"In the days of ancient Greece, there existed a gladiator sport called pankration. No weapons were barred, and victory was claimed, only when one's opponent surrendered, or upon death. The predecessor of this vicious sport, predating it by centuries, was even more fearsome, an art used by soldiers in unarmed hand-to-hand combat. And now, centuries later, the spirit of that ancient martial art is reborn. Pancrase!"
— Opening narration used for the Pancrase Perfect Commercial Tapes on the first Pancrase events.
"October 4, 1992, Tokyo Dome: At a pro wrestling event, a rare legitimate match was booked where Wayne Shamrock, as Ken was known in Japan, faced world kickboxing champion Don Nakaya Nielsen. Shamrock took Nielsen down immediately and submitted him with [a modified keylock/americana from half guard] in 45 seconds. The success of this match made young pro wrestlers Shamrock, Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki question what they had been told since breaking into predetermined wrestling: that nobody would ever pay to see real matches."
"September 21, 1993, Tokyo: Shamrock, Funaki and Suzuki spearheaded a group of pro wrestlers and decided to abandon everything people had told them about real matches not being marketable. They formed a promotion called Pancrase, named by '60s wrestling star Karl Gotch after the sport of Pankration."
— Dave Melter
"So I hope the very best in the future for those boys because they represent the style that I made before... not that I made, I made as a rebirth. Before the style was known as Pancrase, which is a mixture of wrestling, with fist-fighting and feet-fighting as a self-defense. So we hope that from now on this will click and will then replace the circus that they did before, because you can cheat some of the people, some of the time, but not all of the people, all of the time. So it’s time that it go back to what it was before, the real sport of wrestling."
"Yeah- it wouldn’t be with Fujiwara-Gumi because Fujiwara-Gumi was pro wrestling. It was a hard-style pro wrestling. But Pancrase was the real deal."
"Pancrase is a name. Gotch loved to research old documents and literature including martial arts history. He found the word Pancrase in his research. Pankration is from Greece and was pronounced differently than Pankration in the U.S. Gotch explained that Pancrase is the origin of Pankration. I am not sure if that is accurate or if it is true. If my understanding is correct, it is a technique that was used in unarmed combat in medieval times. You could say it was a form of self-defense or martial arts of that time and was called Pancrase. Anyway, Gotch explained all the historical background, but it really didn’t matter much to me. Most important was for Gotch to name it. He didn’t remember the spelling of it when I asked. The spelling became Pancrase based on what Gotch recalled, but it was spelled differently, according to some later research by other people. There is actually a martial art called Pancrase in another country. Kakutougi Tsuushin (Editor’s Note: A Japanese martial arts magazine) found this out at one point- these guys practicing the art called Pancrase do not know that there is a fighting organization in Japan called Pancrase."
"Several spin-off promotions stepped up to fill the void. Maeda started an organisation called RINGS, which put on half-worked, half-real matches. But the most notable of the UWF splinters was Pancrase. Pancrase was the brainchild of a businessman named Ozaki, who combined forces with Suzuki, Funaki, and wrestler Karl Gotch with the intention of creating the most realistic fighting promotion possible. Although the rules were not as loose as those of the soon-to-emerge Ultimate Fighting Championship in America, it was a far cry from the fixed matches of pro wrestling. There was no weight classes. A competitor could strike his opponent with a closed fist to the body, and an open palm to the head. A fighter could also kick, knee, and elbow — but knocking an opponent out with strikes was not always the choice method of achieving victory. With master submission fighters like Funaki, the emphasis of Pancrase was on technique, with much of the action occurring on the ground. If, however, a fighter found himself in trouble, he could work his way to the edge of the ring and cling to the ropes. The referee would separate the fighters and the match would be restarted standing. This reprieve was called "rope escape", and it was a remnant of the organisation's pro wrestling roots."
— From the book, Brawl: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Mixed Martial Arts Competition.
"Many people assume that modern MMA started with UFC 1 at the Mc Nichols Arena in Denver, Colorado, in November 1993. In fact, the first mixed fights had taken place months earlier at the Tokyo NK Hall in Japan, where a small troupe of maverick pro wrestlers had taken the wrestling business back to its roots. Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki had tons of potential in traditional pro wrestling. Funaki had a real shot at succeeding Antonio Inoki as the biggest star on the Japanese circuit, and Suzuki had an amateur pedigree that could take him far. But the students of Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Karl Gotch weren’t looking to take pratfalls for giant American steroid machines like the The Road Warriors. They wanted to take wrestling back to a simpler time, when the matches were real and the showmanship was in the context of actual competition. The idea wasn’t exactly new. Inoki had wrestled a variety of martial artists in matches billed as the real deal back in the 1970’s. In the 1980’s the UWF and its offspring presented the public with “shootstyle” wrestling, predetermined matches using real techniques and real holds and designed to be realistic enough to pass for an actual fight. It was Funaki and Suzuki who wanted to take it a step further. They wanted a match, contested under modified pro wrestling rules (break when you get into the ropes, no punches to the face), that was a legitimate shoot. The concept was unheard of, failure the predicted result. With straight matches up and down the card, the first event featured just 13 minutes and five seconds of action spread over six fights. Something would have to change."
— What is Pancrase? Excerpted from The MMA Encyclopedia by Jonathan Snowden and Kendall Shields.
"... I have no regrets about being here. I had to separate from many people. Instead I have gained partners who can be sympathetic to my ideals. They are really important to me. With the fighting style we've been using, I decided to form a new team, in order to keep that principle... We'll never give up. I think making this team long lasting is the most important thing. A new fight is beginning. Please pay attention to us. That's all."
— Masakatsu Funaki, in a press conference with the original Pancrase guys before the first Pancrase event.
"The Pancrase game was maybe a little too refined, lacking the violence fans saw from the UFC and the newly created PRIDE organization in Japan. Funaki attempted to adjust course, going to more traditional Vale Tudo rules in 1998, including the legalization of punches to the head. But it was too little too late. Most of the top foreign talent had left for greener pastures in the UFC and PRIDE. To make matter worse, the established Japanese stars were wearing down. Years of grueling training sessions and a fight every single month had taken there toll on the Pancrase founders. Today, the promotion continues to put on a monthly show. But it isn’t an important player, even on a diminished Japanese scene. Firmly an independent promotion, only the most diehard of fans can remember a time when the best fighters in the world wore the famous Pancrase banana hammock trunks and shinguard combination."
— Excerpted from The MMA Encyclopedia by Jonathan Snowden and Kendall Shields, on state of the promotion.
"I believe that we had an opportunity to change the direction of the entertainment industry, and we had something real special, that we could challenge the world– that we were the best fighters in the world and that we could challenge anybody that we wanted to, like the UFC did. We were on the front side of that looking and going- hey, why are we still doing this stuff when we can create something that we believe would be the best legitimate fighting organization in the world- and we can prove it? We can bring in Muay Thai fighters, we can bring in pro wrestlers, sumos - whoever we wanted to bring in- we can bring them in and we can compete against anybody in the world and our style will stand above it all. And that’s the vision I really believe Funaki and Suzuki had- when they went with the Pancrase organization was to prove that this style- that whoever developed- I don’t know who’s taking credit for it- but whoever developed this style that they had over in Japan which eventually went into the Pancrase organization- that this style was legitimately the best in the world."
— Ken Shamrock on what hoped Pancrase could have been.
"Their showmanship was really good there. It taught me a lot about how to be a professional in front of a crowd because all those guys are pro-wrestlers, so they knew how to look and how to draw the crowds. Back then, we were drawing some huge crowds. The rules are not necessarily…well, they have a lot of unspoken rules, which makes it basically an ankle game there. When you have wrestling shoes on, it's real easy to get your career ended there real quick. You have to learn very fast how to play their game in order to survive. Being over there in Pancrase and watching guys get their knee blown out, and get fed to the lions basically, made my game go up in a hurry, in relation to learning how to deal with ankle and leg locks, so it was good just in that, along with learning how to be professional and even how to run an event. I took a lot of notes on how to run an event and I started running my own."
— Matt Hume, on his time in Pancrase.
"In the Pancrase organization, I was among real martial artists. It was an art and a sport. There were a lot of official rules, but also a lot of things you just didn’t do. You could legally hit a guy when he was on the ground, but you didn’t. It was not cool. Maybe because the sport was so small, I knew everyone I was ever going to fight. If I fought a guy tonight, I was going to fight him again in six weeks. So we all followed these unspoken rules. We beat the shit out of each other, but we didn’t want to injure each other. There was more honor and respect in it than that. We fought all over Japan. The touring circuit took us everywhere from Kobe to Sapporo. We mostly fought in ten-thousand-seat arenas. Some venues were as small as two thousand seats. Some were as large as fifteen thousand. We played Korakuen Hall in Tokyo because that’s where all the boxing and wrestling events in Tokyo are held. We played NK Hall, near Tokyo Disneyland. After an earthquake in Kobe, the whole city had toppled over except for this brand-new shopping mall. So we came down the escalators and held our fights right in the mall. We were treated like royalty, like rock stars. We were modern samurai. I was a big celebrity——over there. At home I spent all my time training hard in a sport no one knew and no one really wanted to see. But I’d go make to Japan, and we were big and everyone knew us. They respected us. Everyone knew that pro wrestling was fake. We were something new, this new kind of hybrid fighters, and we were famous."
— Frank Shamrock on his time in Pancrase
"RINGS had a similar setup, but it was fixed. When Pancrase came, I told them that if they wanted me they had to make sure it was real."
"It was a submission oriented game, so most of the finishing holds were joint locks. Over time the cumulative result of the tearing of the tendons was devastating."
— Frank Shamrock on what kind of fighting was done in early Pancrase
"Well see there, in Pancrase and stuff, there was different fights where there were works, there were shoots, there was works where the other guy didn't even know it was a work. So, who knows what's gonna happen."
— Scott Bessac
"There was not very many works. Maybe 4 or 5 total and most of them were before I was fighting for them. I hate when people say that there was so many works in Pancrase, they truly do not know what they are talking about."
— Guy Mezger on works in Pancrase
"There were no works. There was only one time where there was a questionable situation- and I’m not gonna elaborate on it, it was just because someone had gone to the dentist, and they hadn’t been able to train, they couldn’t really change it- the marketing was already done- so there are things that happened. And I’m not gonna say what, or who, or when. But I will say this- the rest of everything that happened in Pancrase, nobody that I know of, that as far as I was involved with- put anybody over. If you were good enough, and you could beat the other guy you did it. "
— Ken Shamrock on works in Pancrase
"So, Pancrase was considered the big one. The big, real one because it existed before Pride. And then Shooto was more amateur. So that was very much how it was seen. And Shooto was amateur, collegiate, high school- where it really tried to develop itself through the grassroots level at a broader base. Whereas Pancrase was just trying to be the big entertainment show. But they were both real in their approach to submission."
— Christopher DeWeaver
"When I first got involved with the UWF it was one unit- there was just one organization. I remember I got into it and I really enjoyed that style. But then, after I was there for two shows, I end up sitting home for a couple months because something happened and Maeda, Takada, and Fujiwara split into three different groups. I kind of went with what I knew, which was Sammy Soranaka- he’s the one that brought me in. So, I went with him to Fujiwara-Gumi. We started doing shows with Fujiwara-Gumi and then Funaki and Suzuki came to talk to me and say “Hey, we’re thinking about building a new organization, and it’s going to be a shoot. It’s hardcore-style.” And of course that lit me up because, like I’ve said- I think most people know my personality now- I love that challenge. The more extreme the better. I’ve never changed that my whole time, that’s who I am- I’ve done that my whole career, I’ve always stepped up to the next challenge that was even more of a challenge. This was part of that beginning, of me being me– where they came to me, they spoke to me, the only one they wanted to bring was me, they didn’t want to bring anybody else- so they were going to start a new thing and bring in young boys, and they wanted me to help them. So, I made that change with Funaki and Suzuki. I don’t regret it, the only thing I regret is I wish it would have been a smoother transition, and that the people like Soranaka- I wish he would have understood who I was, and that this was what was going to make me happy- and not staying in that soft-style. I appreciate everything he did for me but I needed to be me- and by going into the shoot-style, it was something that I really was looking forward to. I tried to explain it to him, I think he understood to a point, but it didn’t make it any easier when I had to leave. So when I did leave there was definitely some resentment towards me- I’m sure by some of the fans, and definitely by the Fujiwara organization itself. But, after we got in to do our first show with Pancrase, and probably six months after we got started- all those people that were a little bit disappointed in what we were doing understood that we weren’t competing with them. We weren’t trying to outdo them and we weren’t trying to grab what they built and steal it. We were going out and doing something completely different than what they were doing. We wanted realness. We wanted to be able to go in and fight for real, and not have to go in there and lay down for people- even though that was part of the program. So, after we got started I think people understood like “OK. I get it now. It wasn’t anything to do with personalities or trying to screw or stab somebody in the back- it was that they were creating something new.” It had nothing to do with what they were doing. So once we got started you see Pancrase become the best, and the favorite of Japan."
— Ken Shamrock on why he joined Pancrase and the backlash he felt
"Well I think in the beginning no one really understood what it is we were doing. I think they thought like “Oh, look at that. Wow, that was great”- but they didn’t see much difference from the UWF or the UW Fi (Union of Wrestling Forces International) until we started getting into it a little bit more- six months, a year into it- then they really started seeing that “Hey wait a minute. This stuff isn’t fake. This is the real deal.” But for so long the other organizations were trying to convince the fans that their style was hard-style along with ours. But when you put them up next to each other you could clearly tell that what we were doing and they were doing was nowhere near the same, at all."
— Ken Shamrock on how it was different from the other UWF offshoots
"Because Pancrase at that time was a sport with rules, not like NHB. Pancrase then and Pancrase now are different. But it is more aggressive now I think."
— Guy Mezger on the differences between early and modern Pancrase
"It's hard to understand how big the Pancrase was at this time. Sweden is far away from the battle sports Mecca, Japan. Somehow it seems that everything starts and ends there... If you're big there, it's like nothing else. It was totally crazy in Japan. We were like pop stars, we who represented the Pancrase. But you should know that it is difficult to win in Japan. There is nothing that Japanese love as much as seeing a big wicked gaijin get beaten in martial arts galas. They are also prepared to take quite an unjust means of doing so."
— Omar Bouiche
"The gentleman's agreement was that it was legal to hit shotei to the head on the ground and fist to the body but that we would preserve the submission art and promote Pancrase as something different and more dignified than UFC. Especially since it would have been easier for the experienced wrestlers to pound out the stand up guys... The Big Powers stepped in and shifted things, not caring about honoring agreements the previous Powers had made. I didn't care about the change as much as I cared that everyone loyal lost any security."
— Jason DeLucia
"Pancrase was, in the standup, open hand palm strikes. You could kick, but you wore shin guards and knee pads. You could knee when you were standing too and punch to the body. On the ground, pretty much everybody went for submissions. There wasn't a lot of striking. It was definitely a lot more technical with submissions when you were on the ground. And the standup had more of a combination of punching and kicking than early UFC. In the UFC it was closed fist, bare-knuckle. And no rules. It was a huge difference from Pancrase, where you could grab a rope and escape and start over again standing up. But you lost points when you did that. You lose five points and the fight's over. That's a whole lot of chances to escape out of a submission hold. It was a lot more strategic and you had to be a lot more skilled in your submission game. The UFC was less skilled, but a lot more dangerous than Pancrase."
— Ken Shamrock comparing Pancrase to the UFC
"I had done my homework on Pancrase and was convinced that it was 80 percent work and 20 percent shoot. It was a more sophisticated version of American pro wrestling, but there were shooters in Japan. Funaki as an example. There are people who had some skills. The question with that early on was separating the wheat from the chaff and I was good at that. Who was bullshit? Who was real? That was one of the genres I investigated. Above and beyond Vale Tudo in Brazil, I began to look at the whole wrestling situation and shooting and working in Japan. I think the Japanese were very sophisticated in understanding the nuances of these things and how to combine elements that would be something new."
— Art Davie
"No, I think what they were looking at, at least in my opinion- was that we had no competition. Our competition was making sure that we could train enough guys, and get enough guys in there to be able to compete and have a full card. So there was a lot of things that we had to do to build those fighters up and train those fighters using me in the U.S. to help train new fighters and bring people up to speed fast enough so they could fight the young boys in Japan- and then of course me, Suzuki, Funaki, and some of the other guys who had more experience to compete at that top level until these guys underneath were good enough to compete at the top level."
— Ken Shamrock on their competition in Pancrase’s beginnings.
"We went from fighting in Pancrase to doing straight-out MMA, so in training, we couldn’t lay on our backs; you had to move, unless you wanted to get punched in the face. Pancrase was way different. There was no punching in the face, open-hand only, unless somebody really pissed you off. Once we got into this, into MMA and NHB, there was no more making faces. You’d get your eyebrows punched off."
— Vernon White
"I think Pancrase is the best organization as far as quality. The have great fighters, they really treat you well and take care of you when you’re over there, and they pay well. The Japanese Pancrase fighters train really hard. I think it is a great organization."
— Nate Marquardt
