Ken Shamrock Podcast

Mick Foley with short hair and big beard looking like Tank Abbott
 
One mystery to me, with Ken Shamrock, is where he really, truly first learned submissions. The story goes that his first experience with submissions came in his UWF tryout, with Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. And then he came under the tutelage of Funaki, who as Shamrock says, "saw something" in him. But the interesting thing is that you see him doing submissions in his American pro-wrestling matches as Vince Torelli. In fact, you see him doing a rolling Kimura and even a scissors to heel-hook transition in his matches.

Legit submission guys like Dean Malenko (a student of Karl Gotch and the one who informed Shamrock about the UWF) and Lou Thesz were in his orbit and if you look at his matches, Buzz Sawyer, Shamrock's original professional wrestling instructor, was actually using legit submission holds in some of his matches. So he may have gotten some tutelage from them or maybe he was still wrestling as Vince Torelli in America on and off between trips to Japan. I'm not sure, but it is a question that interests me.
 
I hope "Lionheat" returns to the cage

So sad to see Lionheart reduced to doing a podcast like some wannabe 40 year old hipster when he belongs in the cage. Millions tuned in to see his fights against Kimbo and that cheating weasel Gracie. Ken Shamrock is a legend of the fight game and deserves more cage/ring time.

Ken, please come back, MMA just isn't the same without "Lionheart"

I hope you get into your RV and come up to California again. Scott Coker always has a home for guys like you.

Hulk Hogan is still wrestling at 60, Japanese Grandmas are taking on Gabi Garcia in MMA fights...Why cant Ken do both?
 
Kforcer said:
One mystery to me, with Ken Shamrock, is where he really, truly first learned submissions. The story goes that his first experience with submissions came in his UWF tryout, with Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. And then he came under the tutelage of Funaki, who as Shamrock says, "saw something" in him. But the interesting thing is that you see him doing submissions in his American pro-wrestling matches as Vince Torelli. In fact, you see him doing a rolling Kimura and even a scissors to heel-hook transition in his matches.

Legit submission guys like Dean Malenko (a student of Karl Gotch and the one who informed Shamrock about the UWF) and Lou Thesz were in his orbit and if you look at his matches, Buzz Sawyer, Shamrock's original professional wrestling instructor, was actually using legit submission holds in some of his matches. So he may have gotten some tutelage from them or maybe he was still wrestling as Vince Torelli in America on and off between trips to Japan. I'm not sure, but it is a question that interests me.
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How did Frank get so good at submissions with no in ring experience and a couple of years of training ? Ken and Frank are a mystery.
 
manboy<3 said:
How did Frank get so good at submissions with no in ring experience and a couple of years of training ? Ken and Frank are a mystery.
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Well, Masakatsu Funaki was definitely a great teacher, not only Ken and Frank say so, but Guy Mezger, Bas Rutten, Yuki Kondo and a number of others point to him as a guy who really went above and beyond to help his students get as good as possible. And Ken Shamrock also had Minoru Suzuki and submission legends Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara teaching him. Frank had Ken teaching him and he had Funaki also taking a special interest in him, just as he had done with Ken.

But what is a little funny is seeing Ken pull off submission holds in American pro-wrestling, before he ever went to Japan. Unless, like I said, those matches actually happened after he went to Japan for the first time or something.
 


Here's an example of what I'm talking about. That is definitely a guy that knows his submissions right there. Either he'd already been to Japan at that point, or he starting learning them somewhere before he first got to Japan.
 
This video could be from 1990 until 1991

hard to tell if it's pre or post Japan Ken but I think it's pre-Japan Ken
 
I think it’s pretty clear Ken learned catch as catch can wrestling before going to Japan.
 
Kforcer said:
Well, Masakatsu Funaki was definitely a great teacher, not only Ken and Frank say so, but Guy Mezger, Bas Rutten, Yuki Kondo and a number of others point to him as a guy who really went above and beyond to help his students get as good as possible. And Ken Shamrock also had Minoru Suzuki and submission legends Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara teaching him. Frank had Ken teaching him and he had Funaki also taking a special interest in him, just as he had done with Ken.

But what is a little funny is seeing Ken pull off submission holds in American pro-wrestling, before he ever went to Japan. Unless, like I said, those matches actually happened after he went to Japan for the first time or something.
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What I can never get over is how he failed to finish Kimbo with a fully locked rnc.
You see him do the same bad technique in his Pancrase bouts with the hand on top not behind the head but he got away with it.
So too much pro wrestling crossover can obviously backfire.
 
TheMaster said:
What I can never get over is how he failed to finish Kimbo with a fully locked rnc.
You see him do the same bad technique in his Pancrase bouts with the hand on top not behind the head but he got away with it.
So too much pro wrestling crossover can obviously backfire.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't think there is any question that the pro-wrestlers who trained him for submission-wrestling were awesome at what they did, from Fujiwara and Gotch, to Suzuki and Funaki. There is a pretty awesome list of students that have come out of that lineage, including later guys like Satoru Kitaoka. So I wouldn't blame that on his professional wrestling background. In the case of Kimbo, the main thing I would blame was just age.
 
Ken was at the NEWBORN UWF for their 12-31-90 event, but what a lot of people don't know is that he had a brief stint in NEW JAPAN before this. I would have to look up the exact dates, but he wasn't well liked by the other performers on the roster for being too stiff, so he probably learned some things there, also. Which may have predated the video you posted of him putting the American jobber in a heel-hook.
 
Mbetz1981 said:
Ken was at the NEWBORN UWF for their 12-31-90 event, but what a lot of people don't know is that he had a brief stint in NEW JAPAN before this. I would have to look up the exact dates, but he wasn't well liked by the other performers on the roster for being too stiff, so he probably learned some things there, also. Which may have predated the video you posted of him putting the American jobber in a heel-hook.
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Yeah, I was looking it up and he was also in AJPW at least as early as 1989. So that explains a lot about his use of legit submission holds. Basically all the Japanese dojos did legit rolling back in those days.

He was also around guys like Lou Thesz, Dean Malenko and Mark Fleming, who not only were legit but also had Japan connections. I'm guessing Sammy Saranaka probably prepped Ken in some way for his initial UWF tryout as well.
 
Kforcer said:
Yeah, I was looking it up and he was also in AJPW at least as early as 1989. So that explains a lot about his use of legit submission holds. Basically all the Japanese dojos did legit rolling back in those days.

He was also around guys like Lou Thesz, Dean Malenko and Mark Fleming, who not only were legit but also had Japan connections. I'm guessing Sammy Saranaka probably prepped Ken in some way for his initial UWF tryout as well.
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Ken has said in the past that he thought Masami Soranaka taught him the heel-hook. Funaki on the other hand has said that Soranaka didn't have any input into his training.

For those that don't know. Masami Soranaka was part of the Orignal UWF roster, but didn't stick around for the 2nd incarnation as he had moved to the United States and married Karl Gotch's daughter. He was responsible for a lot of the booking, and talent scouting for the PWFG, while living in Florida. He is also the main person responsible for Bart Vale's career. He also had connections to the same gym that Dean Malenko was training out of, so he would have been in Ken's orbit in those early days.

Here is a video that has him facing Nobuhiko Takada:

Here is another with him facing British wrestler Scott McGhee:
 
Also, I stand corrected. When I said that Ken had been in New Japan, I misspoke, I had meant to say ALL JAPAN. I don't think he ever did anything for New Japan.
 
Mbetz1981 said:
Ken has said in the past that he thought Masami Soranaka taught him the heel-hook. Funaki on the other hand has said that Soranaka didn't have any input into his training.
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I believe Ken said in an interview that Soranaka did train him, to some extent, between Ken's trips to Japan. That's my recollection, anyways. I think Soranaka initially gave him an America tryout prior to the UWF tryout, and then afterwards helped with his training while he was stateside.

Obviously though, Funaki had a major, major role in developing Ken's submission skills.
 
TheMaster said:
What I can never get over is how he failed to finish Kimbo with a fully locked rnc.
You see him do the same bad technique in his Pancrase bouts with the hand on top not behind the head but he got away with it.
So too much pro wrestling crossover can obviously backfire.
Click to expand...

ken clearly took a dive that fight.
 
Mbetz1981 said:
Ken has said in the past that he thought Masami Soranaka taught him the heel-hook. Funaki on the other hand has said that Soranaka didn't have any input into his training.

For those that don't know. Masami Soranaka was part of the Orignal UWF roster, but didn't stick around for the 2nd incarnation as he had moved to the United States and married Karl Gotch's daughter. He was responsible for a lot of the booking, and talent scouting for the PWFG, while living in Florida. He is also the main person responsible for Bart Vale's career. He also had connections to the same gym that Dean Malenko was training out of, so he would have been in Ken's orbit in those early days.

Here is a video that has him facing Nobuhiko Takada:

Here is another with him facing British wrestler Scott McGhee:
Click to expand...


So are u saying Ken can be considered first and foremost a UWF trained guy?
 
TheMaster said:
So are u saying Ken can be considered first and foremost a UWF trained guy?
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If anything, I would say that Ken' s foundation was originally a product of Karl Gotch and catch wrestling. Gotch didn't personally train Ken much, but he did tain the original UWF roster, especially Fujiwara.

He then built on that over the years with the Lions Den/Pancrase/etc
 
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