Pancrase (Hybrid Wrestling)
パンクラスA Japanese promotion founded in 1993 and one of the first true MMA formats. Closed fists were allowed to the body only; the head could be struck open-handed.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Pancrase (Hybrid Wrestling)
Pancrase is a Japanese promotion and rule set founded in 1993 by the professional wrestlers Masakatsu Funaki, Minoru Suzuki and Ken Shamrock after they left the Fujiwara Gumi group. Their intention was simple and, by the Japanese standards of the day, radical: to run pure shoot-style with no predetermined outcomes and no wrestling gimmicks. The name is a bow to antiquity, taken from pankration, the discipline of the ancient Olympic Games. The immediate inspiration, though, was the 1976 bout between Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki — a boxer against a wrestler, the question of who would beat whom asked in public. The original rules carried the mark of their wrestling origin. A closed fist could strike the body only; the head could be struck with an open hand. Escaping to the ropes was permitted but cost a point, and a fighter had only a limited number per bout, typically three to five; exhausting them could bring disqualification. The result was a format that pushed towards finishing on the ground instead of waiting cautiously at the edge. Ken Shamrock was the first King of Pancrase at open weight. Bas Rutten, Frank Shamrock and Guy Mezger passed through as well — names that would later make up the first generation of international MMA. Pancrase therefore stands at the beginning of modern mixed martial arts alongside the early UFC tournaments.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.