Proving Pro-Wrestlers Can Fight: The Masakatsu Funaki Interview
Part One of Two: Behind the Scenes of the U.W.F., Fujiwara-Gumi, and SWS Organizations
By William Colosimo | wcolosimo@yahoo.com
Masakatsu (“Masa”) Funaki is the founder of the Pancrase organization, a mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion that debuted two months before the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event. While the Shooto organization predates Pancrase and could be considered the first to hold regular MMA bouts in Japan, Pancrase was done on a much larger stage. Funaki was widely considered Japan’s best fighter for a number of years, and is also credited with being a trainer to other MMA legends- such as Ken and Frank Shamrock. His importance to the world of MMA is staggering. This interview gives great insight and adds more pieces to the puzzle concerning the behind the scenes history of the Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi and Pancrase groups.
Due to the language difference, this interview was conducted a bit outside of how I would normally do so. I speak virtually no Japanese- and while Mr. Funaki speaks, reads, and writes English adequately, I elected to use translator Mark Ruina (mmatranslations@gmail.com) to ensure that no details were lost in translation- as I felt this opportunity was too special and wanted to obtain all the minutiae I could in the time we had together. Mr. Funaki and I greeted each other and said our goodbyes in English- but outside of that- Mark asked my questions in Japanese, and after they were answered he would ask Mr. Funaki pertinent follow up questions before moving to my next topic. I thought it ended up working well.
William Colosimo: Hello Mr. Funaki, this is William. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
Masakatsu Funaki: Yeah, me too. Thank you very much for everything.
Colosimo: Who was your main teacher?
Mark Ruina: Also, if you wrestled or anything else in school, please comment on that.
Funaki: I didn’t do any wrestling at all during my school years. What ended up happening is that after I graduated from school, at 15, when I was 15 years old, I joined Antonio Inoki’s New Japan Pro-Wrestling. There, I trained with (Yoshiaki) Fujiwara, and that was the first time I trained wrestling. And then, after I had turned 22, I met Mr. Karl Gotch, and I trained with him for half a year.
Colosimo: How was training under Yoshiaki Fujiwara?
Funaki: Before a match, each day before a match, Fujiwara would spar with me for an hour. That was from the start. There would be basic body conditioning, training to build your body, and when that finished, we would, just the two of us, we would do sparring training for an hour. After the sparring was finished, he would have me ask him questions. Then, I would ask him, like if I didn’t know how to escape from a certain technique, I would ask that sort of thing to him, and he would conscientiously answer me.
Ruina: With his body? Or with verbal instruction?
Funaki: Right, he would teach me physically- “When you’re here, you do this,” he would teach me like that.
Ruina: Training with Karl Gotch was only that one-half year all the way up until now?
Funaki: Yes, the half-year. I became a Fujiwara-Gumi (Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi) member and then trained with him from the start for about three months. And then Mr. Gotch had to go back to Florida for his visa, then he returned here again and we trained another three months, so six months altogether. But, at the time, Mr. Gotch was over 65 years old, so we didn’t spar. He explained techniques and how to train your body, how to do conditioning. He really taught me a lot about that. To add to that, though, one thing really has stuck in my mind since then. At that time, Mr. Gotch did squats together with all of us, and he did 2,000 squats. He was over 65 years old and yet he could do 2,000 squats together with us. It took him about an hour and a half, doing them together with all of us. Later on, when I was training and bringing up the young fighters in Pancrase, I took the information on conditioning and the lectures on techniques he gave and applied it to them. I trained them the same way he trained me. Mr. Gotch’s training really helped me when I was training the young fighters in Pancrase.
Ruina: So, he was a really important teacher for you?
Funaki: Yes, he was.
Ruina: And what was Fujiwara like?
Funaki: When I first started training at 15, I didn’t know any wrestling. Fujiwara would tell me not to think about that, about techniques, but just to think about how to take my opponent down. For him, first off and more than technique, it was guts, the mindset that was important. So, I would get beat again and again and again by him, and through that I was able to learn defense.
Colosimo: After the second, “Newborn” U.W.F. ended, why did you and Minoru Suzuki decide to follow Yoshiaki Fujiwara to Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi, instead of going with Akira Maeda to RINGS (Fighting Network RINGS) or Nobuhiku Takada to UWFi (Union of Wrestling Forces International)? Did you and Suzuki want to stay together, no matter what professional wrestling organization you two joined?
Funaki: What came first was Maeda, the U.W.F., he was saying if they couldn’t keep banded together, then the U.W.F. would break up. And then (Yoji) Anjo, Anjo and (Shigeo) Miyato, those two said that they wouldn’t go along with Maeda’s thinking. Maeda said that even if one person left, the U.W.F. wouldn’t be able to continue as it was, and so he announced to dissolve it. With Maeda saying he was going to break the U.W.F. up, then Takada said that if Maeda said that, if Maeda was talking about a breakup, then the U.W.F. is impossible. Then, with all the young fighters worried about what they were going to do, I got a call from Fujiwara. He said he was going to be building a new organization and asked for my help. So, Suzuki and I went to meet him, and we decided to go to him with some of the other athletes. And so we invited some of the other guys, but they all wanted the U.W.F. name, so they said they couldn’t go to Fujiwara’s new organization. So, from the start, it was just the three of us, myself, Suzuki and (Takaku) Fuke, us three alone went to join Fujiwara. And the rest of the guys all went to UWF-International. They built that with Takada. So, we were asked, Suzuki and I, by Fujiwara to help him, and that’s why we went to Fujiwara-Gumi. When we were invited by him, Maeda and Takada, RINGS and UWF International had not been decided at that point, so at that point in time, going with Fujiwara’s organization was the quickest way to go. We wanted to have matches as soon as possible, so Fujiwara’s new organization was the place to go.
Colosimo: Who was the owner of Fujiwara-Gumi? Was it Megane Super or did they sponsor it?
Funaki: It was Megane Super, Megane Super’s president (Editor’s Note: Megane Super was and is a large eyeglass company based out of Japan).
Ruina: I see; I have heard he was very interested in pro-wrestling.
Funaki: Yes, first, Megane Super came and said they wanted to buy the U.W.F. But the U.W.F. didn’t sell to them. So next, Megane Super’s president said, “Well, then let’s make a pro-wrestling organization to compete against the U.W.F.,” and that’s the way it went. So then, to start, the top athletes, they started by trying to peel Keiji Mutoh away and into the new organization. To compete with Maeda’s U.W.F., they started by trying to grab Mutoh, but they were refused by Mutoh. So next, in order to try to become a rival to Maeda, they went after (Genichiro) Tenryu. That was Megane Super’s doing.
Ruina: Did that have anything to do with the dissolution of the U.W.F.?
Funaki: This was before the U.W.F. broke up. But after that, the U.W.F. did break up, so Megane Super’s president came to Fujiwara asking him to bring in the remaining athletes from the break-up.
Colosimo: When Fujiwara-Gumi started in 1991, both you and Minoru Suzuki also did some matches in the SWS (Super World Sports) organization. What was the reasoning behind this? Did both companies have the same owner or sponsor?
Funaki: That was also that we were told to go there by Megane Super’s president. From the start, he asked us again and again, “Go fight in SWS.”
Ruina: And SWS was owned by Megane Super’s president?
Funaki: Right. It was Megane Super’s company- Megane Super World Sports- SWS. The third time, maybe the second time we went there, Suzuki and the pro-wrestler Apollo Sugawara ended up in a fight during their match. So, it was thought after that that it would be dangerous to put matches together pitting the SWS athletes against the Fujiwara-Gumi athletes, so after that, we only did matches in Fujiwara-Gumi.
Ruina: The incident with the match between Minoru Suzuki and Apollo Sugawara…
Funaki: Right, it became a real fight during the match. So, they decided that SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi couldn’t really be together (Editor’s Note: The work turned shoot took place on April 1, 1991 at the “SWS Wrestle Dream In Kobe” show).
Colosimo: Was Masami “Sammy” Soranaka the man that basically ran the day to day operations of Fujiwara-Gumi? If so, was he based in Japan at this time, and no longer the United States? If not, who ran it?
Funaki: Soranaka picked the foreign fighters.
Ruina: Like a scout?
Funaki: Right. He would call the athletes from the Joe Malenko dojo in Florida to come to Fujiwara-Gumi, Soranaka would. And he would come here generally three days before the event. Then, when the event was over, he would go back over there. Generally speaking, he basically lived in Florida. And for the business affairs, he and Fujiwara would talk on the phone and put together the matchmaking and all of that.
Ruina: So then, Soranaka was also in charge of matchmaking?
Funaki: Yes, he and Fujiwara, those two together would make the decisions.
Ruina: So, as for the business affairs taking place in Japan, was Fujiwara actually doing all of that by himself?
Funaki: Fujiwara and the office staff, there were two office staff.
Colosimo: You never had a match against Minoru Suzuki during the two years you were both in Fujiwara-Gumi. Why is that?
Funaki: I don’t know. I think that was Fujiwara’s thinking. Fujiwara and Soranaka were the ones making the matches so I don’t know about that.
Colosimo: Was forming Pancrase originally your idea, or Suzuki’s, or were you approached by someone else to be the face of the potential new Pancrase organization?
Funaki: That was just when, we had a clash of opinions, Fujiwara, myself and Suzuki. The reason was that SWS, Megane Super, told us they wanted to combine SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi into one. But if that were to happen, we would lose our ability to do things in our own style, so we said no way and it was a clash of opinions between Fujiwara and myself and Suzuki. So, Fujiwara said, “Well, then let’s break it up.” And the rest of the athletes followed me. And that’s the time when I decided it, to do the new organization, Pancrase. And the young athletes under me all agreed to it.
Ruina: So, it was your idea alone from the start?
Funaki: Right, originally, back when I was 17, I thought it up. The reason was that lots of people were always saying that pro-wrestling is fake, and I hated to be told that, so I thought how you would, in what way you could improve it so that people would no longer say it’s fake. So the results-oriented style I was thinking about became the Pancrase style (Translator’s Note: He uses “kekka no sutairu” [kekka style] to describe it. “Kekka” [results, outcome] is also used to mean how a fight ended. He means this as in that the end isn’t preplanned, that the allure is based on watching the fight to see how they fight and win). That’s what I thought up when I was 17.
Colosimo: How early into your time at Fujiwara-Gumi did you begin to have thoughts about Pancrase? Your interview in the January 1992 Fujiwara-Gumi fight program seemed to indicate that you were a bit distraught over the ending of the U.W.F. for a portion of 1991, and I didn’t get the impression from that interview that you were very satisfied in Fujiwara-Gumi. Ken Shamrock told me Pancrase was being planned for a while- at least before Sammy Soranaka passed on, as Ken remembered discussing the move with him.
Funaki: December, after the match.
Ruina: 1992…
Funaki: Yes, my last match. After that, we held a meeting with Fujiwara and the SWS president talked about combining SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi. So, Fujiwara asked if everyone would accept that, but Suzuki and I told him we didn’t want to go together with SWS, so he again said “Then, we’re going to break up.” So, Suzuki and I and the other young athletes went off to form the new organization. So, it was December, about December of 1992, around December, the situation became such that I had to create a new organization.
Ruina: So, it was after that meeting with Fujiwara that you went to get the approval of the young fighters?
Funaki: Right. And Pancrase, Pancrase, yeah, like that. It was December, it was cold, so it was December when Fujiwara said we were going to break it up. And after that, I and Suzuki invited the young fighters and then went to build Pancrase.
Part One of Two: Behind the Scenes of the U.W.F., Fujiwara-Gumi, and SWS Organizations
By William Colosimo | wcolosimo@yahoo.com
Masakatsu (“Masa”) Funaki is the founder of the Pancrase organization, a mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion that debuted two months before the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event. While the Shooto organization predates Pancrase and could be considered the first to hold regular MMA bouts in Japan, Pancrase was done on a much larger stage. Funaki was widely considered Japan’s best fighter for a number of years, and is also credited with being a trainer to other MMA legends- such as Ken and Frank Shamrock. His importance to the world of MMA is staggering. This interview gives great insight and adds more pieces to the puzzle concerning the behind the scenes history of the Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi and Pancrase groups.
Due to the language difference, this interview was conducted a bit outside of how I would normally do so. I speak virtually no Japanese- and while Mr. Funaki speaks, reads, and writes English adequately, I elected to use translator Mark Ruina (mmatranslations@gmail.com) to ensure that no details were lost in translation- as I felt this opportunity was too special and wanted to obtain all the minutiae I could in the time we had together. Mr. Funaki and I greeted each other and said our goodbyes in English- but outside of that- Mark asked my questions in Japanese, and after they were answered he would ask Mr. Funaki pertinent follow up questions before moving to my next topic. I thought it ended up working well.
William Colosimo: Hello Mr. Funaki, this is William. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
Masakatsu Funaki: Yeah, me too. Thank you very much for everything.
Colosimo: Who was your main teacher?
Mark Ruina: Also, if you wrestled or anything else in school, please comment on that.
Funaki: I didn’t do any wrestling at all during my school years. What ended up happening is that after I graduated from school, at 15, when I was 15 years old, I joined Antonio Inoki’s New Japan Pro-Wrestling. There, I trained with (Yoshiaki) Fujiwara, and that was the first time I trained wrestling. And then, after I had turned 22, I met Mr. Karl Gotch, and I trained with him for half a year.
Colosimo: How was training under Yoshiaki Fujiwara?
Funaki: Before a match, each day before a match, Fujiwara would spar with me for an hour. That was from the start. There would be basic body conditioning, training to build your body, and when that finished, we would, just the two of us, we would do sparring training for an hour. After the sparring was finished, he would have me ask him questions. Then, I would ask him, like if I didn’t know how to escape from a certain technique, I would ask that sort of thing to him, and he would conscientiously answer me.
Ruina: With his body? Or with verbal instruction?
Funaki: Right, he would teach me physically- “When you’re here, you do this,” he would teach me like that.
Ruina: Training with Karl Gotch was only that one-half year all the way up until now?
Funaki: Yes, the half-year. I became a Fujiwara-Gumi (Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi) member and then trained with him from the start for about three months. And then Mr. Gotch had to go back to Florida for his visa, then he returned here again and we trained another three months, so six months altogether. But, at the time, Mr. Gotch was over 65 years old, so we didn’t spar. He explained techniques and how to train your body, how to do conditioning. He really taught me a lot about that. To add to that, though, one thing really has stuck in my mind since then. At that time, Mr. Gotch did squats together with all of us, and he did 2,000 squats. He was over 65 years old and yet he could do 2,000 squats together with us. It took him about an hour and a half, doing them together with all of us. Later on, when I was training and bringing up the young fighters in Pancrase, I took the information on conditioning and the lectures on techniques he gave and applied it to them. I trained them the same way he trained me. Mr. Gotch’s training really helped me when I was training the young fighters in Pancrase.
Ruina: So, he was a really important teacher for you?
Funaki: Yes, he was.
Ruina: And what was Fujiwara like?
Funaki: When I first started training at 15, I didn’t know any wrestling. Fujiwara would tell me not to think about that, about techniques, but just to think about how to take my opponent down. For him, first off and more than technique, it was guts, the mindset that was important. So, I would get beat again and again and again by him, and through that I was able to learn defense.
Colosimo: After the second, “Newborn” U.W.F. ended, why did you and Minoru Suzuki decide to follow Yoshiaki Fujiwara to Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi, instead of going with Akira Maeda to RINGS (Fighting Network RINGS) or Nobuhiku Takada to UWFi (Union of Wrestling Forces International)? Did you and Suzuki want to stay together, no matter what professional wrestling organization you two joined?
Funaki: What came first was Maeda, the U.W.F., he was saying if they couldn’t keep banded together, then the U.W.F. would break up. And then (Yoji) Anjo, Anjo and (Shigeo) Miyato, those two said that they wouldn’t go along with Maeda’s thinking. Maeda said that even if one person left, the U.W.F. wouldn’t be able to continue as it was, and so he announced to dissolve it. With Maeda saying he was going to break the U.W.F. up, then Takada said that if Maeda said that, if Maeda was talking about a breakup, then the U.W.F. is impossible. Then, with all the young fighters worried about what they were going to do, I got a call from Fujiwara. He said he was going to be building a new organization and asked for my help. So, Suzuki and I went to meet him, and we decided to go to him with some of the other athletes. And so we invited some of the other guys, but they all wanted the U.W.F. name, so they said they couldn’t go to Fujiwara’s new organization. So, from the start, it was just the three of us, myself, Suzuki and (Takaku) Fuke, us three alone went to join Fujiwara. And the rest of the guys all went to UWF-International. They built that with Takada. So, we were asked, Suzuki and I, by Fujiwara to help him, and that’s why we went to Fujiwara-Gumi. When we were invited by him, Maeda and Takada, RINGS and UWF International had not been decided at that point, so at that point in time, going with Fujiwara’s organization was the quickest way to go. We wanted to have matches as soon as possible, so Fujiwara’s new organization was the place to go.
Colosimo: Who was the owner of Fujiwara-Gumi? Was it Megane Super or did they sponsor it?
Funaki: It was Megane Super, Megane Super’s president (Editor’s Note: Megane Super was and is a large eyeglass company based out of Japan).
Ruina: I see; I have heard he was very interested in pro-wrestling.
Funaki: Yes, first, Megane Super came and said they wanted to buy the U.W.F. But the U.W.F. didn’t sell to them. So next, Megane Super’s president said, “Well, then let’s make a pro-wrestling organization to compete against the U.W.F.,” and that’s the way it went. So then, to start, the top athletes, they started by trying to peel Keiji Mutoh away and into the new organization. To compete with Maeda’s U.W.F., they started by trying to grab Mutoh, but they were refused by Mutoh. So next, in order to try to become a rival to Maeda, they went after (Genichiro) Tenryu. That was Megane Super’s doing.
Ruina: Did that have anything to do with the dissolution of the U.W.F.?
Funaki: This was before the U.W.F. broke up. But after that, the U.W.F. did break up, so Megane Super’s president came to Fujiwara asking him to bring in the remaining athletes from the break-up.
Colosimo: When Fujiwara-Gumi started in 1991, both you and Minoru Suzuki also did some matches in the SWS (Super World Sports) organization. What was the reasoning behind this? Did both companies have the same owner or sponsor?
Funaki: That was also that we were told to go there by Megane Super’s president. From the start, he asked us again and again, “Go fight in SWS.”
Ruina: And SWS was owned by Megane Super’s president?
Funaki: Right. It was Megane Super’s company- Megane Super World Sports- SWS. The third time, maybe the second time we went there, Suzuki and the pro-wrestler Apollo Sugawara ended up in a fight during their match. So, it was thought after that that it would be dangerous to put matches together pitting the SWS athletes against the Fujiwara-Gumi athletes, so after that, we only did matches in Fujiwara-Gumi.
Ruina: The incident with the match between Minoru Suzuki and Apollo Sugawara…
Funaki: Right, it became a real fight during the match. So, they decided that SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi couldn’t really be together (Editor’s Note: The work turned shoot took place on April 1, 1991 at the “SWS Wrestle Dream In Kobe” show).
Colosimo: Was Masami “Sammy” Soranaka the man that basically ran the day to day operations of Fujiwara-Gumi? If so, was he based in Japan at this time, and no longer the United States? If not, who ran it?
Funaki: Soranaka picked the foreign fighters.
Ruina: Like a scout?
Funaki: Right. He would call the athletes from the Joe Malenko dojo in Florida to come to Fujiwara-Gumi, Soranaka would. And he would come here generally three days before the event. Then, when the event was over, he would go back over there. Generally speaking, he basically lived in Florida. And for the business affairs, he and Fujiwara would talk on the phone and put together the matchmaking and all of that.
Ruina: So then, Soranaka was also in charge of matchmaking?
Funaki: Yes, he and Fujiwara, those two together would make the decisions.
Ruina: So, as for the business affairs taking place in Japan, was Fujiwara actually doing all of that by himself?
Funaki: Fujiwara and the office staff, there were two office staff.
Colosimo: You never had a match against Minoru Suzuki during the two years you were both in Fujiwara-Gumi. Why is that?
Funaki: I don’t know. I think that was Fujiwara’s thinking. Fujiwara and Soranaka were the ones making the matches so I don’t know about that.
Colosimo: Was forming Pancrase originally your idea, or Suzuki’s, or were you approached by someone else to be the face of the potential new Pancrase organization?
Funaki: That was just when, we had a clash of opinions, Fujiwara, myself and Suzuki. The reason was that SWS, Megane Super, told us they wanted to combine SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi into one. But if that were to happen, we would lose our ability to do things in our own style, so we said no way and it was a clash of opinions between Fujiwara and myself and Suzuki. So, Fujiwara said, “Well, then let’s break it up.” And the rest of the athletes followed me. And that’s the time when I decided it, to do the new organization, Pancrase. And the young athletes under me all agreed to it.
Ruina: So, it was your idea alone from the start?
Funaki: Right, originally, back when I was 17, I thought it up. The reason was that lots of people were always saying that pro-wrestling is fake, and I hated to be told that, so I thought how you would, in what way you could improve it so that people would no longer say it’s fake. So the results-oriented style I was thinking about became the Pancrase style (Translator’s Note: He uses “kekka no sutairu” [kekka style] to describe it. “Kekka” [results, outcome] is also used to mean how a fight ended. He means this as in that the end isn’t preplanned, that the allure is based on watching the fight to see how they fight and win). That’s what I thought up when I was 17.
Colosimo: How early into your time at Fujiwara-Gumi did you begin to have thoughts about Pancrase? Your interview in the January 1992 Fujiwara-Gumi fight program seemed to indicate that you were a bit distraught over the ending of the U.W.F. for a portion of 1991, and I didn’t get the impression from that interview that you were very satisfied in Fujiwara-Gumi. Ken Shamrock told me Pancrase was being planned for a while- at least before Sammy Soranaka passed on, as Ken remembered discussing the move with him.
Funaki: December, after the match.
Ruina: 1992…
Funaki: Yes, my last match. After that, we held a meeting with Fujiwara and the SWS president talked about combining SWS and Fujiwara-Gumi. So, Fujiwara asked if everyone would accept that, but Suzuki and I told him we didn’t want to go together with SWS, so he again said “Then, we’re going to break up.” So, Suzuki and I and the other young athletes went off to form the new organization. So, it was December, about December of 1992, around December, the situation became such that I had to create a new organization.
Ruina: So, it was after that meeting with Fujiwara that you went to get the approval of the young fighters?
Funaki: Right. And Pancrase, Pancrase, yeah, like that. It was December, it was cold, so it was December when Fujiwara said we were going to break it up. And after that, I and Suzuki invited the young fighters and then went to build Pancrase.
