Ken Shamrock was at the receiving end of illegal knee strike to the groin which went unnoticed by the referee, in his trilogy bout with fellow UFC hall of famer Royce Gracie.

Gracie followed the groin strike, with a knee to face and take him down to finally finish him with strikes on the ground. The fight was stopped after 2:22 min sin the first round.

Shamrock was very upset and didn’t accept the loss and said at the post-fight press conference:

“I got kneed in the nuts….I don’t know what else to say,”

“I apologized to Royce and his corner because it wasn’t his fault. He was doing what he had to do. But I wanted this fight. It bothered me a lot, because I figured that in a main event fight with something like this, you have all those fans there, they’re waiting to see us end this our way, and all he had to do was stop and give me a chance to recover, tuck my nuts back in and go again.

“That’s all that had to happen. Instead they call the fight? I mean, it was pretty clear to me.”

“In my opinion, it’s not over. I wouldn’t want to win that way. If it was me, personally, if I had hit somebody in the nuts and they went down – I knew that I hit them in the nuts – I would probably put my hands up and go, ‘Sorry’ out of reaction, out of a reaction, out of courtesy. Out of a reaction, I would’ve went, ‘Whoa. Sorry, dude.’ and given him time to get his five minutes to recover. That’s what I would’ve done.”

Royce Gracie stated:

It’s my first KO win!

About the controversy:

Ken and me come from an area where everything was allowed. There were almost no rules.