Fighting Pro-Wrestlers

[Hookah Smokin Caterpillar]

A lot of people on this forum don't know a lot about pro-wrestling, so I decided I should do a little paragraph on each fighter that does pro-wrestling or was a pro-wrestler at one point in his career. If you have questions or comments, feel free to add. Also, if there's someone I forgot, don't forget to mention him.

Nobuhiko Takada - UWF, UWFi, NJPW
Takada in terms of popularity in Japan ranks right up there in the top 5. He's an AMAZING pro-wrestler, I think he's one of the best of all time. His selling [acting to getting punched, kicked, put in submission] is probably the best I've seen. He's the best shoot-style pro-wrestler ever; shootstyle is wrestling thats meant to look as real as humanly possible and it was popularized by Akira Maeda. Maeda is Takada's rival and the owner of Rings. Takada puts a lot on the line everytime he goes out there because of his status in Japan, he's a hero. Way bigger in Japan then Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin is in the states. If Hulk Hogan wasn't a pussy, we'd probably be interested in seeing him fight in the UFC, but he is and we know what the outcome is. Most of us would want him to fight just so he can take a brutal beating. Without Takada, there would be no Pride.

Ken Shamrock - Various US Indies, Pancrase, WWF
Ken Shamrock started his career in the late 80s training with Dean Malenko and traveling throughout the Indies. After his career started heading no where, he moved on to Pancrase where he learned the shootstyle pro-wrestling from Funaki. Obviously the style helped his fighting [like it did Funaki, Takada, Otsuka, Sakuraba, Fujita etc.] but he was still doing mostly worked fights. When he lost to Royce Graice in the first UFC, in his post fight interview he said something to the extent of, "I'm not used to this sort of thing." Although he meant Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there's a joke going around saying that he really meant he's not used to real fighting. In reality, when he left the UFC to the WWF, he was just going back to his roots, and not selling out. He was brought in to be a title contender, but was eventually phased out to a mid card wrestler.

Don Frye - NJPW
Don Frye is as big of a wrestler in NJPW as you can be without actually being the heavyweight champion. He's what you'd consider a Jobber to the Stars, he's built up as a monster only to lose to the good guy super star in the end. He's a decent pro-wrestler, nothing special but he plays an unbelievable bad guy. Since he's supposed to be a shootfighter and he does things like pull his opponents hair, low blow, or hold on to the hold after his opponent submits or grabs hold of the rope. He had a hilarious match with Fujita where he got booed out of the building and then got into a confortation with Ogawa and Inoki.

Alexander Otsuka - Battlarts
Otsuka is a great, great pro-wrestler. VERY fun to watch him as he does a lot of moves you'd expect out of wrestlers in the 70s and 80s like the Airplane Spin, and also does a lot of INSANE suplexes. The Battlarts style of mixing 80s style American Wrestling with Shoostyle really fits into his style. He's one of the top guys in the federation and is interchangable with other wrestlers. Actually had a pro-wrestling match right before his fight with Marc Ruas.

Kazyuki Fujita - NJPW
He's a glorified jobber [wrestler who loses all the time] although he'll pick up victories here and there. Not a big name at all and as far as I know never did anything worthwhile. Not much to add here.

Kazushi Sakuraba - UWFi
This one will surprise everyone I think, but of all the Sak matches I've seen, I've never seen him win one. He's come close but not that close. He'd get spanked around and when you see him lose to a 250 black guy that wouldn't phase Fred Ettish but then watch him snap Renzo's arm, its really funny. Heard stories that him and Takada would fight each other legit all the time in the back to get better, I wonder who used to win.

[Underdog]

How do you get all those infos?

[Hookah Smokin Caterpillar]

I'm a huge Puroresu [Japanese Pro-Wrestling] fan and have seen so much pro-wrestling in my life thats enough to make you sick. It all started a joke and it ended up being a huge hobby for me for a while. Then I discovered MMA and haven't been watching wrestling in a while.

[Biz]

WWF wrestling for the most part sucks. Besides punches, kicks and closelines, there's about an average of 5 moves per match. And most WWF matches only last about 6-10 minutes. My local fed is my favorite. I like some Japanese. Some of the ECW is cool...

[Maxximus]

What about Satoru Sayama (aka Tiger Mask)? He was the founder of Shoot Wrestling and was my teacher's teacher. I believe he was also quite a popular pro wrestler, but I really don't know any details. Any info?

[Hookah Smokin Caterpillar]

He wasn't the founder of shoot wrestling, shoot wrestling's been around since the days of the Gotch's and probably even further. He helped popularize along with guys like Takada, Inoki, Fujiwara, Yatsu but it was Akira Maeda's influence that was the most. Tiger Mask was popular for highflying more then Sayama was for shoot wrestling

[Shimora]

Great Post HSC, very well written.

Hulk Hogan did have an MMA match in 1985. It was against Sylvester Stallone. Hogan threw Stallone out of the ring but Stallone climbed back in, took off his gloves and beat Hogan down with body shots. Then he threw Hogan out of the ring. The fight was declared a draw and they had their photo taken together.





[Edited by Shimora on 11-23-2000 at 06:04 AM]