Is Ken Shamrock really the 'Greatest American Catch Wrestler' in history?

[Idonotbelieveit]

Individually, I don't believe he was ever any of those words, let alone all four of them at the same time.

His grappling in prime was sick

 

[Idonotbelieveit]

No mention of Shinya Aoki?

I believe the best catch wrestlers i have seen are:

Ken Shamrock
Masakatsu Funaki
Josh Barnett
Kazushi Sakuraba
Minoru Suzuki

My favorite out of the group is Masakatsu Funaki, the best catch wrestler i have ever seen. His knee bars are second to none.

His rolling leg lock is my fav

 

[Idonotbelieveit]

Hume learned in Pancrase and trained Barnett himself. He has some amazing credentials and Mighty Mouse by far is the best fighter he ever produced. It's so hard to see the little technicalities in what he does sometimes because he moves so quickly but you can see little catch tendencies here and there.

Not to mention his Mousetrap sub is exactly the kind of batshit crazy move a catch guy would think up.

Hume was injured pre their fight you probably know so they worked it

 

[Idonotbelieveit]

I think Josh is better at straight catch

Would Saku be considered a catch wrestler? Then I pick Saku

Saku is under billy
Edit

 

[Idonotbelieveit]

It's hard to rate the greatest American catch wrestler because the community had been so small and poorly documented.

I can see a strong argument being made for Ken just because there's not many people in the conversation.

The one thing against Ken is that he outweighed all but like 2 if his pancrase opponents. And by a large margin. Usually 20-30 lbs.

Plus that org did have several fake outcomes, which causes every fight to be under suspicion.

But then you have to compare him to the old time guys like Karl gotch. who knows how many people he outweighed, or how many of his fights were against total cans, or how many were faked.

Then there is Josh Barnett. Who has a legit claim on the title because he probably could have destroyed Ken at any point in their respective careers if they fought, and he was UFC champ, and beat the better competition in MMA, but was not as accomplished in pancrase.

Overall I think Josh's accomplishments are more impressive so I'd give him the title.

I don't think Josh would run through 95 severn

 

[Warwick7]

Josh has done more pure Catch Rules matches and tapped Dean Lister. Josh also represnrents Catch a lot. Im not sure I have see. Ken do that so much outside the ring.