Background check: Rich Franklin
Rich Franklin was born on October 5th 1974 in Cincinatti, Ohio. Franklin is 6ft 1in tall and weighs in at 195lbs (as of his last fight) but usually competes at 185 or 205lbs with a reach of 76 inches. He holds a brown belt in BJJ and is well trained in Freestyle fighting, Muay Thai and Boxing. He trains with Team Extreme/AMC Pankration and his MMA debut was in 1999 at world extreme fighting 6, where he beat Michael Martin via head kick knockout after 21 seconds of round 1. Since his debut Franklin has built up a record of 26-5-1. Sds
Rich then went on to beat Travis Fulton, Marvin Eastman by arm bar and Anthony Rea by TKO among others, before earning his debut in the UFC. His first UFC fight was against Evan Tanner at UFC 42. Franklin won by TKO in round one. His next UFC fight was another TKO win for Franklin as he dispatched Edwin Dewees in round one at UFC 44. After being knocked out by Lyoto Machida in the 2003 Inoki festival (Franklin’s first loss) he went on to beat Leo Sylvest and Ralph Dilon before his third UFC fight in 2004. Franklin beat Jorge Rivera by arm bar when the two met at UFC 50. After beating Curtis Stout at Superbrawl 38 Franklin beat Ken Shamrock by TKO at TUF 1 finale. Since then he has fought only in the UFC beating such fighters as ETan tanner for the second time, Nate Quarry, Matt Hamill, Travis Lutter, Wanderlei Silva and Yushin Okami among others.
Franklin’s losses have been to Lyoto Machida, Anderson Silva twice, Dan Henderson and Vitor Belfort. If you are going to lose to anyone it might as well be the best. Franklin has beaten many top flight opponents and lost to only top fighters. In his time with the UFC Franklin held the middleweight tile after beating Tanner for the second time, and went on to defend it twice before losing it to Anderson Silva. Franklin’s last fight was a TKO loss to Vitor Belfort at UFC 103.
Franklin has provided many great fights and always proves to be a good sportsman win or lose. He is rumored to be facing Randy Couture in his next fight, which may be postponed if new UFC signing James Toney is to fight Randy this April.
