Worked Pancrase & PRIDE matches

[Loss]

I thought maybe we could use this thread to compile a list of the *known* worked Pancrase and PRIDE matches. I'd like to watch them all just like I watch pro wrestling matches.

[Eduardo]

Cooke and Snowden can probably add some more but here are some for you, Loss.

 

Matt Hume vs. Ken Shamrock

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5stbNT25_1g

 

I love that Shamrock does a northern-lights suplex, float-over into a kimura, as the finish. Shamrock used a similar spot in PWFG, except instead of a kimura, I believe he did a leglock.

 

Mark Coleman vs Nobuhiko Takada

 

 

This might be the most famous one out there. Dave Meltzer admitted on a random Wrestling Classics post that he was consulted on the worked finish of this fight.

 

Nobuhiko Takada vs Alexander Otsuka

 

 

Fisherman's Suplex.

 

Hideo Tokoro vs Daisuke Nakamura

 

 

This has never been confirmed but these are two shootstyle fans doing my favorite RINGS finish ever -- armbar counter to a calf slicer; Han-TK finish. Feels like an exhibition/homage to RINGS and shootstyle. Loss, Tokoro is a huge RINGS fan and is really into Volk Han. Nakamura trained under Kiyoshi Tamura and did some stuff for U-Style.

 

Ken Shamrock vs Minoru Suzuki

 

 

IIRC, Meltzer likes to mention this fight from time to time. Shamrock drops the King of Pancrase title to Suzuki, a couple of months before he goes to UFC 6 to face Dan Severn for the UFC Superfight Championship.

[Loss]

Thanks. Also, what are some of the ones that are hotly debated? Like, I remember Dave saying Ogawa vs Goodridge from PRIDE was a work, and Goodridge swearing on his children that it was not.

[evilclown]

Multiple fighters confirmed for me, on the record, that there were works in Pancrase. They didn't always offer specifics, but it was part of the deal, to the point Ken's dad Bob told me they were sure that UFC promoters were going to tell them who was supposed to go over right up until they went out to the cage.

 

Some specific fights I remember being discussed were Frank's early win over Suzuki, a Jason DeLucia win over Funaki in 1994 that may have been a work gone wrong, and Ken Shamrock's losses to Suzuki in 1994 and 1995.

 

Frank Shamrock's early success, in particular, is considered suspect. Former Lion's Den fighter Scott Bessac told me "Frank was all work."

 

I can also confirm that Coleman-Takada was a work.

[evilclown]

I was also able to confirm Funaki's win over Ken Shamrock in September 1994, a week before UFC 3, as a work.

[evilclown]

More than fight fixing, Pride was especially notorious for changing the opponent or even weight class at the last minute. They would allow their favored fighter to train for months for a specific opponent without telling the other guy until the last minute. They would also get a fighter to prepare for a certain style, like a jiu-jitsu artist, and then switch them into a bout with a kickboxer closer to the fight.

[BruiserBrody]

Takada vs Kyle Sturgeon as well.

 

Oleg Takarov vs Anthony Marcius in UFC

[evilclown]

Takada vs Kyle Sturgeon as well.

 

Oleg Takarov vs Anthony Marcius in UFC

There's a huge difference between someone throwing a fight and a worked fight. I don't know that there have been any UFC works.

[jdw]

There were also Pancrase matches that we more gym sparring than shoots. There was a Shamrock match where it just felt like Ken was doing the Ali-job: carrying a guy longer than he should, not going for finishes, letting the kid look good, then taking it home when it was time. I don't recall if it was the 1993 Yoshiki Takahashi match or the 1994 Ryushi Yanagisawa match, but one along those lines where it just didn't feel like Ken was going full out to win until he felt it was time to go home. The opponent knew he was going to get beat, Ken knew he was going to beat him, and they spared until it was time.

 

I have a feeling more of those would stand out now if one went through every match and every card from the start. We're 20 year removed from the fresh uniqueness of Pancrase and us not having seen something like it before. Since then we've seen a ton.

[evilclown]

Ken definitely cops to carrying guys. Funaki did it as well.

[jdw]

Yep. The thing is... does Ken admit to those being "worked", or did he just see it as Ali-style of giving the crowd a match rather than knock someone out in the 1st?

 

John

[pantherwagner]

I haven't seen Vovchanchyn vs Takada in four or five years but I believe that one was also a carry job where Igor was asked not to beat Takada in the first.

 

Maybe Jon or somebody else remembers the details of this but didn't PRIDE also have some weird "submission" bonuses where BOTH fighters would get extra money if the match ended with somebody tapping out? That left a lot of endings open for speculation back in the day.

[GSR]

There's a huge difference between someone throwing a fight and a worked fight. I don't know that there have been any UFC works.

Do you have any info at all on the Vitor Belfort vs Joe Charles fight? I haven't watched that one in years but remember Belfort (who was blitzing everyone at the time) not throwing one punch the duration of the fight and it ended with him getting a submission victory (this after he had KO'd or TKO'd everyone else up to that point).

 

Regarding Takada in Pride, I wouldn't be surprised if they were all worked one way or another.

[evilclown]

Yep. The thing is... does Ken admit to those being "worked", or did he just see it as Ali-style of giving the crowd a match rather than knock someone out in the 1st?

 

John

He says they weren't worked, but he was basically filling time. Their first show had less than an hour's worth of ring time.

 

I haven't seen Vovchanchyn vs Takada in four or five years but I believe that one was also a carry job where Igor was asked not to beat Takada in the first.

 

Maybe Jon or somebody else remembers the details of this but didn't PRIDE also have some weird "submission" bonuses where BOTH fighters would get extra money if the match ended with somebody tapping out? That left a lot of endings open for speculation back in the day.

I talked to Mark Kerr about this. It's in the book I think, but he said they sort of hinted around about him not beating the shit out of Takada. "Japanese fans like the technical aspects of the fight. I think they'd like a scientific match." That kind of thing.

 

Do you have any info at all on the Vitor Belfort vs Joe Charles fight? I haven't watched that one in years but remember Belfort (who was blitzing everyone at the time) not throwing one punch the duration of the fight and it ended with him getting a submission victory (this after he had KO'd or TKO'd everyone else up to that point).

The two had trained together, but I'm told that this was not a work. There was a lot of drama at the time about Vitor changing his last name to "Gracie." I have been told he wanted badly to win a fight with his grappling to prove he was worthy of it. Vitor's life is super, super weird.

[mookeighana]

Dave's quote on the topic of "Worked Matches in PRIDE" from June 2011 from the F4W board was:

 

Every match Takada won. Half the matches on the early shows.

They did some shoots on the early shows in matches that they didn't have to work, but the key matches were always supposed to be works because the money matches were with Takada. Like with RINGS, it evolved into more shoots and eventually exclusive shoots (but mismatched booking to protect stars).

Rickson-Takada was real because Rickson wouldn't do anything but.

He wrote on the wrestlingclassics board (as noted above) - I think Dave said he had friends who discussed with Coleman about how to work the finish, but I don't know if he outright said that he was consulted directly on it.

 

Every match Takada won was paid for in advance. Takada did do shoots with some very tough people like Mark Kerr, Igor Vovchanchyn, even Mirko Cro Cop who he managed to neutralize, and of course, Kiyoshi Tamura. Kerr was told ahead of time not to harm Takada's face because he was a TV personality but the match was a shoot. It appeared that Igor was told to carry him for one round and beat him in the second, but that's my speculation with nothing to back that up.

 

The Coleman match I knew about long before the match took place. I knew about discussions he had with mutual friends about how best to work the finish. I thought he did a great job under the circumstances of what he was supposed to do, because many people watch that match and believe Takada really beat him. The Otsuka match was a pure pro wrestling match, I mean, fisherman suplexes in a shoot fight?

[evilclown]

Dave's quote on the topic of "Worked Matches in PRIDE" from June 2011 from the F4W board was:

 

Every match Takada won. Half the matches on the early shows.

Again, a fixed fight is different than a "work." It's different conceptually and in execution.

 

He wrote on the wrestlingclassics board (as noted above) - I think Dave said he had friends who discussed with Coleman about how to work the finish, but I don't know if he outright said that he was consulted directly on it.

As for the Coleman match, he told me he was consulted on the finish in an on-the-record interview.

[Zero]

The Takada/Coleman fight is the most obvious. With Coleman letting Takada holding the sub for 30 seconds before tapping. Straight out of pro wrestling.

[jdw]

Yep. The thing is... does Ken admit to those being "worked", or did he just see it as Ali-style of giving the crowd a match rather than knock someone out in the 1st?

 

John

He says they weren't worked, but he was basically filling time. Their first show had less than an hour's worth of ring time.

That's why I'm trying to come up with a proper term for those type of matches.

 

They aren't really pure, straight shoots where they're both going all out to win.

 

It's not really a "work" in the sense of the two co-opperating on "moves" or "holds", etc.

 

But Fighter A knows he's going to win, and Fighter B knows he's going to lose, even if it's just due to skill level... though I'm not totally sold on that: in other words, someone like Ken isn't going to "carry" someone for five minutes and expose himself to getting injured or beat because the kid takes advantage of Ken being in "carry" mode rather than "straight shoot" mode. Fighter B knows he's going to lose because of the skill level, and knows that he better not fuck around with Ken looking for the upset or being a hero.

 

So as close of a term that I can come up with is that they're "sparring". Ken isn't going for the win early, though like in sparring might put the kid at risk and see if he can get out of trouble. The kid is to show Ken what he has, and Ken will let him feel around on stuff, which in turn Ken will look to get out of trouble or counter. At a certain point Ken's going to take it home, and the kid kind of knows when it kicks up a notch, and shouldn't be stupid in trying to be a hero and injure himself in fighting it since there were enough injuries in Pancrase.

 

It's not a work in the sense that we think of it, but there's a level of "fake" to it. It's not a shoot. I don't at all buy that it's a one-sided carry-job where the kid has no idea, the carry equiv of Taking A Dive where the diver knows what he's up to, but the opponent might not. With these... I really think the opponent knows Ken is going to spar with him, knows the agreed upon "rules" of this type of a match, has had a conversation with Ken or one of the other guys about it, and everyone in there knows what's up.

 

* * * * *

 

Then there's the other type of screwed up Pancrase match: the cross-art matches. Smith wins the Kick Boxing match with Wrestler X, then jobs the Pancrase match with Wrestler X. Or vice versa. It was one of the favorite gimmicks that Pancrase would run, and it's a throw back to the 80s and 90s... 1880s & 1890s where guys like Muldoon and the Original Strangler Lewis would have multi-fall matches where the falls alternate styles (what we'd now call Arts), with the Grecco guy winning the Grecco falls, and the Catch As Catch Can / Freestyle guy winning the Catch/Free falls. Or if they had matches under just one set of rules, the guy whose art/style it was would win... and when we'd stumble upon a rematch under the opposite rules, the other guy would win.

 

It was a way to put over Smith, then have him job to someone under Pancrase rules.

 

These two types of matches (Carry/Spar and Cross Art) are reasons I tend to ignore a lot of those Pancrase results. They were up to all sorts of shit and booking. Some of it we kind of got at the time, but I don't think any hardcores gave enough of a shit about Pancrase to really try to study it at the time. Now perhaps one could make better sense of it, and folks like Jon can interview some of the participants (though like any sport and form of entertainment, they participants are full of shit a lot of times).

 

John

[evilclown]

Jason DeLucia tells a funny story about beating Funaki with a heel hook to everyone's surprise, including his own. Funaki, apparently, was going to try to give him a point or two to make it look good but misjudged where he was in the ring and was forced to tap out instead of grab the rope. So DeLucia got a rare clean win over the Pancrase founder.

 

Pancrase was fun, but the more I hear about it from people who were there, the less I'm inclined to consider it seriously when determining legacies and historical import.

[pantherwagner]

But Fighter A knows he's going to win, and Fighter B knows he's going to lose, even if it's just due to skill level... though I'm not totally sold on that: in other words, someone like Ken isn't going to "carry" someone for five minutes and expose himself to getting injured or beat because the kid takes advantage of Ken being in "carry" mode rather than "straight shoot" mode. Fighter B knows he's going to lose because of the skill level, and knows that he better not fuck around with Ken looking for the upset or being a hero.

DeLucia surely didn't get the memo that he was losing.

[jdw]

Jason DeLucia tells a funny story about beating Funaki with a heel hook to everyone's surprise, including his own. Funaki, apparently, was going to try to give him a point or two to make it look good but misjudged where he was in the ring and was forced to tap out instead of grab the rope. So DeLucia got a rare clean win over the Pancrase founder.

That would be here:

 

 

The funny thing is that on the earlier attempt, Funaki was right there by the ropes. He tried to counter around, put himself in a worse position, and ended up further away from the ropes.

 

It was DeLucia's first Pancrase match, and it's one that could have felt goofy at the time of the new guy getting put over after Funaki has a long string of wins. Instead, DeLucia promptly lost his next Pancrase match to Fuke in one of those WTF moments that the promotion had.

 

 

Pancrase was fun, but the more I hear about it from people who were there, the less I'm inclined to consider it seriously when determining legacies and historical import.

Pancrase certainly was kind of fun at the start: it was something new and different. I think it's been overblown since then, and was even in the late 90s when people were trying to credit it with being a big factor in things like UWFi dying. My interest waned in it and the Bas-Funaki that everyone loved/loves was kind of my Foley HitC moment for Pancrase in just not wanting to watch stupid shit like that anymore. Don't really know how much I watched after that... wasn't a ton.

[evilclown]

Pancrase certainly was kind of fun at the start: it was something new and different. I think it's been overblown since then, and was even in the late 90s when people were trying to credit it with being a big factor in things like UWFi dying. My interest waned in it and the Bas-Funaki that everyone loved/loves was kind of my Foley HitC moment for Pancrase in just not wanting to watch stupid shit like that anymore. Don't really know how much I watched after that... wasn't a ton.

Some of the most entertaining fights actually came after that. Among my favorite MMA moments of all time were these tiny Japanese Pancrase guys trying to figure out how to fight 6-11 Semmy Schilt. He would later become K1 champion, so he was a pretty good striker, and he could literally reach the ropes from almost anywhere in the ring. Those were fun logistical problems to watch guys desperately try to solve.

[jdw]

I don't doubt there would be some fun Best of Pancrase, as long as it edged away from the insane style of Bas vs Funaki. But by that point there was also UFC, which I found more interesting on an MMA level.

[Guest TheGreatPuma]

I absolutely love Pancrase

 

I have heard from someone that Funaki got beat against Rutten after prolonging the match for the fans. I think I heard Rutten say something along the lines of that he didn't think this happened. I know I watched the match and I couldn't tell. My memory has been poor my whole life so that's all I remember. And I don't know if I'm remembering it exactly right.

[jdw]