Herschel Walker signs with MMA organization

[Pistons < Spurs]

Former Viking, Cowboy, Eagles and Giants running back Herschel Walker has signed with Strikeforce, a mixed-martial arts and kickboxing organization based in San Jose, California.

AOL Fanhouse has the story which quotes the 47-year-old Walker as saying, "I will go in there and test myself against any 20-year-old. I know there will be naysayers and I'm fine with that. I want to prove to people who sit on a couch and don't do anything but criticize other people [Is he talking to us? He's not talking to us, is he?] that, if you're a true athlete or martial artist, you're not old until you can't get up and walk around anymore. ...my plan at the age of 47 is to show the world I am still one of the best athletes as well."

Walker is best remembered for being a singular force of nature during his college career at the University of Georgia, then signing with Donald Trump's New Jersey Generals of the USFL. The defining moment of his good but not great NFL career was the trade that sent Walker from Dallas to the Minnesota Vikings on October 12, 1989. The deal involved 18 picks or players. The Cowboys used their share of the bounty to build a team that won three Super Bowls in the 1990s. The Vikings shipped him to Philly within three years.

A Strikeforce spokesman said Walker will most likely debut in 2010.http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/09/21/herschel-walker-signs-with-mma-organization/

[Pistons < Spurs]

The 1982 Heisman Trophy winner already holds a fifth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

[lebomb]

Im sure he is phenomenal shape..........but, regardless of what anyone says...........age does take its tole. Especially if you are fighting someone that is 22-30yrs of age. Good luck Hershel. You have my support.

[dallaskd]

lol.

[LEONARD]

It's a smart move for ratings...

but if he fights anybody halfway decent (or better), he'll get slaughtered.

I have a feeling he'll fight a 30 yr old with an 0-1 pro record and get the win though...

[LEONARD]

Johnny Morton...younger, on roids, and also with a martial arts background...fighting a part time fighter / actor...

mniHJAQmNG8

[Evan]

$50 says he fights Fedor

[LEONARD]

I'll take that bet...

cha-ching

[Blackjack]

Former NFLer Herschel Walker signed with Strikeforce (http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Former-NFLer-Herschel-Walker-signed-with-Strikef?urn=mma,190906)
By Maggie Hendricks


Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy-winning running back and former NFL player with the Minnesota Vikings and Dallas Cowboys, has found a new career: mixed martial arts. The 47-year-old Walker has signed a contract with Strikeforce to fight at an unspecified date. He will begin training with American Kickboxing Academy, the high-profile camp in San Jose, Calif., that trains UFC standouts Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick, Jon Fitch, Cain Velasquez and Strikeforce lightweight champion Josh Thomson.

"I've been training for several years. I would play college football games on Saturday and then compete in martial arts tournaments on Sunday after church. I'm now looking forward to opening up another chapter in my life and to competing in MMA," said Walker in a news release.

Walker is not the first high-profile athlete to make the jump to MMA. In the current season of "The Ultimate Fighter," four former NFL players are trying for a chance at a contract with the UFC, most notably Marcus Jones, who played with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for seven years. Cleveland Cavaliers star Shaquille O'Neal has trained in mixed martial arts for years, and made jokes about challenging former UFC champ Chuck Liddell.

That doesn't mean that the road to MMA success will be easy for Walker, who retired from football in 1997. During last week's episode of "The Ultimate Fighter," Jones became sick from the intense workouts that MMA requires. Afterwards, he noted that he never had to work that hard in the NFL.

Walker will also have the obstacle of age in front of him. Though there are fighters who compete well into their forties -- most notably Randy Couture, who is 46 -- but those fighters did not spend much of their lives being tackled by 265 pound linebackers. The wear and tear on a running back should not be dismissed when looking at Walker's chances.

At the same time, it will be hard not to root for him. He's been an MMA fan for years, and was even at UFC 103 this past weekend in Dallas. Walker is a modern-day Jim Thorpe, having competed in the Olympic bobsled, professional football and now MMA. Now, he will test the bounds of his age and health again in MMA. Seeing a 47-year-old man walk the walk in this manner is downright inspirational.


The guy's one of the most freakish athletes you'll ever see and his workouts are legendary, but 47?

I'll be rootin' for him, even if it's a bit of a freakshow, but I ain't all that optimistic for him..

Well, maybe if he can get a couple of those personalities to materialize into tag-team partners he'll actually capture a belt.:hat

At least he picked a good camp.:tu

[BlackSwordsMan]

mma- if you previous career is over come join this one

[Evan]

I'll take that bet...

cha-ching

I was just being a smart ass.

[Evan]

The guy's one of the most freakish athletes you'll ever see and his workouts are legendary, but 47?

47 year old back...and he was having problems his last 2 years in the NFL.

[LEONARD]

I was just being a smart ass.

Nope, too late...looks official to me!! :greedy

[Evan]

Dammit

[benefactor]

Despite age, Walker no gimmick (http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news;_ylt=AhmPAIdcTSql1gv84_czkAU5nYcB?slug=dm-walker012210&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The time is drawing near for Herschel Walker, one of the greatest college football players of all-time, to step into a mixed martial arts cage, some 27 years after he won the Heisman Trophy as a running back at the University of Georgia.

“He’s a freak, but this is not a freak show,” said Luke Rockhold, one of his main training partners at San Jose’s American Kickboxing Academy and a rising star with the Strikeforce organization. “He put in three months of training at one of the best gyms in the world. He’s legitimate.”

Every discussion of Walker’s foray into the sport, with his debut fight Jan. 30 on a Showtime-aired Strikeforce card against unknown heavyweight Greg Nagy (1-1) at the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise, Fla., begins with the question of age.

But according to trainer Javier Mendez, as illogical as it sounds for a man who turns 48 in less than six weeks, the number doesn’t apply to Walker. And while inexperience is most definitely an issue, age is not.

Unless your name is Randy Couture, who won the last of his five UFC titles at 43, the cage is not the kind of place for men on the wrong side of 40. Some of the saddest sights in recent years have been legends from MMA’s early days going in as shells of their former selves and being dominated by men barely half their age who aren’t even top guys.

So having someone walk into the cage who had never even trained for the sport until November, who is more than a year older than Couture and has never trained in boxing or wrestling at any kind of a high level before, on the surface sounds ridiculous.

“I don’t know how he does it, but just throw the age thing out the window,” said Mendez, who noted that unlike most older fighters who start training differently because their bodies need more recuperation time between workout sessions, Walker’s training has made zero concessions for the age. “He is the best student I’ve ever had. Every day he comes to practice 10 to 15 minutes early. He’s never late. Every day he gets better. For a normal 47-year-old, it would be a big disaster.”

Mendez said he’s the second-best conditioned heavyweight he’s trained, behind only Cain Velasquez, who is generally considered the hardest trainer and best-conditioned heavyweight in the sport.

“And he keeps right up with Cain,” Mendez said.

While that may sound like coaching hyperbole, the Florida Boxing Commission made Walker undergo extensive testing to get licensed due to his age and lack of fighting experience. Commission head physician Dr. Allan Fields, who oversaw the stress test on Walker’s heart, said that Walker’s heart functions better than any individual tested at the cardiac institution that handled the testing. “He’s in as fine a shape as [a prime] Muhammad Ali or any of these people we’ve had under our care,” said Fields, who has been a physician with the U.S. Olympic boxing team. “This guy is 47 going on 22, as far as his physical fitness goes.”

Rockhold, who spent several days with Walker last week on a media blitz in New York, said that what was most amazing to him is Walker’s ability to train so hard without any food, confirming the legend of Walker’s eating habits.

“He eats one meal a day, at night,” he said. “He has salad, soup, maybe chicken soup, and bread, and he’s not afraid to put butter on it. He eats no meat and no fish.”

Walker, who said he never sleeps more than four hours a night, doesn’t make any claims about finding a secret diet that keeps his body looking like a remarkably fit 217-pound competitive athlete in his 20s, even though his last high-level sports competition was the 1997 NFL season. He doesn’t lift weights but still does a ridiculous amount of pushups and sit-ups every day.

“It’s just what my body has gotten used to,” Walker said. “I just started eating this way in college. I was going to class. I was a very good student, ran track and played football. I was always doing something so it didn’t have time to eat until the evening.”

Mendez said that if Walker started in the sport at 23, he would have become the single greatest mixed martial arts fighter of all-time. But on the flip side, he warns people about having high expectations.

“I’ve only had him for seven weeks,” Mendez said. “When he started, he didn’t even know how to throw a punch correctly. He had terrible footwork for boxing. But he picked it up that quick. It would take a normal pro fighter one year to two years to progress as fast as he has.

“He’s not an elite fighter,” Mendez said. “When he spars, right now he can just edge out guys who have had about six fights. But if I had three years with him, he could be an elite fighter.”

Under normal circumstances, Mendez said he wouldn’t even have him spar this early in his training, but with a fight coming up, everything had to be accelerated.

He said he considers Nagy, 26, who is 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds and has been training for about two years, as a fair first fight.

“Greg Nagy is bigger. He’s had three fights. His record says two but they’ve told us it’s really three. He’s been fighting for two years. He has the experience. Herschel is the better athlete. I think Herschel’s in better shape and stronger, but anyone can get clipped. There’s no guarantees in an MMA fight. We can’t say something can’t happen to anyone because it does.”

Rockhold noted that Walker has taken some solid shots in training and has yet to be knocked down. He said in terms of grappling, Walker is freakishly strong and he has shown surprisingly good takedown ability. He’s not at the level of a top wrestler, but Rockhold said he could probably take anyone down who doesn’t have a good wrestling background.

Walker, who has trained wrestling with Velasquez and Daniel Cormier, a two-time Olympian, has no concrete plans after the fight. He is the sole owner of Renaissance Man Food Services Inc., a meat-processing business specializing in chicken based in Savannah, Ga., with more than 100 employees, and he also co-owns a chicken processing plant in Silaom Springs, Ark.

Walker is also quick to point out that he is no Jose Canseco, who went into the ring in Japan last year with no training in the sport and lost quickly, or Johnnie Morton, a former NFL star who was knocked cold just seconds in his lone pro fight in 2007. Canseco and Morton were approached by Japanese promoters (Morton’s match took place in Los Angeles but was promoted by the Japanese-based K-1 organization) to be novelty drawing cards.

“I approached them,” Walker said. “If this sport was around 20 years ago, I may not have played football as long as I did.”

He noted when he talked with Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker, Coker told him he’d only be interested if he went through three months of hard training at Mendez’s camp.

“I gave up Christmas and New Year’s for this,” Walker said. “This is not a gimmick.”

----------------------------------------------------

This is going to be sad to watch.

[Whisky Dog]

I bet he beats the 1st dude but has some difficulties in doing so.

[Blackjack]

Walker a winner in mixed martial arts debut (http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=ki-herschelwins013010&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)
By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports


SUNRISE, Fla. – Herschel Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, won his professional mixed martial arts debut on Saturday at the tender age of 47, but he proved one thing: He’s a better football player than a fighter.

The one-time Dallas Cowboys star stopped a totally ineffective Greg Nagy at 2:17 of the third round on Saturday at the BankAtlantic Center on a Showtime-televised Strikeforce card.

Walker took Nagy down in each of the three rounds and tried to punish Nagy on the ground. He landed a few punches and seemed as if he were going to go for a submission at several points, but he was unable to do anything dramatic.

Walker, who has long been a martial artist, was pleased with the win and thanked Nagy for the opportunity.

“It’s kind of tough to fight an old man,” Walker said.

Nagy had no offense and spent most of the fight on his back, trying to fend off Walker, who trained at the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif., under the guidance of the renowned Javier Mendez.

Walker’s endurance was sensational, but he looked stiff in his standup game and didn’t have a good concept of what he was doing on the ground. According to CompuStrike, Walker landed 77 of 106 strikes overall, an amazing 73 percent. He connected on 69 of 91 on the ground. Nagy landed just seven punches.

“This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Walker said.

Robbie Lawler scored one of the best knockouts in a long time after taking a beating from Melvin Manhoef for most of their fight. Manhoef was stalking Lawler, raking him with punches and hard kicks and seemed on the verge of an impressive victory.

Lawler checked a kick and as Manhoef rushed to him, Lawler ripped a straight right that landed on the temple. Manhoef went down quickly. Lawler landed a quick punch on the ground before he was pulled off and the bout was stopped at 3:33 of the first.

“This guy is a killer and he was coming after me,” Lawler said. “I knew I was going to catch him and I just didn’t want to get overextended.”

Bobby Lashley, who still is a professional wrestler, improved to 5-0 as a mixed martial artist by dominating late replacement Wes Sims. Lashley quickly took Sims down and pummeled him on the ground, forcing referee Troy Waugh to stop it at 2:06 of the first.

Sims, a former cast member of “The Ultimate Fighter,” admitted he hadn’t trained for the fight as Strikeforce struggled to find an opponent for Lashley. Sims was paunchy around the middle, while Lashley had a bodybuilder’s rugged physique.

It was no contest, as Sims accomplished nothing other than picking up a paycheck.

[dallaskd]

thought he looked pretty good for a 47 year old in his debut.

[djohn14]

Oh yeah...he really did. Obviously Herschel isnt doing this for publicity and hes not trying to win any titles. Hes doing this because he has a drive in him to compete and he wants to prove to himself that he can still compete with elite athletes and he wants to prove to everyone else that age isnt an issue.

[Taco]

PSsgbMpD_fw

[desflood]

he wants to prove to himself that he can still compete with elite athletes and he wants to prove to everyone else that age isnt an issue.
It's the stereotypical former athlete middle-age crisis.

[dbreiden83080]

Please show me another 47 year old athlete that looks like Herschel? Herschel is a absolute freak of nature:toast

Agreed i applaud his efforts..

[djohn14]

Oh yeah, there is nobody like Herschel...its crazy...he looks like his in his early 30's but he's 47. I know what Des is saying though. All those athletes have trouble hanging it up and they always toy around with the idea of coming back. But this is the only case I know of with somebody doing it at a different sport lol

[BlackSwordsMan]

herschel does look amazing for his age