The Tiger and the Machine: An Unsettled Score in the Octagon
A lost classic from Vernon White and Ian Freeman at UFC 43
I’ve always viewed prize fighting as a duel. It’s romantic to see it that way, maybe. But that doesn’t make it any less true. This is my attempt to portray it, my Princess Bride, my Swordspoint. Thanks for your patience.
Here in Alabama, on a Friday thick with the heat and humidity of July, the old stories ring truer than the new. The year is 2025, and the tales of the Octagon have grown polished with the telling, their jagged edges worn smooth. The fighters are more skilled, perhaps. But the stories are those of sport, not those of battle.
There’s a difference.
We speak of the old warriors more and more instead, memories shared over iced tea as the cicadas drone, tales of men whose profession forbade them easy answers. And there is one story, now twenty-two years cold, that I return to now and again: a matter of a student taking up his master’s sword, of a battle fought to a perfect, maddening standstill.
It is the story of an unsettled score.
It was supposed to be the night the great warriors clashed. On one side, Ken Shamrock, the ostensible “World’s Most Dangerous Man,” patriarch of the Lion’s Den, a lord of the old school whose reputation was a thing of weight and terror. On the other, Ian Freeman, the pioneer from the hard lands of Britannia, a man who had blazed a trail for his countrymen on the world’s stage, art learned as much in the doorways of nightclubs as in any formal academy.
But the Fates, as they are known to do, intervened. The troubled Shamrock was laid low, not by a battle in the cage, but by the treachery of his own body, the quiet pressures of a life lived at the edge. His honor, it seemed, would go undefended.
But a great house does not leave a challenge unanswered. And so, into the light stepped the student, Vernon “Tiger” White. He was the epitome of the journeyman, an original acolyte who had followed his teammates to the Pancrase tournaments in Japan. This man had since traveled the world to fight anyone, anywhere, for his purse and his pride. With 44 fights in five different countries, he was a man who knew the cost of the trade.
See the Fight
White had spent years waiting for an invitation to the hallowed UFC Octagon—an invitation that never came. Too many of his teammates were already there, one matchmaker told him. Another hated their entire crew, a victim of a Shamrock screaming match in a hotel lobby. But now his time had, at last, come.
Across the cage stood Freeman, yes. But someone else as well. White was to face his test under the watchful eye of the very man who had bested him a mere twenty-one days prior. For in Freeman’s corner, a ghost at the feast, stood Jeremy Horn, the man to whom White had just lost his King of the Cage title. It was a mind game of exquisite viciousness, a public reminder of a fresh defeat.
White was not merely fighting Freeman—he was fighting his recent history, his lost battles, his doubts.
The duel began as such affairs sometimes do, with a formal exchange of a courtesy, the tap of gloves. This was no snarling contest of indignation and rage. These were seasoned, veteran operators, and the first exchange was a sophisticated colloquy as a result. White offered an educated inquiry to the leg, a deep kick that Freeman answered with the heavy commerce of a clubbing right hook, a blow that spoke of his past as a boxer and a bouncer. The exchange troubled the Tiger, who forced a fall to the canvas, seeking to press his argument in that desperate congress of limbs. But following some solid ground-and-pound, the Briton, “The Machine,” powered his way back to his feet, and soon it was he who slammed his man to the mat. For 90 seconds, he uncorked a merciless, piston-like rhythm of blows, each a reverberating pronouncement of dominance that echoed through the arena. White, clever as ever, was able to mitigate most of the harm.
The second frame was a contest of reversals, a physical argument where each man sought the final point. It began with the noted absence of courtesies. This time, the Lion’s Den man would not touch gloves, preferring to start the festivities immediately. Suddenly, the professional felt a bit more personal.
White’s clever kicks and weaves, a duelist’s dance, but soon collapsed again into the intimacy of the mat. The Briton took his back, letting loose a salvo of massive hooks from behind. But the man from the fabled Den had been there before and felt worse than that from men he called “friend.” He reversed the position, letting go of shots of his own, elbows slicing both air and skin. He passed the guard, sought a choke, and even found the mount, that most kingly of positions.
Yet Freeman, with the strength that gave him his name, survived.
They traded questions, each always having the correct answer—a Kimura countered, a head kick that slapped home—and returned to their corners with the weight of their exertions heavy upon them.
The final round was a battle of pure will. White, ever the taekwondo artist, opened with spinning attacks that flew well shy of the mark, the sort of flourish a man makes when his reserves are low, but his heart is not. Freeman answered with Saturday night specials and a great knee that thudded home.
They fell to the ground once more, a tangled question of the heel and ankle, a deadly knot that neither man could tie to his satisfaction, an echo of Pancrase and 100 similar battles that had preceded it. Referee Larry Landless, seeing only inactivity in this profound and exhausting stalemate, separated them. In the final minute, they plowed into each other again, a last, desperate exchange. Freeman slugged with all that was left in his soul; White dug in with knees to the body, his own account nearly spent.
And then, silence. The two men, battered and bruised, could only wait for an official verdict. The judges were flummoxed. They had witnessed a thing so perfectly balanced in its ferocity and its heart that the code by which they measured such contests had simply broken. Their verdict was a null result, a contradiction that settled nothing. Cecil Peoples, seeing one truth, gave White all three rounds. Abe Belardo, seeing another, had Freeman winning instead. And Tony Weeks, perhaps the most honest of them all, declared the bout even.
A split draw.
No victor’s purse, no satisfaction. All that violence, all that art, and the two had answered no questions. It is a crime of the highest order that a duel should end so, with no resolution to be had. But here, twenty-two years on, we know the truth. The beauty of this particular tale is not in its conclusion but in its lack of one. The unsettled score is a question that still hangs, perfect and terrible, in the smoky air of memory.
Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters, and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports, and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.
Well done, Jonathan.