A great read for MMA history guys

Godfather's thread about the fall of Gracie's made me remember this thread a friend of mine put together at a site I used to post at Ironlife.com check it out. The videos are awesome it takes a while to read through everything and watch all the videos but if you enjoy that kind of shit, it is well worth it.artie:


http://www.ironlife.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1411290

 

Nice, good read. They didn't mention that A LOT of the japanese catch wrestling matches were completely staged.

 

No he didn't, but I don't think he's trying to rip on anyone or any organization really. Just give a chronological review of how some of all that we enjoy went down. I found it very interesting myself.

 

:: I can't really remember who it was, but remember when some of you guys tore me a new asshole when I said MMA had roots in pro wrestling? I think it was Trpl.

 

I don't think that person realized the difference between that Japanese pro wrestling and pro wrasslin' as we know it though. That's probably why.

 

Yep, it is true.

 

I guess it all comes down to who says it.

 

Japanese MMA CLEARLY has roots in pro wrestling. The UFC does not.

 

Actually Steve_Dave's comment was that modern MMA is ALL directly linked to Pro Wrestling in Japan during the 80's.

That comment was moronic then and it's even more moronic now. In fact, Steve_Dave took an ass whooping in that thread and recanted the statement.

Saying modern MMA is all linked to 80's Pro Wrestling in Japan absolutely ignores the huge influence of Vale Tudo on the UFC, which is the primary face of modern MMA.

We can revisit this deeply if Steve needs a refresher.

 

Very true, the UFC's roots come directly from Brazil. Pride and Dream do come from the old Japanese wrestling. Machida talked about this in an interview once, if you remember he was slapped by some old Japanese wrestler after a debut match which was supposed to mean something good in the old Japanese wrestling days. I know we all remember the old Pride shows, the Pro Wrestling influence was obvious, the wearing of masks especially.

 

The influence of Japanese pro wrestling in PRIDE is something I wouldn't debate. My contention was the inclusion of ALL MMA being rooted in 80's Pro Wrestling in Japan. It had ZERO influence on the UFC. And when you think of modern MMA, the first organization is the UFC.

 

pro wrestling pretty much led to the inception of mma in japan considering they did 'worked' shootfights (where sakuraba got his shit started), but a lot of those japanese pro wrestlers were also collegiate freestyle wrestlers. i think bad news brown was also part of that process as well and he was an olympic judoka.

 

If you guys don't think Pride has influenced cage fighting as it is today, I don't know what to tell you.

 

Of course it has. The most popular, or the second most popular organization as cage fighting grew has obviously had influence. Think.

 

Sorry, I can tell when you don't want to understand something. I'm not getting into three pages of wall-talking.

 

I think there is really no debate that pro wrestling had a major influence on mma in Japan. Now to say that influence didn't matriculate over to the UFC would be silly, beings that is where Ken Shamrock came from. I don't think the pro wrestling influence had as much an influence on the UFC, but I would agree it did have its affects in a more indirect way to say the least.

Pro Wrestling today is nothing like the Pro Wrestling in the 60's and not even close to what Pro Wrestling was in Japan. I have talked with old pro wrestlers, guys who are in their 70's and 80's now. Most of it was all staged, but when the belt was on the line, so were pride's and ego's and the shit went down. Vince McMahon truly changed wrestling. I watched an interview with Hulk Hogan once and he was talking about his match against Andre The Giant in Wrestlemania. He said how it was all scripted out, but no one new for sure if Andre would go along with it, because Andre was a left over from that "old guard" who you really couldn't tell him to lose a match. Funny shit.

 

Good post jarhead. :bears: You don't have to be the only influence, or the main influence, to be an influence.

 

First and foremost I would think the biggest influence Pride had on the UFC was the promotion style. Pride was the bigger the better, way over the top style. The UFC barely had ring entrance songs there for a while in the late 90's. The production side was almost non existent.

 

I am thinking. It's pretty straight forward.

 

Geez.. You talk about a stretch. First, current MMA is ALL linked to 80's pro wrestling in Japan. And now we've honed it down to PRIDE influenced UFC's ring entrances. Holy shit that's weak.

But you guys really need to keep in mind that this isn't a legitimate discussion. This is simply the threatened SD trying diminish MMA by hinting at some kind of circuitous link to Pro Wrestling. It's laughable.

But still, it's fun watching GF back him in a corner.

 

GF > Stevedave :hump:

 

Trpl, I know exactly what SD is trying to do. But I still think Pride had an influence on the UFC doing more with their productions. GF may be right, it could easily have been due to lack of funds, but the UFC's shows became very lackluster for some time. If I remember, it was around Tito's reign, possibly just before it, that they started to get their "shows" on par with what Pride was putting on. I guess I just don't see the Pride influence or whatever you want to call it as a bad thing.:dunno: