Sunset For Shamrock?

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Dave Meltzer seems to think that Frank Shamrock’s days as a headlining performer are over.

“It’s sad because Frank is my friend and he and his wife are my social friends,” said Coker, whose initial success in promoting MMA came March 10, 2006, when Shamrock knocked out Cesar Gracie at the HP Pavilion before a sellout of 18,265 fans.

Diaz was 22 at the time, and was Gracie’s corner man. It was a night that left a lot of scars that may have been healed for him with the victory that ended a three-year quest to avenge his teacher.

“If that fight would have gone to the ground, Cesar would have submitted him,” said Diaz after the fight, still reliving that night.

When the match ended, Diaz helped Shamrock to his feet.

“I told him to get up, you’re a legend,” said Diaz, who in prefight hype said that Shamrock was not a legend to him.

The sportsmanship shown by Diaz post-fight actually surprised me, because I’m not used to either of Diaz brothers doing that type of thing. It was a classy display from Nick, especially after the one-sided technical beating he issued to the fading legend.

Is Frank Shamrock done? It’s hard to say. It’s probably a safe assumption that his days as a top-level main event fighter are over, but he’s probably one of the top three guys in the business as far as selling a fight (a list that includes Brock Lesnar and Quinton Jackson), so he’s going to continue to have a place on Strikeforce cards until he decides to call it a day. But I’m not sure that anyone expects him to be an actual contender going forward.

Shamrock won’t be able to fight Cung Le as he’d originally planned, and I’m not sure who you’d be able to match him up with for his next fight. Ideally (at least from a marketing standpoint) you’d match up Frank with psuedo-brother Ken, but Ken is on the outs with Showtime and CBS officials, making that fight highly unlikely.

Nick Diaz, on the other hand, gave his most impressive showing to date last night and proved that his reach, body type and technical boxing skills could be a handful for just about anyone in the welterweight or lightweight divisions.