This post is so devoid of context and understanding, it’s almost impressive.
You win a hat!
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You’ve never seen Ken take a legit loss in Pancrase.
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I’m calling Pancakes fighting championships a Shooto like sublevel “MMA style” organization. Its barely fighting in comparison to the UFC of the 90s. That’s why he got bingo’d by Royce. Even when he learned how to actually ground fight besides diving for desperation leg locks he could just hold on for dear life against a real mma champion.
I believe that is the great Antonio Inoki
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You’re just toxic for no reason when it comes to Ken, and spin your responses to reflect that bias.
It’s silly, and has a negative effect on your understanding of early MMA history – which is a subject better understood through a lense of respect and appreciation.
Here’s Ken “holding on for dear life” lol..
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Show Ken’s pulverized ribs and kidney.
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Can’t show something that didn’t happen.
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Instead I’ll show you something that does happen – a meatball sub with extra mayo.
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Sayama was a young boy then, victor koga was around for years before inoki was doing that king of the ring gimmick and brought gomes and ruska in. That picture looks very familiar
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Why not change your name back?
I know Funaki learned the heel hook from Gotch and Fujiwara (he first trained with Gotch in 1991 and started training with Fujiwara in I believe 1984). He said he learned the ankle hold while in Germany from Mile Zrno, which would have been in 1988. Zrno’s teacher was Johnny Londos.
Ken’s prime was probably 1992 through early 1996. I don’t know if there was one top dog above all concerning leg locks, but Ken was obviously in the top group of people.
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Below I link to a brief clip of Erik Paulson, talking about asking Satoru Sayama (Tiger Mask, founder of shooto) about the origin of the leg locks in shooto.
According to Paulson, Sayama said he learned the knee bar and achilles lock from Victor Koga, the toe hold from Karl Gotch, and the heel hook from Ivan Gomes. This also dovetails with what I have seen from looking into this and origins of the heel hook, specifically. In any case, it seems that Sayama himself tells the standard story that he and the other New Japan pro wrestlers first learned the heel hook from Gomes during Gomes’s mid-70s stint in NJPW.
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You cant believe an jkd guy about anything, erik is probably the most sane one ive ever met but jkd is jkd
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According to the 2005 book, The Martial Arts of Ancient Greece by Dervenis and Lykiardopoulos, the centaur heel hook is a Roman era bas-relief currently in the Vatican museum. It is strong, but indirect, evidence that the heel hook was known in Ancient Greek Pankration.
According to Ivan Gomes’s brother José, Ivan learned the heel hook from their coach José Maria Freire, who was a student of Builson Osmar, who was a student of Takeo Yano. Yano was a student of the legendary Kodokan ground specialist Hajime Isogai, who was a foundational figure in Kosen Judo. Isogai apparently became a ground specialist in an effort to defeat the non-Kodokan ground fighting legend Mataemon Tanabe.
While in Brazil, Yano also interacted with various early figures in BJJ and luta livre, so the heel hook could have come from any of them (Yano lost a match to George Gracie via leg lock, and drew with Helio). At present, I’m skeptical that it existed in mainstream catch wrestling outside of Brazil. But there are some great pictures of modern-looking leg entanglements during catch matches, e.g., this one with Ad Santel against Clarence Eklund:
But I have never seen a clean picture of the heel hook being performed before the 1970s pictures involving Brazilians. If anyone has one, please post it! The heel hook doesn’t appear in LeBell’s early books, even though he shows other leg locks (in both his judo book and his pro wrestling finishing moves book). I’ve looked at a lot of the catch material to find a clean early heel hook picture, but haven’t done a deep dive into the sambo material. However, twisting leg locks are not allowed in sport sambo, so it wouldn’t appear in official matches. It is possible that, as with Pancrase, sambo banned twisting leg locks early in its history because of the injury rate, but that is just speculation.
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Interesting thing with Pancrase and the heel hook–it got banned starting with I believe the June 1995 event, after some crippling injuries. There were IMO a few damaging heel hooks used to punish and send a message. There was also one crippling example done by someone brand new to the technique who didn’t mean to blatantly injure. But on the November 1995 event, and then the March 1996 event, and later, the heel hook was seemingly back–just using different hand positioning.
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I wish Funaki would have signed with the ufc in the early days - he was a bit smaller but quite technical .. him vs Severn, Ruas or Frye would have been fun
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Definitely would have been some fun matches for sure. That said, I’m glad he stayed in Pancrase to keep that organization going–his presence on the card was essential to that company staying afloat (he fought on basically every Pancrase event from their September 1993 debut up though March of 1996). Instead we ended up seeing lots of skilled guys go from Pancrase to the UFC, and do very well.
At the UFC 8 PPV the camera rested on Funaki (after the Herrera fight) and Bruce Beck talked about him a bit…I was curious as hell, thinking maybe he was coming to the UFC.
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I would have bet my life that OPJD would be the top poster in this thread…he probably thinks 95 Ken beats any version of Jon Jones…
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This is the most un-natural movement I’ve ever seen.