Fighters Only

Issue 052

July 2009

Far more than just the chubby bloke kicking the crap out of his unfortunate students with a kendo stick in an infamous YouTube video, 51-year-old Satoru Sayama is a true pioneer of Japanese MMA.

As an undersized employee of New Japan Pro Wrestling in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Sayama traveled the world to gather experience in different aspects of the game (he appeared in Britain as ‘Sammy Lee’, Bruce Lee’s alleged and apparently geographically challenged cousin) before being called home and made an instant superstar.

Taking the Tiger Mask persona from a wildly popular Japanese cartoon series, and being far more exciting than his contemporaries, Sayama was an instant superstar. An impossibly fast and acrobatic performer, Sayama fused elements of high-flying Mexican pro-wrestling with the flashy kicks picked up in his teenage martial arts training, essentially creating a whole new style of pro wrestling.

Unsatisfied with his own overly theatrical profession, Sayama quit in August 1983 at the very peak of his immense popularity and went back to his martial arts roots, opening up his first dojo in Tokyo. But Sayama was soon back in the pro-wrestling world, this time with the revolutionary Universal Wrestling Foundation [UWF], a more realistic-looking version of the art.

Massively influential, the UWF and its direct descendants would spawn the careers of MMA legends such as Masakatsu Funaki, Ken Shamrock and Maurice Smith, not to mention history-making promotions Pancrase and Pride FC. But Sayama argued frequently with fellow UWF star and pivotal MMA Icon, Akira Maeda (more on him in an upcoming issue). Predictably quitting the UWF in 1985, Sayama turned his attention to his true vision – ‘Shooting’.

Sayama’s ‘Shooting’ (in the pro-wrestling world a ‘shoot’ is a term for a match that is real) started out small, with amateur events in Tokyo pitting fighters, from a tiny number of affiliated gyms, against each other. Striking on the ground was forbidden for many years, but competitors were free to throw, wrestle, punch, knee, kick and use submissions.

Essentially, ‘Shooting’ was MMA, just a few years ahead of its time. Sayama’s sport grew and evolved, though remained firmly under the radar until May 1989 and the first professional Shooto event (the name had changed somewhere along the way), in Tokyo’s mini-Mecca of both pro wrestling and fighting, Korakuen Hall. To reiterate, that’s May 1989, more than four years before Shamrock and Funaki headlined the world-changing debut of Pancrase and Royce Gracie forever transformed North America’s perception of hand-to-hand combat at the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The Sayama-led Shooto helped run the first Japan Vale Tudo tournament in July 1994, capitalizing on the nation’s new-found fascination with the Gracies and particularly the clan’s near-mythical Rickson, who dominated the field then, and in the far more famous follow-up nine months later. By 1995 (and at Sayama’s urging), Shooto had adopted more recognizably ‘full’ MMA rules that included ground ‘n pound (four years before Pancrase finally did the same). By that time, Shooto were averaging five or six shows per year and were starting to develop some of the entire sport’s most exciting, skilled fighters, such as Rumina Sato, all the while building-up their own extensive network of gyms and amateur shows.

For reasons that remain unclear, Sayama left the promotion in 1996. Under the guidance of Sayama’s followers and students, Shooto began to expand internationally. Over the next decade, Shooto became more than just a pioneering Japanese fight promotion. Affiliates and partners sprang up all over the globe, running shows all over North America and Europe, Brazil and Australia.

To date, Shooto have run over 260 professional MMA events in 20 years (and that’s just the primary Japanese promotion; it doesn’t even take into account affiliated international events). A fairly conservative estimate of them all would be well in excess of 400 shows. In contrast, Pancrase have run a little over 200 and the UFC a mere 130 or so. Along the way, Shooto, the brainchild of a man most famous for bouncing around a pro-wrestling ring in a furry mask, has launched or shaped the careers of international stars such as Takanori Gomi, Hayato Sakurai, Caol Uno, Joachim Hansen, Rumina Sato and Megumi Fujii. And all of this was thanks to one man.