Royce vs Akebono - The Forgotten Fight?

While the conventional wisdom is that "anyone" could have done what Royce did back in the day, the fact of the matter is Royce is the one who actually did it. For those of us old enough to have been training in martial arts at that time, you can't overstate how influential he was.

The funny thing to me is, one of my favorite Royce fights never seems to make his "highlight" reel. It was against Akebono -who must have been at least 150lbs heavier than Royce. Think about that the next time someone writes about why GSP and Anderson Silva can't fight because of a 15lb weight difference. Imagine fighting a guy the size of Akebono and having him fall into your guard. He would literally tear your groin muscles apart. Royce can do a full split so maybe that saved him when Akebono fell into his guard twice.

Royce wins the match rather quickly with a classic submission. I don't know what its called but I attempt it off of Chill Dog regularly. It's a shame Royce never came over to the Dark Side to train 10th Planet...

[IMG][URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/18/51vha37wlglss500.jpg/]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/954...7wlglss500.jpg[/IMG]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POJ2T023M4I

To prepare for this fight, Royce had like 6 guys in his guard at the same time.

WRT GSP vs Silva, i feel its different due to how well trained and versed they are in MMA. You could say the same thing about Royce vs Severn but the fact of the matter is that Severn didn't have that level of training that Royce did. I'm not saying a smaller guy can take a bigger guy ever but im saying at the level they are at it definitely plays a role.