Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Yogi's Ground Game

From 1997, an early tribute I did in honor of the UFC.

When I first turned in this scene to CN, they wanted me to cut it because they thought Yogi and Ranger Smith were having "relations". I explained that, no, this was an MMA style of fighting popularized by first, Royce Gracie's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and then built upon by Mark "the Hammer" Coleman's "Ground and Pound" combination of wrestling and strikes. This scene has never aired in its entirety on TV as far as I know, but now that UFC is popular everyone understands what "the guard" position is, so I'm guessing it's safe to finally show it uncut.
Todd White, famous cartoonist and illustrator has a black belt in Machado Jiu Jitsu. He helped me plan out all the poses. It's animated by Anthony Agrusa.
WATCH YOGI GROUND AND POUND RANGER SMITH
what this scene really needed was Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan to do the commentating

I've been a huge fan of UFC since almost the beginning and even pitched the idea to Spike TV to do a reality show based on it back in 2002. I wanted them to follow Tank Abbot around to bars and watch him start fights with people. We even wrote Ken Shamrock into a Ren and Stimpy episode playing Stimpy's Dad. At the time, Spike had never heard of UFC but thank Jesus (and Dana White) it's mainstream now. There was a time when it looked like it was going to disappear forever.

I think it's the best show on TV (the live Pay Per View events) and possibly the last purely human entertainment.