Posted by Jonathan Snowden on 5th October 2009
Tomorrow night, Kazushi Sakuraba makes his return to the ring for DREAM in Japan. It’s a return to action that literally no one has been awaiting with baited breath. As I point out at Heavy.com, Sakuraba is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Now the hall of famer is firmly in the Ali-Holmes stage of his career. He’s clearly no longer the man he once was, and just as clearly needs to stop fighting to protect his long term health. Yet, promoters keep dragging him back to the ring. And he goes willingly. And audiences still want to watch him fight and in an ugly business that trumps all. Everyone is responsible for the tragedies, yet no one is.
I run down Sakuraba’s back story in the piece. He’s clearly one of the most important figures in MMA history. It’s a shame to see him come to this. Remember this up and coming fighters: save your money so you can save your brain.
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Posted by Jonathan Snowden on 12th January 2008
A fight between the biggest stars in the history of Japanese MMA. It’s UWFi versus PWF-Gumi. It’s Pride versus Pancrase. And no one seems to have noticed.
Masakatsu Funaki did more than anyone to build the sport of MMA in Japan. Pancrase was running shows before the UFC even existed and Funaki was the star. Originally groomed to be the protege of New Japan Wrestling star Antonio Inoki, Funaki was handsome, charismatic, and most importantly, he was good. Really good. He beat many of the sports biggest names in the early to mid-1990s including Bas Rutten, Ken Shamrock, Guy Mezger, and Frank Shamrock. When he did lose, like to his successor as Pancrase’s top star Yuki Kondo, it was always slightly shady. Funaki was so good, so far above the other guys in the business, that he needed to give them an leg up when he fought. So he’d challenge himself: ‘I’ll let the other guy get two rope escapes on me to get the crowd fired up and then beat him.’
Sometimes it backfired, like when journeyman Jason DeLucia tapped him out when he misread how far away the ropes were and couldn’t escape a kneebar. “From what I understand, he was supposed to carry me to three rope escapes into the match and miscalculated his distance upon the first rope escape — it happens. The promoters were very unhappy, needless to say,” DeLucia said. But usually it made for the most exciting and technically sound fights on the scene. When the UFC was still using “talent” like John Hess and Moti Horenstein, Funaki and Pancrase were putting the best fighters in the ring together in grappling classics.
“Pancrase, it was the stuff back in the day. It was the height of pro wrestling then, and we were pro wrestlers that did it for real. We were the shoot wrestlers in a sport everyone knew wasn’t real and we really captured the imagination of the Japanese audience,” former Lion’s Den fighter and King of Pancrase Guy Mezger said. “It was a lot of fun back in those days and there was a lot of notoriety to be had then. In the 17 years I was a professional fighter, that five year period was probably the most fun I had.”
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Posted in Japan, Jonathan Snowden, Kazushi Sakuraba, Masakatsu Funaki | No Comments »
