Part I | Part II
With the dissolution of the UWF, key players from the promotion went in different directions. A number of new fighting promotions were created, with varying degrees of reality.
The biggest success was UWF International, or UWFI. The UWFI was a worked promotion built around Nobuhiko Takada, who derided the legitimacy of other Japanese wrestling companies. UWFI also featured young wrestlers Kazushi Sakuraba and Kiyoshi Tamura, who went on to have great success in mixed martial arts.
Akira Maeda formed his own promotion, RINGS. RINGS was initially a worked promotion, built around Maeda. Over time, it would begin to mix works with shoots. Eventually, it would become an all shoot promotion, featuring major players like Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fedor Emelianenko.
While RINGS and UWFI continued to promote worked products, another group of UWF wrestlers decided to create something different. Pancrase was formed, and it became the first widely popular Japanese shoot promotion. Ken Shamrock explains the mentality of the Pancrase founders: "They got tired of putting over guys that were 40 and 50 years old. They were better, but they weren't getting the chance to show they were better. They went in and said they were going to start a real organization where it's a shoot and the real guys are going to win."
Masakatsu Funaki, Minoru Suzuki and Ken Shamrock left the UWF first for Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, a new pro wrestling company. PWFG was mostly worked, but began to feature shoots. The first shoot fights of PWFG took place on Oct. 4, 1992. Pro wrestlers submitted kickboxers in both bouts, with Ken Shamrock defeating Don Nakaya Neilsen and Yoshiki Takahashi defeating Superman Sattasaba. Those fights weren't presented differently than the other matches on the show, even though the rest of the card was worked. Funaki, Suzuki and Shamrock wanted to have more real matches, and they left Fujiwara Gumi to create Pancrase.
Pancrase debuted in September 1993, and a noticeable difference from its predecessors was just how quickly the fights ended. Josh Barnett, who will be commentating Pancrase shows available on ImaginAsian TV starting Nov. 7 at 8 p.m., notes: "The matches finished in a minute or two minutes. For a lot of people, that was shocking, because pro wrestling matches never ended that fast." The first show featured only 13 minutes and 5 seconds of fighting.
Pancrase's biggest star was Masakatsu Funaki. Funaki was the Japanese hero, an incredibly talented fighter who battled against other top fighters from around the world. Josh Barnett describes him as the "symbol of Japan" and Frank Shamrock labels Funaki "the golden boy" of Pancrase.
Ken Shamrock cites Funaki as his best tutor. "I learned the most from him," Shamrock says. "He took time and worked with me and other boys and took me under his wing to bring me along. He saw something in me and groomed me." It was apropos that in the main event of the first Pancrase card, Ken Shamrock defeated his mentor Funaki.
Funaki was ahead of the MMA game, because he had trained in submission wrestling techniques from an early age and was coming into his physical peak in the early 90s. Funaki defeated all the top stars of Pancrase, including Minoru Suzuki, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten. He also made sure to entertain the crowd, and build the fledgling promotion.
Frank Shamrock says, "Funaki was like a mad scientist. He took the idea of submissions to an even higher level than the rest of the Japanese contingent. He had this insatiable desire to learn more and push his body harder. And as an entertainer he understood the need to entertain."
Pancrase's other big Japanese star was Minoru Suzuki, who played the role of bad guy. It was a role he cultivated well. Ken Shamrock says that Suzuki "didn't have time for people. He'd rather kick them in the head than to try to help them. He was a good bad guy." Frank Shamrock adds that "he was the quintessential bad boy, Japanese style, which meant slicked back hair and dark outfits." Josh Barnett was a big fan of Suzuki and trained with him, but admits that Suzuki is "mean as (expletive)."
While Suzuki played the role of villain, his technical prowess was highly respected by his peers. Frank Shamrock notes, "His technical ability and knowledge and coordination were beyond anything I could come up with." Rutten adds simply, "Suzuki was a wizard on the ground, very fast."
