The Professional Life of Kevin Randleman

He looked like a monster. Standing at 5’ 10” and sculpted and thick 215-pounds or so, Kevin Randleman looked like a fighter nobody in their right mind would want to fight. Many times, he would prove that sentiment correct, slamming opponents to the ground in the blink of an eye and punishing them with punches and elbows that were a calling card of wrestlers of that era. He was a great wrestler – one of the best in Ohio State history – fast and strong, and with all the talent in the world. With all of his raw tools, he was one of the best athletes to ever step in a ring or a cage, but like many great natural athletes, he never worked as hard as he could have or should have. Injuries, illness, and a refusal to evolve hampered his career and kept him from reaching his potential. Despite that, he was a constant presence on the big stage for nearly a decade, won championships, and his involvement in several seminal moments ensured his place in history.

Randleman passed away on Thursday, February 11, due to complications from pneumonia. He was only 44. Less than a week prior, he was in Las Vegas posing for pictures at the World MMA Awards.

Randleman last competed in 2011 in Russia. It was another loss in a string of losses. Like most 39-year-old fighters, his skills, both technical and physical, had depleted. It marked an unfortunately quiet end to a fifteen-year career tightly packed with highs and lows.

Richard Hamilton recruited Randleman into mixed martial arts in 1996 along with a slew of wrestlers that included Mark Coleman. At UFC 11, Randleman made his unofficial UFC debut, staging a wrestling exhibition with Coleman to appease the crowd after Coleman won the event’s tournament by default when nobody would step in to face him. A month later, Randleman was in Brazil making his debut.

Brazilian promoters at the time were keen to book American wrestlers in Vale Tudo tournaments, typically against Brazilians. Randleman breezed through three opponents, including Dan Bobish, to take the tournament. In March of 1997, he travelled back to Brazil for another tournament. After 31 minutes of fighting, he met Carlos Barreto in the finals. Barreto, a BJJ world champion at brown belt the year prior, had completed his first two matches in about 10 minutes. They had fought for 22 minutes when Baretto secured a triangle choke. The referee stopped the match when Randleman slumped over, appearing to go out. However, immediately thereafter Randleman continued fighting for a takedown. Coleman, in Randleman’s corner, was furious with the stoppage. In any case, after 53 minutes of fighting in one night, Randleman had lost for the first time.

He returned in June for another tournament in Brazil, this time with only four participants. It was high stakes for Randleman: if he came out unscathed, he was slated to cut down to compete in the middleweight (199 lbs.) tournament at UFC 14 the following month. “The Monster” got through his first opponent easily enough, but his next opponent was another animal. “The Big Cat” Tom Erikson was an enormous wrestler that took home the national championship in 1997 in freestyle wrestling in the super heavyweight class and hadn’t been beaten in MMA. Randleman wouldn’t just be facing a much bigger man, but also a fighter more accomplished in his core competency. It didn’t end well. Erikson finished Randleman with right hands in 71 seconds. Randleman was stretched out of the cage. It would be nearly two years before his next fight.

By the mid-late 90s, the UFC had turned into a wrestler’s paradise, but the tide began to shift with a colossal upset. Kickboxer Maurice Smith took the heavyweight title from the superhuman Mark Coleman to prove strikers could adapt to beat top grapplers. Smith would lose the title not long after to another wrestler, Randy Couture, who then vacated the title following a contract dispute with the financially struggling UFC. At the same time, UFC brought in Bas Rutten, unproven under UFC rules but promoted as the world’s greatest martial artist. The UFC slotted Rutten in a four-man multi-show tournament to decide the next heavyweight champion, and obviously hoped that the charismatic Dutchman would take the gold.

Rutten got through his opening round match and was set to face the winner of Maurice Smith vs. Marcus Silveira for the belt. The idea was to build to a Rutten vs. Smith final, a match that had already been done twice in Pancrase, with Rutten winning both times. However, Randleman soon replaced Silveira, and took home a clear decision victory over Smith to jump into the finals. The stage was set to determine the next UFC heavyweight champion.

It was a classic striker vs. grappler match, and Randleman took control early with a takedown. He passed Rutten’s guard and smashed his face with punches. He continued the assault until the bout was halted with a bit less than five minutes left to check on the cut on Rutten’s nose. Upon the restart, Randleman was still able to plant Rutten on the ground, but his output had slowed to a near halt. He landed 38 heavy blows on Rutten in the opening five minutes, but landed just seven strikes in the 16 minutes after the break. Meanwhile, Rutten was active with elbows and punches from his back.

When the fight ended, Rutten had been more active for most of the fight, but Randleman’s opening five minutes had left a bigger impression in the fans’ minds and on Rutten’s face. The judges’ decision was the most controversial in promotional history to that point: one for Randleman, two for Rutten.

“If I had to pick one of the fights that made a huge impact on mixed martial arts, it would be the heavyweight championship bout between Bas Rutten and Kevin Randleman at UFC 20,” John McCarthy, who served as the third man in the cage, wrote in his autobiography Let’s Get it On. The match and its result caused the UFC to adopt the current five-minute round structure beginning at UFC 21. It also caused McCarthy and UFC Commissioner Jeff Blatnik to come up with the “effective striking, effective grappling, aggression, and octagon control,” judging criteria that still exists today. Although the UFC almost surely would have adopted its current round structure and the ten-point must judging system without Randleman vs. Rutten, the match hastened its adoption.

Soon after, Rutten vacated the heavyweight championship to chase the middleweight crown, but he ended up retiring due to injuries. Randleman, who had second thoughts about returning to the cage after the decision, was given a reprieve. At UFC 23 in Japan, Randleman captured the heavyweight championship with a dull decision victory over Pete Williams.

Randleman’s title reign came at a dire time for the UFC. They were bleeding money, had pay-per-view distribution limited to satellite homes, and no longer had a deal to put out home videos, making the promotion almost invisible. The UFC Japan show on which Randleman won the championship was a sold show – one put on by Japanese promoters that paid UFC parent company SEG for the rights to the show. UFC 24 was built around Randleman’s first championship defense against Pedro Rizzo. Backstage, Randleman jumped high in the air to warm up, as he often did in the cage, and slipped on pipes and cracked his head on the cement floor. He was knocked unconscious and vomited upon being revived. The match was called off, and the show left without a main event.

Randleman and Rizzo would meet three months later at UFC 26 in front of 1,100 fans in Iowa in an unforgettably bad fight. Both fighters were tentative throughout, perhaps not without reason. Randleman had been up partying the night before with No Holds Barred author Clyde Gentry, and Rizzo was knocked loopy by an accidental headbutt early in the third round. Fans showered the octagon with boos and later, trash.

At UFC 28, Randy Couture returned to the UFC and immediately challenged for Randleman’s heavyweight title. Randleman, the younger, quicker wrestler, was in control through two rounds, but tired in the third and was stopped by mounted strikes. With the benefit of hindsight, it was the beginning of the end of Randleman’s prime. At 29, he was still a physical specimen, but wrestling with Mark Coleman and punching a heavy bag wouldn’t cut it in an evolving sport. He immediately dropped down to light heavyweight, a division that better suited his frame, and was stopped surprisingly in just over one minute by Chuck Liddell – the first major win over Liddell’s career. He would fight once more in the UFC, beating Renato Sobral while he and most others that stayed at the Mohegan Sun that week battled illness.

After beating Sobral, Randleman headed east to Pride in September 2002, which was hitting its stride. He dominated Michiyoshi Ohara in his debut, but it was a dull fight and Randleman’s performance was hampered by illness. He would win twice more in 2002, capped by a cut stoppage win over the tough Murilo Rua. That win set up a shot at Pride middleweight (205 lbs.) champion Wanderlei Silva, however Randleman would run into a major obstacle first.

Quinton Jackson had been on a tear when he met Randleman in March 2003. The two stalemated early, battling in close for position. Randleman had difficulty budging Jackson, and the future UFC light heavyweight champion wouldn’t be worn down. He soon put Randleman down and finished his title hopes. Later in the year, Randleman was injured in a car accident, but returned to face Kazushi Sakuraba in November. Despite his physical advantages and Sakuraba’s much evident decline, Randleman’s tentativeness, perhaps his greatest weakness, may have cost him the fight. Sakuraba scored an armbar win, and Randleman took a break from the 205-pound division.

Randleman returned in 2004 in the field for Pride’s heavyweight grand prix. He was the first round opponent of Mirko Cro Cop, and expected to be a gimme opponent for the Croatian, who had devastating striking and excellent takedown defense. Cro Cop was one of the tournament’s three favorites, along with Fedor Emelianenko and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Early on, Randleman shot for a takedown, which Cro Cop easily defended. Although it wasn’t successful, it put the threat in Cro Cop’s mind. With Cro Cop’s mind on defending the takedown, Randleman surprised him with a left hook that put the striker on the ground. Randleman, swarming like a monster, knocked Cro Cop unconscious. The Japanese crowd, usually strongly pro-Cro Cop, exploded. The announcers expressed shock. Randleman had unseated one of the tournament favorites in the first round in the most unexpected of ways. It was a classic upset that would lead to the most famous moment of Randleman’s career.

Randleman had the tall task of battling heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko in the second round. Although Randleman wasn’t favored, there was an idea that Emelianenko – not yet a suspected cyborg – would have a tough time against wrestlers. Initially, it looked like there was some merit to that. Randleman took Emelianenko down early, but the champion turned to his back and stood up. With a firm grasp on Emelianenko’s waist, Randleman launched the Russian backward into the air and planted him on his head. The move would have folded a lesser man’s spine like an accordion, but Emelianenko remained cool in the pandemonium. Seemingly vulnerable, Emelianenko reversed Randleman seconds later and submitted him with a kimura shortly after that. The thrilling sequence remains an all-time highlight in the sport.

Unfortunately, the slam was the last great moment of Randleman’s career. Age and injuries caught up with him, as did the skills of a new generation of fighters. Cro Cop would avenge his defeat at the year-end show in another surprising finish. Randleman’s first takedown attempt resulted in a guillotine choke loss. He would subsequently return to light heavyweight, but his time had already passed. Strikeforce later brought in Randleman, largely due to his name value, but he dropped both fights to Mike Whitehead and Roger Gracie, respectively. His final career victory came in 2008 in the short-lived Sengoku organization, defeating journeyman Ryo Kawamura.

Kevin Randleman entered the sport at both the best possible time and the worst possible time. On one hand, his athleticism, power, speed, and wrestling made him a standout in an era that was still largely style vs. style. On the other hand, if he’d come along a decade later, it’s frightening to think of what such a natural talent would become after training with a top, modern camp.

Unquestionable, though, is that 44 is far too young to go. He leaves behind a legacy and, more importantly, a family. Kevin Randleman won’t soon be forgotten.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.