Who has done the most for Mixed Martial Arts in Japan?

[masque]

I was recently reading the sherdog forums, and cam across a recently well thought out post. It asked who has done the most for MMA in Japan.

Since I don't have a link, or remember the post, I am making the topic my own.

Without a doubt, the man who has done the most for MMA in North America is Dana White. He is hated among most American fans, but you have to give him credit for getting it sanctioned in most states, and implementing a lot of the current rules (not all, some were already in place before ZUffa).

But I'm not here to talk about that. This is a more interesting topic. Who has done the most for MMA in Japan.

Antonio Inoki, pioneer of Mixed Martial Arts in Japan, havng influence in PRIDE, Shooto, Rings and Pancrase. Albeit, his influence has declined over the years, but he is esponsible for the foundations of those MMA promotions. He also is the one who brought PRIDE nad K-1 together, to put on a joint event, the original PRIDE Shockwave/K-1 Dynamite.

Another man is Akira Maeda, student of Inoki, and founder of RINGS< first a Japanese Pro Wrestling promotion, then a Mixed Martial Arts Promotion. Akira Maeda was RINGS< and that organization has competitors such as PRIDE Champions Minotauro Noguiera and Fedor Emelianenko, as well as TK Khosaka, Randy Couture, Babalu Sobral and Ricardo Arona (those off the top of my head). Maeda really set the stage for Jpanese MMA today.

Then we have Pancrase, founded by Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. They had some weird rules, but so did RINGS, and that org. has produced Bas Rutten, the Shamrock Bros, among many others.

Then we have Japanese Superstar Kazushi Sakuraba. Without him, PRIDE would not have been as successful in the early days, and we would not be enjoying PRIDE as we are right now.

So I ask, who do you think has done the most for modern MMA in Japan?

[NearDark]

A lot of great fighters came out of Pancrase and K-1. In a sense, fighters in Pancrase were ahead of the game before it was even a game, before the UFC or Pride were even companies...guys like Shamrock, Bas Rutten, Josh Barnett are the more popular to come from there but "King of Pancrase" is a title you heard and still hear a lot.

K-1 did wonders for developing fighters as well, Mirko, Mark Hunt and too many others came from there. It kind of depends on how far back in time you want to go. For modern MMA as it exists now, you'd have to go with the founders of Pride. Prior to that I'd have to say Pancrase. Both always featured international combatants.

Another event you have to give the nod to is the Olympics for producing great fighters in Pride.

It's an interesting question and one that can be applied to other countries, such as Chute Box, Vale Tudo competitions or Brazilian Top Team in Brazil, and stateside you can't underestimate the value of an org like ISKA that helped keep kickboxing and karate alive when it was all but forgotten by most of the country. Odd that ISKA never had the talent that K-1 had. There are so many organizations that could be gone through.

That was part of the magic of the early days of the UFC and Pride. You had this massive pool of fighters to draw from, all this amazing talent out there and being exposed to MMA for the first time, you wonder where all these great fighters came from...that was their origins, Pancrase, K-1, ISKA, etc.

[dagreat1]

Originally Posted by masque

I was recently reading the sherdog forums, and cam across a recently well thought out post. It asked who has done the most for MMA in Japan.

Since I don't have a link, or remember the post, I am making the topic my own.

Without a doubt, the man who has done the most for MMA in North America is Dana White. He is hated among most American fans, but you have to give him credit for getting it sanctioned in most states, and implementing a lot of the current rules (not all, some were already in place before ZUffa).

But I'm not here to talk about that. This is a more interesting topic. Who has done the most for MMA in Japan.

Antonio Inoki, pioneer of Mixed Martial Arts in Japan, havng influence in PRIDE, Shooto, Rings and Pancrase. Albeit, his influence has declined over the years, but he is esponsible for the foundations of those MMA promotions. He also is the one who brought PRIDE nad K-1 together, to put on a joint event, the original PRIDE Shockwave/K-1 Dynamite.

Another man is Akira Maeda, student of Inoki, and founder of RINGS< first a Japanese Pro Wrestling promotion, then a Mixed Martial Arts Promotion. Akira Maeda was RINGS< and that organization has competitors such as PRIDE Champions Minotauro Noguiera and Fedor Emelianenko, as well as TK Khosaka, Randy Couture, Babalu Sobral and Ricardo Arona (those off the top of my head). Maeda really set the stage for Jpanese MMA today.

Then we have Pancrase, founded by Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. They had some weird rules, but so did RINGS, and that org. has produced Bas Rutten, the Shamrock Bros, among many others.

Then we have Japanese Superstar Kazushi Sakuraba. Without him, PRIDE would not have been as successful in the early days, and we would not be enjoying PRIDE as we are right now.

So I ask, who do you think has done the most for modern MMA in Japan?

In North America you can basically credit everything since 2001 to Dana White, but as far as the UFC's creation and emergence into MMA, Rorion Gracie was in fact the man behind it.

In Japan, Antonio Inoki is certainly the biggest single person in the big picture of MMA in Japan, Sakuraba has had the biggest impact in MMA in Japan and is basically THE reason PRIDE is what it is, he made them an absolute fortune and such a massive fan base. Maeda, Funaki and Suzuki all played signifficant roles in the progression of MMA in Japan as well.

[Severn]

For sure Sakuraba and Inoki. The thing about Inoki is that while he loves MMA he should have kept it away from his wrestling promorion, New Japan. He tried to mix the two and had his top wretling stars get crushed by MMA fighters. Really killed the image of a lot of those guys. There is a reason why that stuff should be kept seperate.

[Tokyo's bad boy]

SAKU! Hands down! He even had an effect on me and I only pretend to be Japanese.

[Beatts35]

Originally Posted by dagreat1

In North America you can basically credit everything since 2001 to Dana White, but as far as the UFC's creation and emergence into MMA, Rorion Gracie was in fact the man behind it.

In Japan, Antonio Inoki is certainly the biggest single person in the big picture of MMA in Japan, Sakuraba has had the biggest impact in MMA in Japan and is basically THE reason PRIDE is what it is, he made them an absolute fortune and such a massive fan base. Maeda, Funaki and Suzuki all played signifficant roles in the progression of MMA in Japan as well.

couldn't have said it better