been any highflying stunts or flashy strikes; yet they loved it. Right then I knew that mixed martial arts competition was going to be the sport of the future.
After that exciting bout, it was difficult to go back to pulling my punches and releasing my submission holds while in the ring. I loved professional wrestling, don’t get me wrong, but I loved reality combat even more. I had no idea what was going on over in Brazil, that they had been holding mixed martial arts tournaments for half a century. I thought we were breaking new ground by having fighters from different martial arts disciplines square off against each other, and I loved every minute of it. I loved it because in a real fight I was master of my own destiny.
Professional wrestling wasn’t so bad when the fans knew the bout was worked, but that wasn’t always the case. I remember one time Fujiwara wanted me to put him over in a worked shoot. Everyone would think the match was real, only I would lose. I had to pull my punches, and I couldn’t kick. I understood that’s the way the business worked, but I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want people thinking that I was getting my butt kicked when in fact I wasn’t. I gritted my teeth and bore it, but when Suzuki and Funaki came to me in secret and said that they were thinking of starting their own organization, one that was going to be more shoot and less work, I was all ears.
I was the biggest foreigner in Japan at the time, and they needed me in order to get their organization off the ground. It was a big risk to take. If I went with them and their organization failed, my professional wrestling career in Japan would most likely be done. Fujiwara wouldn’t have taken me back, and the other organizations probably wouldn’t have taken me in either. Despite what I had riding on the line, the decision didn’t take long to make. In addition to wanting to fight, I was also deeply loyal to Funaki. I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today without him. Fujiwara offered me a substantial raise to stay, but I didn’t take it. I had made up my mind—I was going to fight for a living.
| 4 | A Glimpse of the Future |
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WHILE FUNAKI AND SUZUKI WERE GETTING things organized in Japan for the first Pancrase event, I returned home. With no more ties in North Carolina, the family moved back to California and settled in Lodi, a midsized town in the north of the state. It was a great place to raise a family, but it wasn’t the best location for what I was trying to do. If I was going to start fighting, real fighting, then I needed to keep up on my training, spar for at least a couple of hours every day. The problem was I had no one to spar with.
In an attempt to solve that problem, I started going around to all the karate schools in Lodi and Sacramento. I was a pretty big kid, and I’d go into a place and approach the head instructor. Almost every time, I had the same conversation.
“What you looking for?” the instructor would ask.
“I’m training for some fights, and I need someone to punch and kick at me. Perhaps do some grappling.”
“Oh, that’s great,” he would say. “Sounds really interesting. I don’t think this would be the right place, but I know of a dojo that’s probably right down your alley.”
He would give me the name and location of this other school, and I would head over there. I’d talk with the instructor, he’d tell me it sounded real interesting, and then he’d send me to another school. None of the instructors wanted to train with me because everyone in their school thought they were the toughest fighters on the planet. If they did some sparring and got their ass handed to them, they would no longer be the toughest fighter on the planet. It would hurt their business, so they locked me out.
It got really frustrating, and I eventually gave up on trying to spar with people who already knew, or thought they knew, how to fight. Instead I searched for people who knew absolutely nothing about fighting so I could build them up from scratch. It was slow going in the beginning, but eventually I stumbled upon Vernon White, my first student. He was a gifted athlete who was eager to learn, so every afternoon we worked out in the attic of my home. Submission fighting is nothing like karate—there are no katas or flashy punches and kicks. There are no belt tests or secret moves. If someone puts in the time and hard work, he can usually excel relatively quickly, and that is what Vernon did. It didn’t take long until he could put up enough of a fight to give me the kind of work-outs I needed to stay in shape.
Word started to get around, and soon more young men who knew absolutely nothing about fighting started dropping by. It was hard to convince them that what we were doing was going to be the wave of the future because everything was so informal—we were training in my attic, for crying out loud. I had made some decent money over in Japan, so I decided to open up my first school. It wasn’t much, just a small storefront in a local strip mall, but I still felt it deserved a name. I didn’t want the name to give people the wrong impression—I didn’t want them to think it was another karate school. I toiled over it for quite a while, but then one afternoon I was watching a National Geographic special on lions. They talked a lot about the lion’s den, the lion’s home, and how lions will creep off into the grass to go hunting. It seemed to fit what I was trying to establish. I didn’t want a bunch of guys who felt like they had to bow to me or go through ridiculous rituals. I wanted the gym to be a home away from home for everyone who was a part of it. I wanted it to be a gym full of ruthless fighters.
As I was getting my gym off the ground, I got word from Funaki that the first Pancrase event was going to be held on September 21, 1993, in Tokyo Bay Hall. Suzuki was going to be on the card, as well as Bas Rutten, a famous Dutch kickboxer. The organization wanted more Americans on the card to build controversy, and I told him that I’d gotten Vernon up to speed. We decided to pair him against Takaku Fuke, the second young boy I had wrestled when I went through my tryout over in Japan a few years prior. The card was starting to fill up, but Funaki and I still weren’t in the mix. I asked him what was going on, and he said that he had arranged it so that he and I would fight in the main event.
I trained hard for that one—had to. Funaki is the best submission wrestler out there.
When it came down to fight night, I wasn’t nervous; yet I wasn’t calm. Funaki was my instructor, a man I deeply respected. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gotten as far as I did. But the moment we climbed into that ring, our friendship would have to be put aside. It wasn’t going to be like those thousands of sparring matches we’d had in the gym. We wouldn’t pull our punches and kicks, and we wouldn’t go easy on the submission holds. When we stepped into that ring, we were going to try and hurt each other.
The under card fights went really well. Suzuki caught his opponent in a rear naked choke in less than four minutes. Rutten, who would later claim the heavyweight title of the UFC, knocked his opponent out in forty-three seconds. Vernon did well, but Fuke caught him in an arm bar in a little over a minute. You could tell by looking out into the audience that the bouts weren’t what the crowd was used to. They had grown accustomed to long, drawn out fights full of reversals and close calls. These were real fights, and I think the crowd recognized the difference. I think it confirmed their suspicions that what they had been seeing all those years in professional wrestling was just a little too dramatic to be real.
Then Funaki and I climbed into the ring. Both of us were extremely popular in Japan at the time, and we had the crowd hanging on the edge of their seats. It wasn’t a one-sided beating, that’s for sure, but I did manage to catch him in a chokehold that forced him to tap in submission in a little over six minutes. It was the first time I had beaten him. It was a big victory for me, but it was also a big victory for Funaki. He was the one who had trained me, the one who taught me everything I knew.
The first event was a huge hit
