While reading about Ken Shamrock, I learnt that both UFC and Impact have a Hall of Fame.
I didn’t know that. I’ve never come across any article about a UFC or Impact Hall of Fame! They obviously aren’t as ubiquitous as the WWF’s Hall of Fame. I did quite enjoy WCW’s Hall of Fame, but in typical WCW fashion, they didn’t hype it as well.
Anyway, the Shamrock article mentioned the following promotions: RINGS, UWFI, and PWFG. Does anyone have any views on those promotions?
I *think* UWFI may have aired on a satellite channel here once or twice. I don’t think I’ve seen RINGS or PWFG.
I’ll say one thing for the 80s and 90s. Different promotions were at least trying to do different things. Variety is good! We don’t want every drink to be Coca-Cola. This is where Vince Russo went wrong, trying to turn WCW into the WWF, but giving us crappy WWF-lite. Which WCW fans did not want.
I did a lot of tape trading in the 90s - when I could afford it - and when I desired a break from WWF and WCW, it was nice to be able to view promotions with a different flavour.
I can shed a bit of light, on them and Shamrock's time. However, to my knowledge, he never had a match with RINGS or UWFI. First, some background on those promotions and Japanese "shoot wrestling."
Japanese wrestling, traditionlly, drew a lot of workers from sumo, amateur wrestling, martial arts (especially judo) and a few other sports (Giant Baba came from baseball). Japanese wrestling, for the most part, really focused on the sport element of wrestling, rather than the show biz portion. New Japan even more so, because Antonio Inoki fancied himself a real fighter (his only legit fight was against Ali, with bizarre rules that moth look terrible) and did several worked matches against boxers and martial artists. He gave himself a World Martial Arts Championship title, and defended it, since there was no way he was going to be NWA or AWA World Champion (even his WWF reign was late in the game and was done on the fly, without acknowledgement in the US, for years). New Japan emphasized what is known as "strong style" wrestling, that was built around more realism, hard hitting matches, with a real competitive angle to them. The New Japan dojo young boys trained in it, with the big influence being catch wrestling from guys like Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch, both of whom trained at the Wigan Snake Pit, aka Billy Reilly's gym., though Gotch also wrestled for Belgium, in the Olympics. They influenced an entire generation of young Japanese wrestlers.
In the mid-80s, a group of wrestlers who had been pushing for more realistic matches, with financial backing, broke away from New Japan to form the Universal Wrestling Federation. The UWF emphasized more realistic moves, like kicks and punches, suplexes and legit submission holds, and fewer things like of the showier nature. However, there were factions within, as the two leading figures were Satoru Sayama, the former Tiger Mask, who favored more of a wrestling-based presentation, and Akira Madeda, who favored more of a martial arts presentation. Their rivalry turned into a real behind-the-scenes feud, which led to Sayama leaving and the promotion falling apart, after an embezzlement scandal. Sayama went his own way, while Maeda went back to New Japan, with a few others, with tail between his legs. They did the first "invasion" angle, with UWF vs New Japan, with New Japan defeating the UWF guys, as punishment for disloyalty.
A few years down the road, more young guys were itching to do more realistic matches and a new UWF was begun. It featured such people as Maeda, Yoshiaki Fugiwara, Nobuhiku Takada, and some others. They presented matches as what they called "shoot wrestling," with emphasis on kicks and open hand strikes, plus suplexes and submissions. Once again, politics led to factions and people started splitting off into groups, with new "shoot" promotions. Takada became the top star of Union of Wrestling Force International, or UWFI. They launched with several young guys, plus American and British wrestlers with strong amateur backgrounds (Bob Backlund and Pez Whatley, both collegiate wrestlers, worked matches there), as well as some people from the European martial arts world. They eventually had a tournament for a champion, which Takada won, and he was presented Lou Thesz's original NWA World title belt (which Thesz owned). Later, Leon "Vader" White came in, as Super Vader, and won the title. The bigegst stars were Takada, Kiyoshi Tamura, and Gary Albright. UWFI did big busines for a couple of years, then the bloom was off the rose. They ended up brokering a cross-promotion "invasion" angle with New Japan, where UWFI won the initials stages, with Takada defeating Great Muta for the IWGP title, before losing to Shinya Hashimoto to take it back and bury UWFI. This was the angle that inspired the NWO angle, in WCW.
Maeda went off, with backing, and formed RINGS. he was their star, though Tamura would later come over. Another big star was Russian sambo expert, Volk Han, who would do these lightning fast submission attempts, which made for some fast paced and hard hitting action. RINGS did quite well for several years; but, injuries took their toll, plus they didn't really develop much young talent. When the UFC came along, they started to go to a mix of worked and legit fights, then went all legit, by the end, but still couldn't compete with the UFC and the Pride promotion.
The remnants of the UWF reorganized as Pro Wrestling Fujiuwara Gumi, though they used the UWF name for a bit. This is where Ken Shamrock comes into things. He was trained in pro wrestling by former NWA World Jr Hwt champion, Nelson Royal, after some time doing tough man contests. Royal had a school in North Carolina and a wrestling promotion there. Shamrock wrestled there as Vince Torelli. It was there where he ran afoul of the Nasty Boys and got the s@#$ kicked out of him (Mostly by Sags, who wrestled in the Army). Dean Malenko worked some shows with this promotion and put Shamrock onto a scout from the UWF, looking for young talent. Shamrock had a tryout and was signed and went to Japan, to work for Fujiwara. There he had matches with the tops stars, Minoru Suzuki, Masakatsu Funaki, and also fellow American Bart Vale, a kickboxer. Suzuki, Funaki, and Shamrock, plus some other talent, were unhappy with how Fujiwara promoted and wanted to do legit submission wrestling. they found backers and broke away to form Pancrase, taking the name from the ancient Greek combat sport Pankration, which was submission fighting. They had mostly legit bouts and Shamrock made his name here, which led to him coming to the attention of Art Davies, for the first Ultimate Fighting Championship. Shamrock was the reigning King of Pancrase, having won the initial torunament for the title. In the UFC, in his first match, he submitted tae kwon do fighter Pat Smith, with a heel hook, that had Smith screaming for his mama. Then, he faced Royce Gracie and got schooled about chokes, as he did a leg takedown, tried to settle in for a heel hook and Gracie rode the momentum towards Shamrock and got him in a guillotine choke and Shamrock tapped out.
Shamrock worked some more matches for Pancrase, then left to fight full time for UFC and run his Lions Den school. He dropped the title to Minoru Suzuki, in what most consider to be a worked bout, though he denies it. Later, his adopted brother Frank (who is a better all-around fighter then Ken) won the title, then won the middleweight title in the UFC and worked with other MMA promotions. Ken was never able to face Royce again and beat him and settled for defeating Dan Severn for the Superfight title. However, in a rematch, they had a 30 minute dance, where Severn tagged him with one shot that drew blood, but didn't submit him. After an overtime period, Severn was given the win by the judges. Shamrock moved on. He did a couple of fights for Pride and then signed with the WWF and did pro wrestling again. Later, he joined the new TNA promotion and won the tournament for the NWA World title (the title was vacated when the NWA Board signed the deal to let it be used exclusively in TNA) He stayed for a bit, in the early days (with Russo's horrible booking), then left. He had a few more MMA fights; but, age and injury made him come out badly.
RINGS and UWFI put on some great worked submission matches, especially in the beginning; but, I thought Pancrase was much better. The talent was on a higher plane, with Ken, Funaki, Suzuki, Bas Rutten, Frank Shamrock, Jason Deluccia, Maurice Smith (who did a couple of bouts with them), Semmy Schultz, Guy Metzger and some of the other Japanese fighters whose names escape me. For RINGS, the best matches came from Volk Han and Kiyoshi Tamura. For UWFI, it was Takad and Tamura with the best bouts, though Albright was good and had tremendous bouts against Takada and Tamura. He was from Calgary and had worked the Stampede promotion, when Owen Hart was the top young star, and Brian Pillman and Chris Benoit were there. He was part of Karachi Vice, as Volkan Singh, along with Mike Shaw/Norman the Lunatic/Trucker Norm/Friar Ferguson/Bastion Booger as Maka Singh, managed by the Great Gama Singh, a long time Calgary fixture.
Pro Wresdtling Fujiwara Gumi had good fights with the faction that went off to form Pancrase, but faltered when they left. Bart Vale was a big bruiser of a kickboxer, but wasn't as good working the fights. he was given a worked win over Shamrock, which he used to publicize himself to the magazines and rival promotions that sprung up in the wake of the UFC. Fujiwara shut down PWFG, after others left and formed the Battle Arts promotion; but, he came to the US to drop the title to Vale, at a Florida show that Vale promoted. Vale then used that as his World Shoot Fighting Championship, which got him sone ink in Black Belt magazine. He then was signed to fight in the first and only World Combat Championship, where they had a striker division, where submissions were not allowed, and a grappler division, where everything was okay, then a final match between the winners of the two divisions. Vale faces a kid from San Diego who was supposedly trained in the Hawaiian martial art Kapu Kuialua (the "Art of Bone Breaking"). The kid had good grappling defense, but was outweighed by about 50 pounds or more. Vale got a keylock on him (hand on the underside of the opponent's wrist, while his other arm is placed in the crook of the elbow, to act as a fulcrum, and the opponent's wrist is pressed back towards the head, putting heavy pressure on the wrist and elbow (and shoulder, if done right). However, the kid wouldn't tap and Vale didn't seem to know how to sin it in properly. He eventually got a side choke and the kid tapped; but, Vale was gassed and pulled out, claiming injury to his skull, from the cage. Mostly, he was exposed as a fraud, as he couldn't finish a guy that he had half a foot in height and 50 or more pounds on. He did turn up again for one of the Extreme Fighting Championship cards, where he got his ass handed to him by Kazunari Murakami. He also got whooped by Dan Severn.
Vale also did some bout for RINGS; but, left when they switched to a shoot format, as he was all talk.
A few of the WCW guys had worked for the shoot promotions. Jerry Flynn, one of the undercard guys, had worked for PWFG. Norman Smiley, who was trained in catch wrestling, worked for UWF, before it split into the factions. He was also wrestling in Mexico, as Black Magic.
Early matches from RINGS and UWFI are worth watching for a more competitive style of wrestling, but still done as entertainment. Pancrase is worth watching up through late 90s.
Satoru Sayama went off and founded Shooto, a submission wrestling sport, with an amateur and professional component. Amateur bouts were held in various places, with schools and others participating, as sporting event. The pro ranks turned out some good fighters, including Hawaiian Enson Inoue and brother Egon, as well as Eric Paulsen, who also fought int he World Combat Championship (which was won by Renzo Gracie, Royce's cousin and one of the better Gracie fighters, who didn't handpick opponents). Sayama also promoted the two Japan Vale Tudo MMA tournaments. The first was won by Rickson Gracie, who had been given smaller opponents. That tournament can be seen in a documentary, called Choke.
Shamrock was better at shoot style than traditional pro wrestling, and did alright in early MMA; but, was not a good student of his opponents, like Frank was. He has at least one win over Bas Rutten; but, Rutten was just learning the grappling and submission game and was getting schooled by Shamrock and Funaki, as long as he couldn't tag them with a punch or kick. Once he developed his grappling defense, he was way better than Shamrock, as he turned into more of an all-around fighter. Shamrock knocked out a lot of the Japanese fighters, because he had size and a punch; but, he didn't fare as well with bigger guys and his grappling wasn't that strong (not compared to Severn and not in Kurt Angle's universe). he also had an arrogance in his thinking. Ironically, his marriage broke up and he ended up in a relationship with the woman who portrayed his sister, in the WWF (Ryan Shamrock). Russo wanted to do an incest angle but was shot fown by everyone, leaving the bad Ryan sleeps with Val Venis angle.