Why Did Pancrase Never Become As Popular As Pride?

[Savant21]

Title say it all. I'm not extremely familiar with the overall history of Pancrase unfortunately, though I have watched a few fights and I genuinely really dig the old school rule sets and fights of Pancrase (despite some of them being fixed apparently), they looked like shoot/non-fixed pro wrestling matches with open-palmed strikes (the grappling seemed pretty fast-paced and honestly more exciting than a No-Gi BJJ match IMO, Masakatsu Funaki is pretty exciting to watch IMO).

I'm just curious why Pancrase never reach the level of notoriety and fame that Pride did. I'm curious to know why the owners of Pancrase never attempted to build up their divisions in a similar fashion as Pride, especially after Pride disbanded and the fact that Pancrase has been around since the UFC.

I'd also would like to know why did Pancrase abandoned the pro-wrestling-esque rule-set and ring in favor of a cage? According to wiki, the previous rule-set prohibited knees & stomps/kicks on the ground & banned elbows whereas the current rule-set is similar to Pride except there's no knees on the ground. Either way, I personally believe they probably should've kept the ring instead but I'm curious as to their justification for the change.

 

[kingcillo24]

I'm guessing Pancrase didn't have the funds, TV deal, or talent to become Pride-like. However, they were able to survive through the recent JMMA Dark Age.

They changed to a cage to "become a modern mma org and prepare JMMA fighters for the USA based MMA fighting". It would have been cool to have a legit JMMA rules organization on Fight Pass, but they still put on great cards. In 2016 they should have at least 8 fight cards on UFC Fight Pass.

Recently, the Pancrase owner, Masakazu Sakai, met with the Rizin boss Sakakibara.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

Two reasons:

a) No closed hand strikes until it was too late

2) The boots

 

[Sherdoggy]

Two reasons:

a) No closed hand strikes until it was too late

I remember seeing this fight on YouTube and thinking how rediculous it looked. And this is how Bas Ruten got his big reputation. There is another fight with Shamrock and Ruten that looked like a work. But having said that, Shamrock's UFC "Superfights" with Severn and Kimo looked like works to me as well.

 

[Mitch Thompson]

Marketing and atmosphere mostly. Pancrase was never able to capture the aura PRIDE had mainly due to having an inferior product (in terms of actual promotion).

 

[Edwin]

Title say it all. I'm not extremely familiar with the overall history of Pancrase unfortunately, though I have watched a few fights and I genuinely really dig the old school rule sets and fights of Pancrase (despite some of them being fixed apparently), they looked like shoot/non-fixed pro wrestling matches with open-palmed strikes (the grappling seemed pretty fast-paced and honestly more exciting than a No-Gi BJJ match IMO, Masakatsu Funaki is pretty exciting to watch IMO).

There was quite a bunch of fixed fights in Pancrase.

I'm just curious why Pancrase never reach the level of notoriety and fame that Pride did. I'm curious to know why the owners of Pancrase never attempted to build up their divisions in a similar fashion as Pride, especially after Pride disbanded and the fact that Pancrase has been around since the UFC.

The reason they never reached the same level of PRIDE is because they lacked the amount of stars PRIDE had.

I'd also would like to know why did Pancrase abandoned the pro-wrestling-esque rule-set and ring in favor of a cage? According to wiki, the previous rule-set prohibited knees & stomps/kicks on the ground & banned elbows whereas the current rule-set is similar to Pride except there's no knees on the ground. Either way, I personally believe they probably should've kept the ring instead but I'm curious as to their justification for the change.

Pancrase dropped the pro-wrestling-esque rule set and picked up normal MMA rules including soccer kicks and stomps.

They dropped the soccer kicks and stomps last year along with the ring and picked up the United MMA rule set to prepare Japanese fighters to compete in overseas organizations as previously mentioned before. The change happened when WSOF Japan was supposed to take off as Pancrase had a working relationship with them, but unfortunately that never occurred.

 

[SamboWrestler215]

I remember seeing this fight on YouTube and thinking how rediculous it looked. And this is how Bas Ruten got his big reputation. There is another fight with Shamrock and Ruten that looked like a work. But having said that, Shamrock's UFC "Superfights" with Severn and Kimo looked like works to me as well.

Wrong Shamrock.

 

[E Undead]

Different business structure. Pride was made to produce and sign top level MMA fighters. Pancrase not so much.

 

[axion]

TV deal

 

[Edwin]

Different business structure. Pride was made to produce and sign top level MMA fighters. Pancrase not so much.

Wrong. That's not what PRIDE was made out to be. PRIDE was made to see how pro-wrestlers would do against NHB fighters in a real fight environment.

 

[savemgs]

TV deal.

 

[BeardotheWeirdo]

A lot of good posts in this thread.

Wrong. That's not what PRIDE was made out to be. PRIDE was made to see how pro-wrestlers would do against NHB fighters in a real fight environment.

He's not wrong. You're both right. Pride was officially made to put on Takada (or Anjoh) vs. Rickson, but they knew Takada was going to lose and they featured a lot of top MMA & kickboxing talent at their first event, so really they had two big goals. The only planned one event to start wityh, then after it's success they decided to keep going. So the goal they started out with at Pride 1, wasn't necessarily the same goal Pride had, after Pride 1.

There were only two pro-wrestlers at Pride 1, three if you count Kazunori but he was doing MMA for years before he started doing wrestling. Pride FC 2 was the same, mostly big name MMA fighters with 2 or 3 pro-wrestlers thrown in.

Pancrase was Puroresu, and Puroresu against MMA fighters. Pride was to see how puroresu fighters can do against Kakutougi STARS, and to promote (and hopefully build) some more MMA stars at the same time. How else do you explain all the top-fighters they signed?

 

[eseseses681]

They lost their TV deal in 2002, and the sport's recession caused by Pride's collapse hurt Pancrase even more. Their 2004 New Year's Eve show drew, like, 40,000 people, and even Shooto's New Years Eve shows attracted, like, 10,000 people, and Shooto's never been an organization that was about making money (and even they had to make their year-end shows big to accommodate the demand.) After Pride's bankruptcy, the bubble burst and everything was hurt, and Pancrase was put down to 1,500 seat arenas and Shooto was relegated exclusively to Korakuen Hall.
Everything hurt in Japan after Pride went under; a bunch of orgs stopped drawing 5-10,000 people on average and went down to 300-1,000, a lot of 'em went under eventually (GCM, DREAM, Sengoku), and even a lot of promising young fighters decided to retire- or disappeared from the sport altogether. That was something I found out that was crazy; between 2006 and 2009, a lot of fighters either retired from the sport very early in their careers or went on very unimpressive skids that they never recovered from. I even collated some information of the Pancrase Neo-Blood- and Shooto Rookie King tournament winners and runner-ups:
Left are the fighters who are still fighting and doing okay, right are the fighters who have either retired or gone on irreconcilable runs.
Shooto 2006
3-6
Pancrase 2006
2-6
Shooto 2007
2-10
Pancrase 2007
1-7
Shooto 2008
4-10
Pancrase 2008
2-4
Shooto 2009
5-7
Pancrase 2009
3-5

The numbers started to even out in 2010. 2007 had the worst year, and, coincidentally, that was the year that Pride went under (and Hero's shortly after.) I didn't check DEEP and their future king tournaments, but those would be interesting, too. A lot of these guys stopped fighting soon after they won their tournament, too-- a couple of 'em right after they won the tournament, too.
Some good fighters came out of all this, though, and some of these guys just had poor luck, but it's still a crazy low rate for what've been the premier prospect-builders in Japan for at least the past 15-years. To give a frame of reference, 10 of the 17 current Japanese fighters in the UFC won- or got to the finals of either a Shooto or Pancrase rookie tournament, and Kiichi Kunomoto won a DEEP tournament, so these things are kinda important. A lot of the Americans, Brazilians and Europeans who debuted during those years and had success in prospect-builders ended up becoming contenders or champions.

Pancrase was big during the '90's, though. And the Shooto-Pancrase rivalry prevented Pancrase from having every top fighter in Japan. The rivalry was apparently so strong that, up until a few years ago, Shooto fighters would automatically lose their Shooto license if they fought in Pancrase. The ruleset change was cuz' everyone else was going with the conventional ruleset as the sport's popularity grew. It's not about the actual rules themselves or anything; every other org had adopted gloves and didn't have boots, so Pancrase went along with it so they wouldn't appear gimmicky. It's the same reason RINGS eventually added head-strikes on the ground.

Edit: finished a cut-off sentence.

 

[Edwin]

A lot of good posts in this thread.



He's not wrong. You're both right. Pride was officially made to put on Takada (or Anjoh) vs. Rickson, but they knew Takada was going to lose and they featured a lot of top MMA & kickboxing talent at their first event, so really they had two big goals. The only planned one event to start wityh, then after it's success they decided to keep going. So the goal they started out with at Pride 1, wasn't necessarily the same goal Pride had, after Pride 1.

There were only two pro-wrestlers at Pride 1, three if you count Kazunori but he was doing MMA for years before he started doing wrestling. Pride FC 2 was the same, mostly big name MMA fighters with 2 or 3 pro-wrestlers thrown in.

Pancrase was Puroresu, and Puroresu against MMA fighters. Pride was to see how puroresu fighters can do against Kakutougi STARS, and to promote (and hopefully build) some more MMA stars at the same time. How else do you explain all the top-fighters they signed?

Their goal was always to see how pro-wrestlers would do in a real fight enviornment.

That's why they tried signing other top name pro-wresters like Shinya Hashimoto, Mitsuharu Misawa and Toshiaki Kawada, but failed to.

Even Big Van Vader was in their plan of signings.

Also a lot of the fighters trained pro-wrestling at pro-wrestling dojos even if they never participated in pro-wrestling.

The top signings they had originally was with the idea of having them fight pro-wrestlers like you mentioned with Rickson vs. Takada.

Like Pancrase, RINGS was also pro-wrestling and pro-wrestling vs. MMA fighters and MMA fighters vs. MMA fighters.

 

[Magooglie]

Pride was the combination of a grand pro wrestling show with MMA matches.

 

[E Undead]

Wrong. That's not what PRIDE was made out to be. PRIDE was made to see how pro-wrestlers would do against NHB fighters in a real fight environment.

Yeah, that's why they signed olympic fighters and MMA greats... because it's all about pro wrestling, sure.

 

[Edwin]

Yeah, that's why they signed olympic fighters and MMA greats... because it's all about pro wrestling, sure.

...

If you don't think PRIDE was highly influenced by pro-wrestling, then I'm not even going to bother explaining it to you.

 

[Crusader666]

pancrase had shitty rules until it turned into mma and it was full of no name japanese cans

 

[MiroHa]

pancrase had shitty rules until it turned into mma and it was full of no name japanese cans

Didn't they have better talent in the early and mid 90's than the UFC? They had the Shamrocks, Bas, Funaki, Suzuki, Vernon White, Semmy Schilt, Maurice Smith, Yuki Kondo and Guy Mezger among others. The Shamrocks, Bas and Maurice won titles in the UFC.

 

[Crusader666]

Didn't they have better talent in the early and mid 90's than the UFC? They had the Shamrocks, Bas, Funaki, Suzuki, Vernon White, Semmy Schilt, Maurice Smith, Yuki Kondo and Guy Mezger among others. The Shamrocks, Bas and Maurice won titles in the UFC.

but the rules back then made it a grappling/leg lock match with slapping, Pride was real fighting, Pancrase was not. Also Pride didn't start until 97.