ttt
i still don't understand why you couldn't close fist strike back then. nice slap fights :P
Le' worked fight.
The choreographed celebration at the end seems a little fishy IMHO.
100% WORK
LOL @ Ken working the canopener from mount
the only purpose i can see for no gloves is the choke & pancrase had very few choke attempts
ttt
Funaki asked Ken to drop the title before fighting Dan Severn. It's an old pro wrestling custom that you don't send your champ into another promotion with your title. If Ken loses he was not officialy Pancrases best, therefore the UFC won't be put over.
"the only purpose i can see for no gloves is the choke & pancrase had very few choke attempts"
The purpose for no gloves, slap fights, boots, rope escapes, etc is because Pancrase was a shoot (MMA) organization based on what was popular shoot-style pro wrestling at the time.
While its cool to see all these old Pancrase videos, this will only make all the TUF army think Pancrase is nothing but works...Pancrase has been 100% shoot since 2000, but I still hear people commenting about Pancrase having "too many works"
that's just unwatchable i'm sorry
Suzuki lost his first KOP title defense also (to Rutten). It's a black mark in Pancrase's history that he was officially a KOP. Shame.
I remember during the King of Pancrase PPV in the US back in 96 or 97, where they highlighted the (at the time) four KOP's careers (including the title fights, of course), Shamrock was commentating. He tried to cover up the fact that this was an obvious work by saying something like, "Sometimes you make stupid mistakes, you know, and you roll the wrong way."
"personally i havent seen anything worked from pancrase outside of 1994-1995"
Kondo/Funaki 2 was in either 96 or 97. ...Just checked, it was April 1997. That's the most recent work in Pancrase I know of.
"personally i havent seen anything worked from pancrase outside of 1994-1995"
I think works mostly went away after the UFC became popular. A lot of the UFC's (then fighters) actually competed in Pancrase...Oleg Taktarov, John Lober, Paul Varelens, Todd Medina, Joel Sutton etc (none had much success)...Pankration matches were introduced in 99 and Pancrase has been 100% shoot since 2000....Sadly the masses on the UG pretty much only know about PRIDE and K-1, there's TONS of talent in Pancrase, Shooto, Deep, ZST etc....All the TUF Army wants PRIDE to fold so badly but that would only help the smaller, less know organizations IMO
Damn Kondo-Funaki2 was worked???? that was one of my favorite matches....darnit
Zinoviev didn't fight in the UFC until after his Pancrase fight, but he did make a name for himself on US PPV, so you can add him to that list. He also didn't have much success (draw).
I love the format the Japanese organizations have. Fighters make a name for themselves in smaller shows, and they typically stay in one smaller organization without fighting in others. (Shooto and ZST have more overlap with each other than the others.) Then if they're good enough, or lucky enough, they graduate into the big shows, Pride or Hero's, and there they sometimes engage in promotional rivalries. I love it. For those who follow the smaller shows, it's also exciting getting to see how fighters do when they get a shot at the big show. Some shine even brighter than they did at the club level (so to speak), such as Aoki, Tokoro, and Gomi. Some fizzle, like Yoshiro Maeda and Ryuta Sakurai.
man, old school pancrase was badass! Even if it was worked, it's way more entertaining than most of the new UFC ppv's.