“That overhead camera shot they used was one of the best shots ever in all of MMA,” former UFC champion and pro wrestling star Josh Barnett said. “It was just so perfect, the way he swung into that knee bar. It was picture perfect.”
Rutten, who was dramatically better than everyone else in the promotion on his feet, was crushed that the extra work with the Japanese experts hadn’t helped.
“[Funaki] was a great guy,” Rutten said. “And he tried to help me with my fight with Ken. But when he tried to show me how to defend the knee bar, he should have told me, ‘Listen, don’t let him step over your hip.’ There are many ways to get in the right position for it. But Funaki only showed me one way to defend. And we worked on it for three weeks. Then when I fought Ken Shamrock he threw his leg over my head. He did it a different way and I thought, ‘Hmm.’ After that I didn’t listen to anybody. I would listen, but I would check later to see if it was actually true. And I’m going to see if I can make it better than what Funaki is doing and try different setups. It’s what made me really good at the submissions.”
“It was the loss against Ken,” he continued. “I really had it. I’m a very sore loser and I knew what the problem was. It was because I didn’t train any ground. That decided it for me. Forget about striking, nobody’s going to strike with me anyway, even Maurice Smith took me down in a fight. So I start concentrating on grappling two times a day, seven days a week. I really took it to the next level in training. I always told Ken, ‘Thank you for that, buddy, because that actually made me very good.’ I never lost again.”
Pancrase’s other new star was Ken’s adopted brother Frank Shamrock. Like Ken, Frank Juarez had been a lost boy when Bob Shamrock rescued him and gave him his name. He was dropped off, fresh from prison, to learn the fight game at Ken’s gym where the elder brother gave him his first beating, pounding him until he coudn’t move and choking him unconscious.
DAN “THE BEAST” SEVERN
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“It was nuts. And I didn’t really have a comparison except for being in jail. They were similar type activities. I had never played sports so I didn’t really get the whole machismo thing. I didn’t understand any of it. And clearly I didn’t know how to fight,” Frank Shamrock said with a laugh, remembering the early days of hazing at the famed Lion’s Den. “It was like that for months. Because I didn’t really know anything. Everybody was a tough guy and I was a young kid. It was tough. It was wild. I’m surprised I made it, because it wasn’t a welcoming atmosphere where they wanted you to be successful. It was certainly not that. . . . Ken was the king of the cavemen and we were all underneath him. We learned that way.”
When the younger Shamrock made his Pancrase debut he was already a star by virtue of his last name. His early success was shocking. Despite just six months’ worth of training, Frank came shooting out of the gates with big wins over some of the sport’s biggest stars. Some called him a prodigy, but Scott Bessac disagrees: “Frank was a work. He used the Shamrock last name and was worked right up the ladder. Frank was just work.”
Like with most things associated with Pancrase, no one can say for certain. Frank doesn’t deny the charge — there were times things seemed off to him too. Although he would later become the best fighter in the world, he wasn’t a world-beater yet in 1995, and yet there he was beating Suzuki and Funaki by submission.
“I know that it went on. I don’t know if I was just too young, or didn’t need to know, but no one ever shared anything with me. I had a feeling . . . there were always secret meetings and whatnot, but I never knew anything about it,” Frank said. “No one ever asked me to end it a certain way. I do know that it went on, but I was never approached or had any experience with it. I believe some of the fights that I fought with the upper-echelon guys, they may have let me win or had some sort of ending in mind. But I always fought my heart out and fought as hard as I could and gave as much as I could.”
The Road to UFC 6
By UFC 5, an event that would finally feature a Ken Shamrock–Royce Gracie rematch, the Gracie name was big enough in Japan that Pancrase could allow Ken to risk loss without first making him put over one of their own stars. It was a calculated risk — they hoped a Shamrock win would make him an even bigger star in Japan and didn’t want to devalue him by having a loss so fresh in fans’ memories.
His match with Dan Severn at UFC 6 was a different story. Like Shamrock, Severn was a wrestler in Japan, working the midcard for the UWFi. This put him on a lower tier than Shamrock in Pancrase’s view, and a loss would be a major embarrassment. Worse, Severn was a traditional pro wrestler too. In a last-ditch effort by promoters to reestablish some credibility, he was the latest NWA world champion. Dave Meltzer had suggested the move, thinking that Severn’s Ultimate Fighting success would help give the title some much needed attention and respect. Severn was a throwback to an era when it mattered whether or not the champion could actually wrestle a lick. In his gray athletic shirt, covered in sweat even before he made it to the ring, Severn made amateur wrestling his gimmick.
“I only wish I had been brought into the professional wrestling business at another time,” Severn said. “The first time I met Lou Thesz in Japan, he really was watching a great deal. He really was watching the scientific, mechanical way I did things and created leverage. It was actually quite a honor that it was Lou Thesz who presented me with my very own NWA title belt at one of the Cauliflower Alley banquets for all I did for the organization and bringing a lot of recognition to professional wrestling. Because I was kinda like that first professional wrestler who crossed back over from no-holds-barred to professional wrestling. Before your Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley and that kinda stuff.”
Thesz’s respect for Severn’s work made him one of the wrestlers Thesz encouraged the UWFi to push hard. Severn was a repeat national champion and would have represented the United States in the 1980 Olympics if the country hadn’t boycotted the Moscow location. In 1935, Severn would have probably been a big star in pro wrestling. Unfortunately, in 1995, the fans were indifferent in America, and in Japan it took some time for Severn to catch on to the shoot style.
Thesz’s protégé Mark Fleming said, “[Thesz] thought Dan Severn was great. Dan Severn was a hell of a wrestler. . . . He’s probably the best wrestler, I think, in my era, in my age group, best ever. He was the best. He could do it all. He could do Greco, he could do freestyle, he could do folkstyle, he could do submission style. Then he could do the street fighting. He could do it all. . . . He’s a super guy, and Lou respected him.”
In the UFC, the mild-mannered Severn had become a star as “The Beast.” He took Royce Gracie to the limit and then dominated the competition on his way to winning the tournament championship at UFC 5. His superfight with Shamrock was to be the first shooting match between two pro wrestling champions in decades — until Pancrase pulled the plug. The group’s founders still had a pro wrestling mentality and their priority was protecting the championship. Most favored Severn in the match and the idea of Shamrock losing to a fake NWA world champion who was also way beneath him in the Japanese wrestling hierachy was more than Pancrase could tolerate. They asked Shamrock to drop his title to Suzuki before the Severn fight, which he did, again falling to a knee bar in just a few minutes.
Suzuki, Pancrase’s biggest native Japanese star besides Funaki, was the real deal. He had been an Olympic contender in 1984 before taking the plunge into pro wrestling. With his slicked-back hair and all-black attire, he played the gangster to a tee. Like Funaki, he was being groomed for a major role in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but preferred the “cool factor” of the more progressive shoot style. He was one of the most aggressive wrestlers in Japan, often calling out performers in other companies.
When wrestlers from outside came into Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, before the transition to Pancrase, Suzuki would explain away their poor performances. “They�
�re just rusty,” he would say. “They haven’t wrestled a real match in years.” The seemingly benign comments from Suzuki were really a clever way of suggesting other wrestling promotions weren’t nearly as real as his own. Funaki had a similar attitude, once giving a bad beating to former WWF champion Bob Backlund in a UWF match because he didn’t think Backlund’s showier style had any place in a realistic wrestling promotion. The two men could talk the talk because they could walk the walk. Suzuki was a dazzlingly good wrestler and could lock on a hold from any position. Super heavyweight Olympic gold medalist David Gobezhishvili learned that the hard way. The two were working out together before their match in 1992 and the nearly 300-pound Russian wrestler was tossing Suzuki around the ring like a sack of potatoes. But when the sparring hit the floor, Suzuki tapped the monstrous Russian out repeatedly.
“I remember Suzuki being super, super fast,” Rutten said. “That’s what he was known for. He was flying around people and putting them in crazy positions. He would tap guys out with inverted neck cranks, but he would use his legs! He would crank the head between his knees. He made the guy tap and in the moment he tapped, Suzuki took him with a straight arm bar because he was in a perfect position for it. He made the guy tap twice. I thought that was really cool.
“He fought Remco Pardoel, who was famous for his knockout of Orlando Weit at UFC 2,” Rutten continued. “When Suzuki fought him in Pancrase, Pardoel was on his knees and turtled up. Suzuki looks at the audience and you can tell he’s very annoyed by this. Because Pardoel doesn’t want to do anything. So he puts his foot in front of Pardoel’s face. He’s waving his foot in Pardoel’s face and Pardoel looks up because he sees peripheral movement. And the moment he looks up, Suzuki slaps a rear naked choke on him.”
Like Funaki, Suzuki spent time honing the skills of the men he would end up facing in the ring. That was just the way business was done in Pancrase. It was his responsibility to make the promotion a success and if that meant building a fighter who would one day be able to beat him, so be it. He had been training in submissions for years and was one of Fujiwara and Gotch’s best students.
“Suzuki was the guy who told me how to beat Bas Rutten in my first fight. He said, ‘Bas knows nothing about wrestling.’ And I said, ‘But I know nothing about wrestling either,’” recalled Frank Shamrock, breaking into laughter. “But he said, ‘You’ve trained with Ken, you at least know how to take someone down.’ And he was right. I didn’t know how to strike or do much of anything. But I knew how to take people down.”
Things were rarely fun and games at the Pancrase dojo. The training was serious and sometimes the fighters got a reminder of how dangerous their profession could be.
Rutten said, “I heard a rumor that Suzuki actually killed someone by accident, one of the young boys. . . . Something went wrong and he broke his neck. I don’t know what happened . . . That was a wild story. I think it changed his fighting style. And from what I’ve heard those parents are still at the Pancrase shows.”
With Suzuki installed as champion, Ken Shamrock was free to take on Severn without the honor of Pancrase being on the line as well. Heated words flew before the men even entered the Octagon. Severn walked out of the prefight press conference, infuriating Shamrock, who warned Severn’s manager Phyllis Lee, “I was just going to beat him. Now I’m going to hurt him.” Once the fight began, Shamrock was a man of his word, making short work of Severn. Shamrock was thought to have a wrestling disadvantage, but he shrugged off the more experienced wrestler’s first takedown and choked him out with a front facelock in just over two minutes.
Less than a year later, in May 1996, the two were scheduled for a rematch. By then the battles outside the cage were as fierce as anything inside it. Michigan’s attorney general sought an injunction to stop the show, citing an 1883 law that banned all unregulated prize fighting. United States District Court Judge Avern Cohn called the law antiquated saying, “This is entertainment the same way football and hockey are entertainment.” Lawmakers considered passing a law specifically banning mixed martial arts bouts but it wouldn’t have been signed into law in time to stop the event.
It was another in a series of close calls for the UFC. The courts established some modified rules for the fights, barring closed fist punches. The UFC was happy to play along — they would agree that closed fist punches were illegal and agree to fine any violators $50. It was a clever way around the letter of the law, which satisfied all the competitors — all of them except Ken Shamrock. Months earlier, a group of fighters was arrested after a show in Canada. Ken was worried that could happen to him and almost dropped out of the fight with Severn.
David Isaacs, the UFC President at the time, said, “I remember Ken Shamrock screaming in the hotel room. Bob Shamrock told me, ‘Once Ken thinks he’s right, there’s nothing you can do to change his mind.’ And it can be about anything. I don’t think he’s a lunatic, but when he gets convinced that this is the way things should be, you just can’t change his way of thinking. With Ken it was just hard. Once he kind of settled on a position on anything he was not flexible. He seemed to have a lot of rage at times. In Detroit, when the courts told us what the rules would be for his fight with Dan, Ken was just fucking furious. I just said, ‘What are we going to do, Ken? What do you want to do? That’s what the court said.’”
Shamrock went through with the fight, but seemed disinterested. Today he shrugs with embarassment when asked about it. Not Severn. To him, it’s still a crowning moment, the night he became UFC champion.
“A lot of people did not like that match. I think it was even chronicled in different books as one of the worst matches in UFC history,” Severn said. “At that time, for being the marquee match, it did not produce. But in my own personal opinion, it was the most well thought out, psychological match ever in UFC . . . the crowd was not liking this match, and they start booing. They start doing everything I hoped they would do. Because Shamrock at that point in time was a counter fighter. As you attack he counter attacks you. And I thought if I do the exact same thing and circle and basically do what he is doing, nothing. The crowd is going to get rather restless, and they would start to boo and they end up booing and even throw garbage in the cage.”
Severn was hoping the angry crowd would prompt Shamrock into action. But that night nothing could. Fans called it “The Dance in Detroit,” and it’s gone down as the worst fight in UFC history. To this day, UFC officials are furious about both men’s performances. It was a deadly dull affair, one that many believed hurt the UFC long term. For Shamrock and Severn it was the beginning of the end for their first runs in the UFC.
“There were a lot of problems and Bob Meyrowitz, the UFC owner at the time, was facing going into court constantly, and it cost him a lot of money and eventually ran him dry. Everywhere we went we were getting a lot of political pressure,” Shamrock said. “Even the cities where we held the events were getting pressured not to hold the fights there. I remember one time we were in New York and they shut the event down. We had to pack up and load everybody up on a big old 747 and move to Dothan, Alabama, set up in a 24-hour period, and still have the show. It’s the kind of thing that happened in Detroit, where they put in rules at the last minute where we couldn’t punch, couldn’t hit a downed opponent, and really changed the dynamics of the UFC.”
Shamrock had left Pancrase in the dust earlier in the year, replaced by Severn’s manager Phyllis Lee as the North American talent scout. By the end of the year he was out of MMA entirely, moving on to the greener pastures of the WWF.
In the UFC Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie had both come and gone. There was a changing of the guard coming in Japan too. Pancrase and the UWFi had gotten the ball rolling, but in 1997 Pride burst on the scene to take MMA in Japan to new heights.
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FIGHTING for PRIDE
Although Rickson Gracie’s December 1994 demolition of Yoji Anjo didn’t h
ave immediate repercussions at the box office (in fact the UWFi sold out Budokan Hall that January for a Gary Albright versus Big Van Vader title match) the company saw business slowly slide. By April they had to cancel an event in Kobe and the much anticipated rubber match between Vader and Nobuhiko Takada failed to sell out the Rainbow Hall in Nagoya, something that would have been unthinkable just a year before.
Takada, their leading man, was looking like damaged goods. His inability to get Gracie in the ring hurt him, but so did his flighty personality and lack of discipline. People who worked with the star described him as “whimsical.” He would come to a rash decision, like retirement, and announce it publicly, only to recant the next week. A run for public office — in typical Takada style, one that was aborted midway only to be resumed days later at the zero hour — also placed a heavy burden on the UWFi coffers.
“Takada ran for political office and cash went out the door,” Zach Arnold explained. He lost his bid for a seat on the House of Councilors in embarrassing fashion, but was soon on to his next adventure. The wrestler’s stoic and serious hero image was a media creation. In real life he was a bit of a goofball: charismatic, ostentatious, and way over the top. “Takada is more like the Hustle character (his bombastic general manager alter ego in the new-wave comedy wrestling promotion in the 2000s) in real life than the wrestler he was all those years,” Arnold remembered.
His win over Vader was the American’s last match with the promotion. Vader went back to WCW, escaping what would have been inevitable demands for a real shooting match. Instead he found a fight in the WCW locker room, taking a poke at mostly retired wrestler Paul Orndorff. But his tough guy image shattered as Orndorff stomped him.
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