Patrick Smith
Patrick Smith was one of my favorite fighters to watch in the early UFC days. He was an exciting and explosive fighter, and a pioneer of MMA, as he competed in the first two UFC events.
However, it turns out Patrick Smith is not a very good person. I definitely do not consider him one of my favorite fighters anymore, but more about that later.
The first ever Ultimate Fighting Championship event was held in Pat Smith's hometown of Denver, Colorado. The premise of the early UFC events was to see how different martial arts styles matched up with each other. Art Davie sent out letters to potential fighters and placed advertisements in martial arts magazines to recruit fighters for the show. With the event being held in Denver, Patrick Smith was eager to compete. He was primarily a Tae Kwon Do fighter.
Ken Shamrock would be Patrick Smith's first opponent. Shamrock easily took Pat Smith to the mat and forced him to tapout due to a heel hook submission. The fans in attendance booed their displeasure at the result. At the time, most fans didn't understand the grappling and submissions. However, Pat Smith was invited back to compete in UFC 2, and that was the first time I had ever seen him fight.
In preparation for UFC 2, Pat Smith said he spent more time working on his grappling, with the intent of fighting UFC 1 winner Royce Gracie. Sure enough, he submitted his first opponent (Ray Wizard) with a guillotine choke.
Also in UFC 2, was perhaps the fight that Patrick Smith is most remembered for. His opponent was a Ninjutsu(Ninja) fighter named Scott Morris. This fight was of course very interesting to most viewers, because of the Ninja mystique...but the ninja would lose. When the fight started, Scott Morris immediately ran across the cage to attack Pat Smith. The fighters clinched and Morris ended up pulling Pat Smith down on top of him in the mounted position, where Smith began landing repeated vicious elbows to Scott Morris' head and face and knocked him out in under one minute.This fight left me awestuck and somewhat disturbed. It was the most legal violence I had seen at that point in my 16 year old life. In the championship fight of UFC 2, Royce Gracie easily defeated Pat Smith by taking him down and punching him in the face until he decided to quit.
Pat Smith returned at UFC 6 where he would fight Rudyard Moncayo. Smith opened the fight with a very impressive front kick to Moncayo's chest that knocked him down. Smith won by rear naked choke-submission in just over one minute, but couldn't continue in the tournament because of stomach cramps. He was replaced in the tournament by Anthony "Mad Dog" Macias.
Smith later fought for K-1 and other shows, as well assome of the World Vale Tudo Championship events. On 4/11/08, Pat Smith came in as a late replacement for Gary Goodridge to fight Eric "Butterbean" Esch in the ill-fated YAMMA PIT FIGHTING event. Smith won via submission due to strikes after Butterbean fell down and couldn't get back up.
However, despite his accomplishments in martial arts, it appears that Pat Smith might be a scumbag in real life. As it turns out, he has a 1999 felony conviction for "Sexual Assault On A Child" according to the National Sex Offender Public Website. He also subsequently failed to register as a sex offender.