Fun fact:
It wasn’t a cape.
I was lazy in my wording. It’s definitely true they weren’t from a shooto instructor lineage, but their style of leg locking was much close to shooto than the catch base people associate with them.
The entries from the bottom, the transitions to legs from top half guard, and the actual attempt to leg lock from rudimentary leg entanglements (primarily 50/50 and that pseudo reap Ken is teaching in that clip above) are all much closer to the techniques you see from shooto guys like Yuki Nakai than Gotch or Robinson. The de-emphasis of pinning, and the idea of a non-linear hierarchy of positions, where positions like 50/50 are valued over just being on top, and the early understanding of gaining heel exposure through isolating one leg, those are things you don’t see from the earlier catch guys.
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I think some of this is a case of parallel technical evolution, as opposed to direct influence.
A relevant point is that it is unclear whether the early catch wrestlers were aware of the heel hook. There is evidence that the technique existed in ancient Pankration and in non-BJJ luta livre in the 1960s. The Japanese wrestlers themselves credited early Brazilian MMA star Ivan Gomes for introducing the heel hook to them during the years he spent in New Japan in the mid-1970s (a photo exists of Ivan doing a heel hook in front of Antonio Inoki, and Fujiwara’s Gotch notebook as published in Japan has a picture of Gomes training with Fujiwara and putting him into an armbar).
In the first shoot-style professional wrestling promotion, the original UWF in the mid-1980s, heel hooks were quite rare and more traditional catch leg locks like the half crab were more common. However, by the time of the second UWF in 89/90, heel hooks were common. Shooto was already running amateur events before this and started having professional events at around the same time.
Ken started at the tail end of the second UWF and, along with Suzuki and Funaki, followed Fujiwara to PWFG (instead of Maeda’s RINGS or Takada’s UWFI). By late 93 Ken followed Suzuki and Funaki in forming Pancrase, but even before that Funaki had been pushing for more and more realism, and their training typically involved legitimate grappling to the tap. The PWFG/Pancrase fighters found that many leg lock positions that were not feasible when pins ended a fight were now extremely effective. They also found that heel hooks, in particular, were quick fight-enders (especially with everyone wearing wrestling shoes).
Once Pancrase started, this became even more apparent. Unfortunately, in a way heel hooks were too effective, and Pancrase banned heel hooks early on because they were causing so many injuries. Earlier in the thread there is a video of Ken doing an inside heel hook on Ryushi Yanigasawa. It destroyed Yanigasawa’s knee and he wasn’t able to fight again for over a year.
In short: I think that the leg lock game of the Japanese catch wrestlers began to develop in some of the ways you suggest during training for the second UWF, in a less structured way than shooto. As also mentioned earlier, Manabu Yamada jumped from shooto to Pancrase early on and helped influence their leg lock game. But the technical development of the leg lock game in Pancrase partially stalled after heel hooks were banned.
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Damn man… That’s a hell of a first post!
Did you have a prior account we would recognize?
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Thanks. I mainly lurked on the old OG, but posted on some obscure catch and BJJ history forums in the 90s and early 2000s and the history of wrestling and BJJ remains an interest of mine — I actually remember discovering Mousel’s BJJ forum in 1996 as a teenager and seeing a poster called harlot opening eyes about BJJ history when the rest of us only had Rorion’s propaganda to go by.
Incidentally, on heel hook history: one of the oldest pictures I’ve seen of a (potential) heel hook is reproduced on page 238 of Robert Drysdale’s new book, The Triumph of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It is of a child (possibly) performing a heel hook in one of Orlando Saraiva’s classes.
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Very cool.
I enjoy these deep dives.
Leg submissions are an interesting subject, and were completely counterintuitive to me back in the day.
The heel hook came from victor koga, he wrote a book with tigermask
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I’d be willing to bet the house the heelhook predates history as most every move being used today.
I’ll bet Neanderthals ruling the world with their ground and pound, they were like dumb Colemans. Cro magnons started using leg attacks to counter this. In the Stone Age if you popped a knee you die of starvation and that is why they went extinct
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I’d guess early civilization when you had guys who could devote themselves to combat fulltime is when shit exploded.
hunter gatherers we’re jack of all trades types most interested in finding food
Maybe it was the heel hooks, maybe it was bow and arrows
The Greeks may well have understood grappling better than we currently do. Modern grappling has history of about 200 years, the Hellenistic period was over 300 years. The smartest people alive were training. Probably a trite fact everyone here knows, but Plato grappled and his nickname comes from his broad shoulders.
There are some sources I’ve read that tried to say there was a separate name for ankle locks and heel hooks, but other sources seem to to disagree. There is that famous story where the guy died and won Olympic gold, with what sounds to me to almost certainly be an the “counter crossed ankles from back Mount" ankle lock.
I could be wrong, I’m a bit biased when it comes to ancient Greece. Maybe they didn’t know what we do now.
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I believe this sculpture literally. There were centaurs doing heel hooks. My only question is why do a heel hook if you could just trample them Pride style?
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There’s some (almost certainly bullshit) story that sambists preferred leg locks because if you broke someone’s leg in battle it took two men to carry him off, where a dead guy or broken arm guy doesn’t. Maybe the centaurs did it for the same reason.
Hard to fight if you can’t walk.
You and me both would be running around the battle field doing Imanari rolls, roll under the sword, pop a knee and run to the next guy. History would be different
Ivan Gomes definitely showed it to the New Japan pro wrestlers during his NJPW stint.
This is long before Sayama was Tiger Mask, and likely just before he even started as a pro. Well before the book.
Of course, it is possible that there were multiple transmission streams and various independent inventions/introductions. I’d be interested to hear any further information about this.
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That dude squatting down looks like a Neanderthal
Pancakes was the original slap fighting sport. Its equivalence to Professional Pattycakes on the Ocho ESPN channel is remarkable.
I love Bas Rutten and can tolerate Ken Shamrock getting spanked here and there but there was never a real MMA King of Pancakes champ that was not gifted a fake MMA belt. Sammy Schilt at least understood this and went on to K1.
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