Shoot wrestling or shoot-style is a Japanese hybrid grappling style and combat sport. Shoot wrestling incorporates techniques from various wrestling, submission grappling, kickboxing and karate styles. It was particularly inspired and influenced by catch wrestling, a form of wrestling with submissions that was the predominant style of professional wrestling in the 19th and early 20th century, at the time a legitimate competitive sport and not yet predetermined.
Shoot wrestling originated in Japan's professional wrestling circuit (puroresu) of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly stemming from the "strong-style" scene. Professional wrestlers of the era increasingly incorporated more realistic or "full-contact" techniques into their matches to heighten their intensity, while diminishing or eschewing some of the theatrical elements and acrobatics of mainstream professional wrestling. The style incorporated techniques from martial arts and combat sports such as catch-as-catch-can wrestling, judo, karate, kickboxing, and other forms of grappling and striking. Matches emphasized hard-looking strikes and kicks, takedowns, suplexes, realistic grappling exchanges, and submission holds, with wrestlers seeking to make predetermined contests resemble legitimate fights through struggles for position, exchanges of strikes, and attempts to force opponents to submit or be knocked out. This emphasis on realism extended to the presentation and structure of matches, presenting some traditional wrestling conventions, such as gimmicks and heel-and-face dynamics, in a more subdued form, with wrestlers commonly wearing simple trunks, singlets, or other combat sports-inspired athletic attire rather than elaborate, colorful costumes, while incorporating elements of legitimate combat sports into their rules and presentation, including rounds, point systems, and kayfabe judges and officials; some also eliminated the three-count pinfall in favor of submission, knockout, or point-based finishes to provide clearer conclusions to matches. The name "shoot wrestling" comes from the professional wrestling term "shoot", which refers to any unscripted occurrence within a scripted wrestling event.
The first wave of shoot wrestlers were students of Antonio Inoki and Karl Gotch from New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), two wrestlers which already were advocates of a stiffer and more realistic wrestling style, and influenced by wrestlers such as Lou Thesz and Billy Robinson, all who had an enduring popularity in Japan due to their serious submission wrestling style. Their students left NJPW to form the Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF) in 1984, which developed and codified shoot-style wrestling into a distinct form. After the UWF closed in 1990, its wrestlers went on to establish or join several successor promotions, including Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, Fighting Network RINGS, and UWF International (UWFi), the latter becoming the most popular and commercially successful of the UWF successors. These promotions helped popularize shoot-style wrestling, which reached its peak popularity in the late 1980s and mid-1990s when UWF-derived promotions drew tens of thousands of spectators, including reported crowds of 60,000 at the 1989 U-Cosmos event and 67,000 at a joint NJPW–UWFi event in 1995.
Shoot wrestling was popular in Japan from the 1980s until the mid-1990s, when its popularity declined sharply amid the demise of the leading shoot-style promotion UWFi in 1996 and the simultaneous rise of mixed martial arts (MMA) in Japan. The decline was particularly notable for its speed: within a few years, many of the wrestlers and organizations that had helped popularize shoot wrestling had transitioned to legitimate MMA, while others returned to more theatrical forms of professional wrestling. Shoot-style wrestling nevertheless survived in smaller independent promotions, such as BattlARTS and Lidet UWF, which continues to present UWF-style matches. Shoot wrestling had a considerable influence on the sport of mixed martial arts.
Prior to the emergence of the current sport of shoot wrestling, the term was commonly used in the professional wrestling business, particularly in the United Kingdom, as a synonym for the sport of catch wrestling.Pure Dynamite by Tom Billington & Alison Coleman, page 7, Dynamite Kid Co 2001 edition Shoot wrestling can be used to describe a range of hybrid fighting systems such as shootfighting, shoot boxing and the styles of mixed martial arts done in the Shooto, Pancrase and RINGS promotions. Organizations, promotions and gyms with origins in shoot wrestling are referred as the "U-Kei".
History
Historically, shoot wrestling has been influenced by many martial arts, most influential of them being catch wrestling, but also freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, and then sambo, karate, Muay Thai and judo in the sport's later stages.
Karl Gotch is one of the most important figures in the development of shoot wrestling. Karl Gotch would begin his journey into wrestling in the German and North American professional wrestling circuits, where Gotch found moderate success. However, it was in his tours of Japan that the early formations of shoot wrestling took place. Gotch was a student of the "Snake Pit" gym, run by the renowned catch wrestler Billy Riley in Wigan. The gym was the centre of learning submission wrestling as practiced in the mining town of Wigan, popularly known as catch-as-catch-can wrestling. It was here that Karl Gotch honed his catch wrestling skills. Karl Gotch also travelled to India to practice the wrestling form of Pehlwani; later on he would propagate the exercises using the "Hindu mace" and would go on to incorporate the Indian system of exercises using push-ups, neck exercises, yogic breathing exercises and Hindu squats for conditioning. Gotch attained legendary status in Japan, earning the nickname God of Wrestling. In the 1970s he taught catch wrestling-based hooking and shooting to the likes of Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Satoru Sayama, Masami Soranaka, and Akira Maeda. Most of these professional wrestlers already had backgrounds in legitimate martial arts. Masami Soranaka had been a student of full contact karate, kodokan judo, and sumo. Yoshiaki Fujiwara was already a black belt in judo, while Satoru Sayama had studied Muay Thai with Toshio Fujiwara and went on to study sambo with Victor Koga. This would eventually lead to the added influences of karate, Muay Thai and judo to the wrestling style.
One of Gotch's students, Antonio Inoki, hosted a series of mixed martial arts-style wrestling matches in which he pitted his "strong style professional wrestling" against other martial arts, such as karate, kickboxing, judo and sumo in an attempt to show that professional wrestling was the strongest fighting discipline, these were known as "heterogeneous combat sports bouts" (Ishu Kakutōgi Sen; 異種格闘技戦). These matches eventually culminated into the Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki. While the previous matches were predetermined, Ali and Inoki could not agree on the terms of the match and it turned into a "shoot".Bull, Andy. "The forgotten story of ... Muhammad Ali v Antonio Inoki". The Guardian. November 11, 2009. Retrieved June 28, 2012. Inoki would go on to teach these fighting techniques to a new generation of wrestlers in the dojo of his professional wrestling promotion, New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
Later on, many wrestlers became interested in promoting this more realistic style of professional wrestling and in 1984, the Universal Wrestling Federation was formed. The UWF was initially more traditional in its presentation, featuring conventional professional wrestling matches, acrobatic maneuvers such as top-rope jumps,Satoru Sayama continued to performing under his Tiger Mask persona, and even having lucha libre matches. As the promotion developed, its wrestlers increasingly incorporated the legitimate martial arts techniques they had learned into their matches and presentations. This gradual evolution eventually led the UWF toward the more realistic, shoot-style approach for which it became known. However, internal conflicts between the wrestlers and financial issues soon resulted in a breakup of the company in 1985. Most wrestlers returned to NJPW, where they were part of an "invasion" angle in which the returning UWF wrestlers were presented as a rival faction challenging New Japan's established wrestlers. But soon, the UWF wrestlers left NJPW again and in 1988 they revived the promotion as the "Newborn UWF" (新生UWF). Led by Akira Maeda, the Newborn UWF expanded and refined the realistic, shoot-style approach that had emerged during the original UWF's existence, placing greater emphasis on realistic strikes, submission holds, and competitive-looking matches. However, just like the original incarnation, internal disagreements and disputes over the promotion's finances and management eventually led to its dissolution in 1991.
Inspired by Antonio Inoki's "heterogeneous combat sports bouts", UWF and its many successors often staged matches between professional wrestlers and practitioners of other martial arts and combat sports. These bouts pitted wrestlers against opponents trained in disciplines such as karate, judo, kickboxing, and other fighting styles, with the matches often presented as contests between different combat sports. This format became a recurring feature of shoot-style wrestling and helped establish the idea of professional wrestlers testing themselves against fighters from outside professional wrestling. This approach was prominently showcased at the Newborn UWF's U-COSMOS event at the Tokyo Dome on November 29, 1989, which drew more than 60,000 spectators. Every match except one featured a UWF pro wrestler competing against a fighter from another discipline, including Muay Thai, kickboxing, sambo, freestyle wrestling, and judo. Among the bouts was Minoru Suzuki, future founder of Pancrase against American kickboxer Maurice Smith, future UFC Heavyweight Champion, while the main event saw Akira Maeda face Dutch judoka Willy Wilhelm, an Olympic bronze medalist and European judo champion.
After the breakup of the Newborn Universal Wrestling Federation, shoot wrestling branched into several disciplines. One of the first top stars to leave was "Tiger Mask" Satoru Sayama in 1985, he was dissatisfied with the UWF's internal politics and decided to follow his dream of founding his own martial art discipline. He combined his knowledge of shoot wrestling and other martial arts to create a legitimate fighting style which he later named "Shooto", holding the first amateur event in 1986 and first professional event in 1989. Other wrestlers took the UWF's ideas in different directions. Nobuhiko Takada and his supporters went to found UWF International, which retained shoot wrestling's realistic fighting style but placed greater emphasis on the presentation and spectacle of professional wrestling. In contrast, Akira Maeda founded Fighting Network RINGS, which initially distinguished itself by bringing in foreign martial artists and placing greater emphasis on authentic fighting backgrounds. While Yoshiaki Fujiwara went to found Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi ("Fujiwara family"), which focused more heavily on technical and catch wrestling skills while remaining a professional wrestling promotion. On the latter, a few wrestlers such as Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki, dissatisfied with Fujiwara's turn to lucha libre-inspired style and lack of focus in fighting skills, founded Pancrase in 1993, which adopted shoot wrestling techniques and rules but replaced worked matches with real, unscripted fights.
The multiple successors and organizations inspired by the UWF range from professional wrestling, to MMA and even standalone martial arts styles, they are collectively known as the "U-Kei" ("U-Group" or "U-Class").