Oh, here we go again with this shared history bullshit.
You copied his AV name, but you share none of the original account owner's intelligence.
I've posted this before, but there is always somebody in one of these threads that needs to be educated. So here we go...
*Around the turn of the century pro wrestling was a real competition. Look up Frank Gotch.
*Mitsuyo Maeda who taught Carlos and Helio Gracie Judo (which they would later modify into BJJ) was a pro wrestler who participated in both worked and legitimate matches.
*Judo Gene Labell (who was involved in the first mma match in the United States with Milo Savage) was a pro wrestler.
*The mma promotion Rings in Japan started off as a pro wrestling promotion.
*How about Pancrace; Which was started by Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki both of whom were pro wrestlers who started and participated in the shoot fighting org.
*PRIDE was initially conceived in 1997 to match popular Japanese pro-wrestler Nobuhiko Takada with Rickson Gracie. And how about that Antonio Inoki or Sakuraba?
*Ken Shamrock (who actually was a pro wrestler before he competed in Pancrase or the UFC) saved the UFC's ass mostly due to the name he made for himself while in the WWF.
It's crazy when you think about it and trace it all back. It all goes back to Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson, who trained together in old school catch wrestling, both went their different ways in the pro wrestling world and ultimately both of them ended up in Japan training pro wrestlers. Gotch trained Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who trained Suzuki and Funaki, who recruited and trained Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Rutten, going on to found Pancrase. Robinson would train most of the UWFI wrestlers that would go on to become Pride.
Then I don't think a lot of modern fans really understand the influence that Rings had on Pride. Pride basically swallowed up Rings, took their best fighters(Fedor, Overeem, etc), stole their ideas, then put them out of business in 2002, right around the time that Pride really started to kick ass. The guy who founded Rings, Akira Maeda is connected to Takada, Fujiwara, and Tiger Mask. Those four guys all came out of the same dojo and basically laid the groundwork for what MMA would become. Their bidding war over Rickson Gracie would basically shape the history of MMA.
If you take away pro wrestling's direct influence on MMA history, you take away Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Suzuki, Funaki, Frank Shamrock, Bas Rutten, Sakuraba, Takada, Fedor, Pancrase, Pride, Rings, Shooto never happens. I think it's safe to say that maybe MMA never happens, especially when you consider the influence that pro wrestling had on Mitsuyo Maeda, who taught the Gracies how to grapple.
Maeda was living in a YMCA in Alabama at one point during his travels, learning tricks of the trade from the pro wrestlers he befriended in the 1900's. He basically taught the Gracie's Judo with some old school pro wrestling tricks and submissions worked into it. I mean, if you take all of that away, what does that leave MMA? It would have basically been just a toughman contest, it would have died an early death, if it even would have happened at all.
