Sherdog’s Top 10: One and Dones

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4. Jose Canseco
Dream 9
May 26, 2009 | Yokohama, Japan
To say Canseco is controversial is one of the most common and drastic understatements in the world of sports. He was one of the best baseball players of the late 1980s and early 1990s, consistently posting offensive numbers in the top echelon of the major leagues and bombing home runs with shocking ease. He formed one of the top batting tandems with his Oakland Athletics teammate Mark McGwire, and the media dubbed them “The Bash Brothers.”

McGwire and Canseco were the harbingers of what we know in hindsight to be baseball’s Steroid Era: a time of comically muscled superstars blasting homers at ever-increasing rates while shattering records that had stood the test of time. No small part of the controversy around Canseco can be traced to his willingness -- for profit, naturally -- to speak openly about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. To be precise, it was not just that Canseco spoke about his use but also the fact that he named other high-profile players who were juicing. Those players included McGwire, who had shattered Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 1998. In conjunction with the Mitchell Report, Canseco helped to shatter the willful ignorance that had prevailed in baseball about the issue of steroid use and its effects, good and bad, on the game.

After the publication of his memoir, “Juiced,” Canseco found himself even more of an outsider than his wild reputation, legal issues and abrasive personality had made him before. In search of a way to continue his time in the spotlight, he turned to fighting; he claimed to have black belts in kung fu and tae kwon do and trained in muay Thai, as well.

His first official outing in combat sports, a boxing match against decorated amateur pugilist and former NFL player Vai Sikahema, ended with Canseco kissing the canvas in the first round. His second, a mixed martial arts bout against the giant Hong Man Choi in the Dream organization’s Super Hulk tournament, went no better. Although he landed a few good strikes early, he ran every time the Korean touched him, and it only took one solid shot to send him cartwheeling to the ground, where he tapped to strikes moments after. It would be Canseco’s only MMA fight.

Bankruptcy and increasingly desperate attempts to get attention followed. Things seem to have reached a nadir in the last several months, as Canseco lost a finger and partial use of his hand when a gun he was cleaning went off. That incident is the culmination of a long fall from grace for the six-time All-Star and 1988 American League Most Valuable Player.

Number 3 » A multi-division boxing champion, he is in all likelihood the most credentialed pugilist to ever compete in mixed martial arts.