close to punch, or too far away.

Each time Igor scrambed up, Kerr would struggle to keep a hold of him, and Igor would land a right hand. But each time Kerr shot, Vovchanchyn was almost resigned to being put on his back.

From the midpoint of the opening round, Kerr was running out of ideas. When he sat in Vovchanchyn's guard, Vovchanchyn would slap his ears with those huge hams he kept under his gloves, and this visibly upset Kerr. Yet any time Kerr postured up to stike properly, he was kicked out to range. When he was at range, he didn't know what to do, and jumped back into guard.

By the second round it was obvious that Kerr, the physical specimen, was struggling to keep pace, while the dumpy Vovchanchyn was still in condition to explode when he needed to. As Kerr weazed in the guard, Vovchanchyn kicked him out again, and the exhausted Kerr lost his footing and was kicked to the ground.

Vovchanchyn came up swinging, sprawled on the exhausted Kerr and finished him with knees to the head.

Controversy and Epilogue

The problem was that knees to the head were banned at PRIDE 7. The PRIDE organization had held events under a few different rule sets at this point and hadn't quite decided on what it would go forward with. Both Kerr and Vovchanchyn had fought in PRIDE with soccer kicks, stomps and knees to the head of a grounded opponent as legal techniques before, and would go onto afterwards.

PRIDE soon reinstated knees to the head of a grounded opponent, but the bout between Kerr and Vovchanchyn was changed to a no contest. The two met again, but both were different men. Vovchanchyn was rounder than ever, but still at the top of his game. Kerr was struggling more than at any point before with his addiction to opiates. Vovchanchyn took a decision win.



Lets be fair, top players are much more exciting when you legalize knees to the head of a downed opponent.

After his second bout with Vovchanchyn, Kerr slid nosedived from 13-2 and finished his career at 15-11 and 1 NC. Vovchanchyn, meanwhile, struggled with the elite wrestlers, and when Mirko Cro Cop came to PRIDE, there was suddenly a man out there who could out strike him.

Vovchanchyn eventually cut some weight and began to look like the chiselled young man from the grainy VHS tapes of competitions in Ukraine. He brought back body kicks and head kicks to his game and looked a more all around fighter than he had in years. But it was too little, too late. Losing to a young Alistair Overeem and Kazuhiro Nakamura, and citing numerous injuries to the hands which he threw with reckless abandon, Vovchanchyn retired from the sport.

Igor has apparently moved into the restaurant business and has been quite successful. There is something that calls retired fighters to the food business—Jack Dempsey being the most notable example—perhaps it is a celebration of not having to watch their weight and conditioning any more.

A few years ago, HBO aired an excellent documentary called The Smashing Machine. It is one of the most candid looks at early MMA out there and definitely worth a watch. In it you not only see the emotional and mental collapse of Kerr, but his struggles with opiate addiction. What's more, Kerr's reflections on his fear of getting hurt and his panic before stepping in the ring are among the most honest and revealing reflections you will hear from a fighter.

Pick up Jack Slack's new ebook, Fighting Karate at his blog Fights Gone By. Jack can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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