GamersMayhem

Jul 14, 2009
From entertainment to fighting: 9 pro wrestlers who impacted MMA
07:54 PM
usatoday


Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley are far from being the first pro wrestling entertainers to convert themselves into mixed martial artists.


Severn, top, and Shamrock, seen at UFC 9, did pro wrestling before MMA. Detroit News

MMA has a history of taking talent from pro wrestling's ranks, going back at least to the turn of the 20th century, when pro wrestling matches weren't fixed. In modern times -- that is, the last 20 years or so — the two have chiefly intertwined in Japan, whose MMA industry was born from pro wrestlers' desires to prove themselves in a competitive setting.

In the wake of Lesnar's victory at UFC 100 to become the Ultimate Fighting Championship's undisputed heavyweight titleholder, let's look nine of his noteworthy predecessors. Note that the list excludes athletes who reached pro wrestling's major circuits only after they started fighting — thus, no Josh Barnett, Don Frye or Ron Waterman.

9) Antonio Inoki. He didn't engage in many actual fights, but he was already well on his way to becoming Japan's version of Hulk Hogan when he started a series of bouts against fighters in other disciplines, including a match-up with Muhammad Ali that was the most notable mixed martial arts fight of the 1970s. The action stunk because Inoki did nothing except kick Ali's legs and flop to his back, but nevertheless, it was a real fight that left the boxing legend's legs in the worst shape they'd ever been after a competition.

Muhammed Ali vs Antonio Inoki

Inoki would become a mentor to several Japanese MMA competitors, including some mentioned later in this list. He continues to be a prominent promoter — the Inoki Genome Federation's roster includes Barnett.

Nobuhiko Takada. Before he became the figurehead president of Pride Fighting Championships, Takada starred in multiple pro wrestling organizations such as the New Japan Pro Wrestling and the Union of Wrestling Force International, and promoters saw potential in having him challenge the champion of Brazilian jiu-jitsu's first family, Rickson Gracie. The fight failed to live up its billing — Gracie submitted Takada in less than five minutes — but it launched Pride Fighting Championships, the most successful organization in MMA to that point. For all his box office success, Takada never triumphed in an actual MMA match; his official record includes two victories that were fixed, including a "win" over Mark Coleman.

7) Kazuyuki Fujita. "Ironhead" Fuijta's decorated amateur wrestling career paved his path into New Japan Pro Wrestling where he trained and worked for several years before training under Inoki to become an MMA fighter for Pride. He scored wins over Mark Kerr, Ken Shamrock, Gilbert Yvel, Bob Sapp and James Thompson, among others, but Fuijta's MMA career arguably crested the moment his right hand smashed into Fedor Emelianenko's face, buckling the champion and leaving him wobbling like a man trying to stay on a tight rope. Had Fuijta gone for the knockout at that moment instead of a takedown, he might have ended the night with Pride's heavyweight belt around his waist; instead, Emelianenko recovered and submitted Fuijta with a choke before the first round ended.

Fuijta's pro wrestling career included three reigns as NJPW's International Wrestling Grand Prix heavyweight champion. The last run ended in 2005, when Fuijta dropped the belt to none other than Brock Lesnar in a three-way match:

NJPW - Brock Lesnar vs Masahiro Chono vs Kazuyuki Fujita

6) Kiyoshi Tamura. The veteran of UWF, UWFi and Rings was arguably one of Japan's top two fighters at one point, along with Kazushi Sakuraba. The list of opponents who lost to him or only escaped with a draw reads like a who's-who of elite fighters in the late 1990s, including Jeremy Horn, Frank Shamrock, Pat Miletich, Ikuhisa Minowa; and Renzo Gracie.

He slowed down in the early part of this decade, with 10 fights in the last seven years, but he still comes out on the winning end most of the time. His last two victories came at the expense of his most notable contemporaries, Sakuraba and Funaki.

5) Dan Severn. He introduced amateur freestyle wrestling to MMA, but Severn was a pro wrestler before he ever stepped into the UFC cage. Severn worked for UWFi in the early 1990s prior to getting the heavyweight belt of the National Wrestling Alliance in 1995 and winning UFC 5 later that year. Severn became the second man to hold a UFC title in 1997 when he won the Superfight belt that eventually morphed into the heavyweight division's strap, making him the only man in history to share title lineages with both Ric Flair and Randy Couture.

In fact, Severn's UWFi reputation indirectly produced blemishes on Ken Shamrock's record. Before facing Severn at UFC 6, Shamrock was forced by Pancrase to lose to Minoru Suzuki so there would be no possibility of a Pancrase star losing to a UWFi guy, according to Jonathan Snowden's Total MMA book.

4) Akira Maeda. Modern MMA arguably began when Maeda formed the Rings organization in 1991 after the collapse of his previous pro wrestling organization, the Universal Wrestling Federation. Maeda favored a pro-wrestling style called "shoot" wrestling, which emphasizes realistic-looking performances, and eventually Rings evolved into a full-fledged MMA group that groomed many fighters who later starred in Pride, K-1 Hero's and UFC.

3) Masakatsu Funaki. A UWF contemporary of Maeda, Funaki and Minoru Suzuki led the formation of Pancrase in 1993, built around a core of former UWF and Fujiwara Gumi performers such as Ken Shamrock. Because of their pro wrestling roots, Pancrase fighters initially learned their craft at the same dojo, where Funaki led the training. "I learned the most from him," Shamrock told CBSsports.com. "He took time and worked with me and other boys and took me under his wing to bring me along."

2) Ken Shamrock. Funaki may have taught his American student too well. Shamrock defeated Funaki to become the first king of Pancrase and earn an invite to UFC 1. Shamrock tore through Pancrase to become its dominant fighter, and although he never won a UFC tournament, he was never far from the top. In fighting Royce Gracie to a draw at UFC 5 and beating Dan Severn at UFC 6 to win the organization's first title belt, Shamrock became one of the sport's first true stars in the United States.

He found himself pushed not only because of his pro-wrestling techniques in the ring, but for his chiseled look, his showmanship and sense of self-promotion. You think Lesnar was the first guy to get on a microphone and yell trash talk? Shamrock mastered the art more than a decade earlier.

His UFC fame led to a stint in the World Wrestling Federation, which cast an even bigger spotlight on Shamrock and made him perhaps the most famous UFC alumnus in the world. Many WWF fans didn't know Royce Gracie from Joyce Brothers, but they knew Shamrock was an "Ultimate Fighting champion." When he returned to UFC in 2002 to face Tito Ortiz, it became the first pay-per-view hit of the UFC's Zuffa era largely because of interest from pro wrestling fans.

Unfortunately for Shamrock, his post-WWE career was littered with defeats, including an October 2005 loss in just 2:27 to...

1) Kazushi Sakuraba. UFC lightweight contender Kenny Florian last year said that if MMA had a Mt. Rushmore, Sakuraba's face should be on it. One of the sport's leading trade publications calls him "the greatest fighter in the history of MMA ... by such a wide margin that his skill level may never actually be met by another competitor for generations, if ever."

Even UFC President Dana White wanted to borrow him from Pride, back when White still believed promotions should share fighters.

Sakuraba earned that status by saving pro wrestling's reputation as a legitimate fighting style.

He was a protege of Takada, starting in 1993 with UWFi and subsequently in Kingdom Pro Wrestling. When Takada tried his hand in the competitive fighting world in 1997, Sakuraba soon went down the same path, competing in December 1997 at UFC Japan and beating the much larger Marcus Silveira for the first of several victories over Brazilian jiu-jitsu experts.

"In fact, pro wrestling is strong," Sakuraba said after winning the UFC Japan tourney.

He would drive that point home with wins in Pride over a quartet of Gracies, including a 90-minute epic against Royce Gracie and a memorable defeat of Renzo Gracie, whose arm was broken by Sakuraba with a double wristlock. The streak earned him the nickname "The Gracie Hunter" and made him the most popular fighter in the world's biggest MMA promotion at the time.

Other notable victims of Sakuraba included former UFC champions Carlos Newton and Kevin Randleman back when they were still viable contenders, as well as Vernon "Tiger" White, Anthony Macias, Ikuhisa Minowa and a raw, inexperienced Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.

Sakuraba could have ridden into the sunset with a halo around his head as the man who lifted the reputation of Japanese fighting and pro wrestling, but he kept fighting much larger men such as Wanderlei Silva, Mirko Filipovic and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. The trilogy with Silva had particularly brutal consequences, but Sakuraba couldn't help throwing himself back into the ring. His fights in recent years have been sluggish at best, and at age 40, he's not likely to regain his youthful spark.

But once upon a time, he was simply the best, the man who demonstrated that in a clash of styles, pro wrestling could match or beat any striker, wrestler or jiu-jitsu practitioner.

UPDATE, 4:42 a.m. ET: BloodyElbow.com reader themachiavellian points out that this list leaves out Bob Sapp, who worked a short period for the NWA before talent scouts for Pride discovered him. The bulk of Sapp's pro wrestling happened with New Japan after his Pride tenure.

UPDATE, 11:23 a.m. ET: It also occurs to me that Satoru Sayama, aka Tiger Mask, deserves a mention. I left him out originally because he never fought in MMA, but he founded Shooto, the oldest continuing organization in the MMA. Sayama and Maeda were rivals in UWF, and their very real feud eventually led to Sayama leaving to form Shooto.

(Posted by Sergio Non)

I had no clue Sakuraba was a pro wrestler at one point.

MMA means mixed martial arts right? lol

yea