Firstborn Lion: The Scott Bessac Interview, Part 1
Part One of Three: On Entering and Exiting the Lion’s Den
By William Colosimo | wcolosimo@yahoo.com
Scott Bessac was the first student of Ken Shamrock and was there at the beginning of what we know today as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). The sport was developing in Japan, exploding with the formation of the Pancrase organization- and almost halfway across the world the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was debuting in the United States. Scott has witnessed the birth of both Pancrase and the UFC and gives us an inside view of that time in history.
William Colosimo: Thanks for agreeing to the interview. I appreciate it.
Scott Bessac: No problem.
WC: First question for you: did I see something on Facebook where you were currently teaching at a catch wrestling school? What’s going on with that?
SB: No. I read stuff all the time that says I’m teaching at a Lion’s Den that no one can find, and I’m teaching here or I’m teaching there. Ken and I- one of our very first students was this guy named Noah Schnabel, and he retired in May. I live in Galt (California), which is right next to Lodi where the Lion’s Den was. Noah still had a gym there, and I would teach there every now and then- stand up. I really don’t like wrestling (laughter), which is funny. I mean, that’s why I stopped doing it. It wasn’t my bag.
WC: Sherdog.com has your record as eight Pancrase fights and two UFC fights, all through 1994-1995. Is their record accurate or did you have any fights that weren’t listed there?
SB: There are different fights I think I fought in that were unsanctioned, or smoker fights- that I can’t find any part of. I fought in New Orleans- I still have the contract, but I can’t find anything about it. The promoters were hella shady. I don’t know. It’s not anywhere to be found. There was a Fearless Fighting thing (Editor’s Note: Fearless Fighting Challenge 1 from February 1997) that’s on some of the records, not on some of the records- so I don’t think that was sanctioned, and who knows?
WC: Back then a lot of them wouldn’t have been sanctioned anyway. Would this have been through ’94 and ’95 when you were fighting in those other big organizations?
SB: No, this was like ’97, ’98. I left the Lion’s Den in December with the UFC’s Ultimate Ultimate ’95 (UU 95). Ken and I got into an argument and I took off, went to Texas and signed with Buddy Albin and the International Fighting Championship (IFC) to fight the main event against Oleg Taktarov, but I broke my hand and couldn’t fight in it.
WC: I could be wrong, but I think I saw the Facebook group MMA Museum post a promotional poster for that match. The Ultimate Warriors Championship- it was eventually what became the IFC- the first one in Kiev (Ukraine).
SB: Kiev, yeah.
WC: With Igor Vovchanchyn? So that poster was legit then? You broke your hand, but you were gonna fight Oleg in that?
SB: Well I was gonna fight Oleg, but I had broke my hand on Joe Charles in the UU 95 in December. And then I cut my cast off early to start training for the IFC while in Texas, and broke it again. So there was no way that I could fight in the IFC. I didn’t make it, I had to back out. When I backed out Oleg went and fought in Pancrase.
WC: Now, on the subject of Oleg: when Ken was training him for UFC 6, were you also training with Oleg at that time? Were you grappling? Did you get a good idea of his skills?
SB: Yeah. We trained everyday. I liked Oleg. Oleg was cool, he was fun. He had a lot of skill. Thank God I was a lot stronger than Oleg so he never submitted me, but he had a lot of technique.
WC: On the topic of Joe Charles- I think the UFC has shown a clip of the arm bar at the end, but I don’t believe the full fight has ever been released. Can you give me a rundown on how that match basically went?
SB: Yeah– I came out swinging and I took him up against the fence, guillotined him, and he picked me up and dumped me. Then the next four minutes or so we went back and forth- me on top, him on bottom, me head butting. I broke my hand on his head in the first minute or so, and then almost five minutes into it or so, he put me in like an americana and I thought he was gonna put the bone through my hand that I had broke, so I tapped. I was like, “F*** that. I don’t wanna be out from fighting for that long.” But hey– Joe was cool. He right away let go. And that’s when Ken and I got into the argument, he was really mad that I was punching- ‘cause for some reason, I don’t know, he trained… I’m like 6’5″, and went between 250 and 280 pounds, and he just wanted me to wrestle and do the submission techniques- and I never wrestled a stitch in my life. In the streets, I’ve never even been on the ground in a fight. I wanted to stand up all the time. And then, guys wouldn’t stand up with me. And when I did shoot in, I got choked out and stuff (laughter), ‘cause I didn’t know what I was doing.
WC: So Ken wanted you to fight more… almost Pancrase style, it sounds like. More grappling, less striking on the ground?
SB: Well, yeah. By far, his whole thing was to showcase the submissions, to showcase how technical everything was, and to build up Pancrase. Which was cool, it’s just I was much better standing up. The wrestling was… I mean I knew all the submissions… It’s funny, ’cause I read an article the other day that I still hold the record for the fastest standing submission in UFC history (laughter). It’s been twenty years. I think that’s kind of ironical.
WC: The David Hood fight.
SB: Yeah.
WC: You actually just went over a couple other questions I wanted to ask- during the ’94, ’95 era they had you listed as 6’4″, maybe 259 pounds. But you’re saying that you’re about 6’5″, maybe you ran a little bit higher than 259?
SB: I ran up to 285. They put… at that time, they would try to make the weights closer to each other. I don’t know why. They never weighed you. So- we never got weighed, we never got drug tested, we never got nothing.
WC: You’re talking early UFC, or Pancrase?
SB: Both. You would tell them, and then they would just put down what they wanted. And plus, I would fluctuate with my weight so much, considering who I was fighting. It’s bad to say, but I’ve taken steroids and so I could go from 280 to 240 in a month and a half.
WC: And then you touched on something else I wanted to ask you. Before joining the Lion’s Den, or training with Ken- what kind of fight experience or background did you have?
SB: None. Street fighting.
WC: How did you meet Ken in the first place? I was reading Jonathan Snowden’s book, “Shooters: The Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling” (ECW Press, 2012)- there’s a lot of information from you in there. Ken had told me that he started forming the Lion’s Den when he was in Professional Wrestling Fujiwara-Gumi (PWF-Gumi), around October ’92 for the Don “Nakaya” Nielson fight- his first fight. And reading Snowden’s book, it sounds like you were training with Ken before that. So how long ago did you meet him, and how did you start training with him?
SB: I think it was ’91 or early ’92. I was playing football, and just getting cut from every league there was- ’cause I had the reputation for being a dirty player. Back then, the NFL (National Football League) had a minor league system which became the World League, which became NFL Europe, which is now nothing. But I was playing football for the California Outlaws, and only getting paid like $1,750 a month. So, making no money and looking like no prospects for football- on the off season I got a job with Bob Shamrock, his adopted dad as a counselor in his boy’s home. That’s how I met Ken, and saw all the tapes and everything, and was like “Hey, that’s pretty cool.” Then one day they took my fingerprints. And one day, Bob was standing out in front of his house and said I couldn’t come in, ’cause my FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) file came back (laughter). I said to Ken, “Are you gonna train me now?” And he’s like, “Okay.” So we would train at Twin Arbors racquetball court, and his living room, and wherever, until he opened the Lion’s Den. Then it was just me and him for a bit. And then Vernon White came, and Noah, and some other guys.
WC: When you originally started training with Ken- this would’ve been during his time in PWF-Gumi- were you looking to make some money by going over to Fujiwara-Gumi and wrestling there?
SB: Yeah. That was before Pancrase. That was before everything else.
WC: Ken had mentioned that the only Fujiwara-Gumi match of his that was a real fight was the Don Nakaya Nielson one- one of his last matches there.
SB: Right. Well see there, in Pancrase and stuff, there was different fights where there were works, there were shoots, there was works where the other guy didn’t even know it was a work. So, who knows what’s gonna happen.
WC: You were there at the beginning of Pancrase. Ken left Fujiwara-Gumi and then was training for about seven months before the first Pancrase show. At that time was he telling you… was he under the impression that Pancrase was gonna be a full shoot?
SB: Yeah, we were under the impression that Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki left to start their own thing, different from Fujiwara-Gumi that was gonna be a full shoot. But, it didn’t end up that way.
WC: Your Lion’s Den tryout- did you roll with Ken for an hour? Was that your tryout?
SB: I believe we did. I was the first one that did it and I was just like, “This is crazy,” because I had never even been on the mat before, and he torqued me so bad I couldn’t walk for like, days. But that’s just the way it was, and then I think he did that with Vernon and Frank Shamrock, and then other guys would come in and if they wanted to get in the Lion’s Den they had to fight Ken, or me, or Vernon, and later Jason DeLucia, and Frank or whoever. And you had to go thirty minutes and you could get knocked out, choked out, tap all you want, but you had to go thirty minutes. And that was how you got in the Lion’s Den.
WC: One person that I didn’t realize was in the early Lion’s Den until just recently was Sean Daugherty from UFC 2; he fought Scott Morris in the first round of that event. How long was Sean on the team and why did he leave?
SB: He was on there a while. I think he went back to the Boston area. I’m not sure if he stayed as long as Jason, but he was in there a while.
WC: Can you remember if he met up with Ken at UFC 2, and that’s when he joined?
SB: I’m not sure if he was friends with Jason- like Haygar Chin was friends with Jason, and that’s why he came out. So I’m not sure if Sean heard through Jason about Lion’s Den. Because through the years I was at Lion’s Den, there were so many dudes that showed up and left, and it was hard to keep track of them because they would figure out what the deal was and they’re like, “Nah, we don’t want no part of it.” We trained 100% every day. So, I’m not really sure how Sean got there.
WC: There was another guy I wanted to ask about from the early team- he fought once in Pancrase against Takafumi Ito, and it sounded to me like Frank was cornering him. His name was Jeff Masajiri, do you remember anything about him?
SB: Jeff, yeah- he’s a Sheriff here in Sacramento County where I live, and I talk to him every now and then, and he trained with Ken quite a bit. Jeff and I trained a lot together; he was a cool guy. He was one of them guys you could beat up and he’d take it. He was a good guy.
WC: That early team with you and Ken, Vernon, Sean Daugherty and then a little bit later in ’94 when Jason and Frank started coming in- what was the atmosphere of the gym like? Was there camaraderie, or was there a definitive pecking order there? How did that work?
SB: Well, there was camaraderie, but it was definitely like a wolf pack. It was like that when you wrestled or sparred some guys, because the better you got- you got the fights and everything if you were higher up on the pecking order, so it’s just… it was like that. And there was guys that came to take my class- ’cause I ran the dojo when Ken wasn’t there and I taught the classes and all that. And later Jerry Bohlander and Pete Williams came and they took the class, and then after a little bit we got them into Lion’s Den and they were like… we called them young boys just like the Japanese call their new fighters young boys there.
WC: Going back a number of years, Jason had mentioned to me that Frank had trained under him in the Den pretty much as his young boy.
SB: Yeah. Basically, he did. He was a lot younger than Ken and me, so him and Jason lived together in an apartment and he trained as a young boy. So he had never done anything else either, and he got out of Folsom (State Prison), and he came right into Lion’s Den. Ken did his thirty minutes with him and Frank went right to training.
WC: You mostly answered this next one about that ‘93 to ‘95 era- I was wondering what you thought your strongest and weakest techniques were at the time? It sounds like the striking was your deal and the wrestling was what you weren’t really into so much.
SB: Yeah. I mean, I could do it- like when I fought Larry Papadopoulos, we wrestled around for about fifteen minutes and he was a jiu-jitsu guy. I could do it, I just didn’t like it. Plus on the ground in the UFC, I wanted to do ground and pound- head butt, punch and stuff, and Ken was like totally against that, and we would argue about it a lot. So, I just didn’t like it. I wanted to be standing up and I wanted to be punching or kneeing, just what I was used to. They say that… I mean, it’s true that when you’re in a fight, you fall back on what you know. Guys like Ken, who had been wrestling his whole life, that’s what he knows– and it’s hard to get someone like me that’s never done that before to do that. And try as I might, I just couldn’t get into it.
WC: Do you think in those early UFC’s, he was really trying to promote Pancrase and their style?
SB: He was trying to promote Pancrase and himself, of course, which you can’t fault him for. Ken was all about Ken, but I can’t blame him for that because he ended up making big money and that’s just the way it was.
William Colosimo is a part time writer who has an interest in interviewing fighters from either a submission wrestling lineage or the no holds barred era of fighting.
