Bas Rutten is one of the deadliest fighters on the planet, in the ring and out of it. He was a UFC heavyweight champion and a three-time King of Pancrase in Japan, and his liver shot was so explosive that it was used in a scientific experiment.
The fighter
His style mixed aggressive, technical striking from Dutch Muay Thai, karate and taekwondo with a street fighter's mentality. He pushed opponents onto the ropes with kicks and swamped them with palm strikes and body punches. He struck with his palms to protect his hands, a habit from his years on the doors, where he often had to fight more than one man.
As a kickboxer he won his first 14 fights by knockout, 13 of them in the first round, and lost his last two, including a first-round knockout by Frank Lobman for the European Muay Thai title in 1991. In MMA, after losing to Ken Shamrock in 1995, he finished his career on a 22-fight unbeaten run, 21 wins and a draw. In 2015 he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
The bouncer
He knocked out so many kickboxers that he struggled to get fights, so he started bouncing, like Patrick Swayze in Road House, he says, brought in to sort out the roughest bars. He wore round glasses like John Lennon on the door, and people wanted to fight him for it. When one troublemaker kept shaking a slot machine after the house doorman asked him to stop, Rutten pulled him down and dropped the whole machine on him. "No more problems in that place. We actually shook hands after that."
Nine times out of ten, he says, he talked people down.
Russia and Sweden
In Russia, on a drunken night out with the fighter Paul Varelans, a play-fight ended with Varelans going through a window, and a security man pulled a machine gun. "I was so lucky to leave that country alive."
In Sweden, a bouncer warned him to keep it relaxed. He knew then he should have turned around. When they poked him in the eyes, he dropped one, and found himself fighting a crowd of them, taking sticks to the head. One of the bouncers was a policeman, and Rutten spent two days in jail. His first phone call was to his wife: "Honey, I got some good news and some bad news."