Firstborn Lion: The Scott Bessac Interview, Part 2

Firstborn Lion: The Scott Bessac Interview, Part 2

Part Two of Three: Pancrase, and an Ad for a New Fight Organization- The Ultimate Fighting Championship

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: How did you originally find out about UFC 1? I heard you had called Art Davie and talked to him about entering that event. 

Scott Bessac: I was reading Black Belt magazine and saw an ad in the back for the UFC, and so I sent an application in. They sent me a packet back, which just like a year or so ago I sold to the MMA Museum. And then a little bit later, I was talking to Art Davie on the phone and explained to him what the whole thing was about- what we’re training, the Pancrase thing, all that kind of different stuff, and he said, “Well, who trained you?” And I said, “Ken Shamrock.” And he said, “Who’s better- you or Ken?” I said, “Well, to be honest, Ken’s been doing this a lot longer, and I’m just starting, so Ken is.” And he said, “Well, could you give me Ken’s phone number, and we’ll get him into the first one, and then we’ll get you in one down the line. I said, “Yeah. That’ll work.” That’s how that worked out.

WC: Your first fight in Pancrase was against Yusuke Fuke in January 1994. How long were you training full time for that match?

SB: At least a year. They wanted to debut me, and they put me in Japanese magazines. I was coming out- Ken’s first student and all that. I’m sure they expected some submission wizard or something (laughter). It wasn’t like that.

WC: Were you training basically more of a Pancrase style in the gym, or was it more of a no holds barred style?

SB: Well, back then, we had Vernon and this guy James Mathews who fought like three of four times in Pancrase, and a lot of other guys. Basically, we didn’t really know what we were doing. I mean, we went and bought kenpo gloves and headgear with cages- until I smashed the cages in on the headgear and we just kind of… Ken did submission on the ground and we sparred standing up, but sparring standing up I was kind of just smashing everybody in the beginning. Because really, there was no sport back then. It’s not like now, where guys follow a regimen, they follow what to do. Back then we were just making stuff up.

WC: So James Mathews, who I’ve seen on those early Pancrase tapes- he was an official Lion’s Den member too? 

SB: Oh yeah, he was a Lion’s Den member almost from the get-go.

WC: Did you have to do any kind of Pancrase style gym matches before Ken thought you were ready for Pancrase? 

SB: No. See we used to do something called challenge matches where guys would either call or come into Lion’s Den and say We wanna be in Lion’s Den or just challenge us, and we would just go full out. And like this guy, he said he was an instructor down in Torrance for Rickson Gracie and he came up the first time and fought me, and like seven minutes or so he quit. The second time he came up and he was really… he told Ken, I’m not worried about you guys, I just want to get into Pancrase,” and Ken said Just hurt him. And so, first ten seconds I knocked him stupid. We had a lot of those kind of fights. So, he probably figured I was ready by then.

WC: Then when you fought Fuke- what did you take away from that experience, it being your first Pancrase fight?

SB: That it was mostly about submission (laughter), ‘cause he heel hooked me pretty dang good, and from there I figured This is not so much stand up, this is gonna be a lot on the ground.

WC: Did you stay in Japan for any length of time to train with any of the Japanese fighters, or were you pretty much just going over there for the fights? 

SB: No, we would go like, I don’t know- a week and half, two weeks or whatever it was early to train there, but I always came back here ‘cause I ran the dojo at Lion’s Den. So, I would always come back to take care of the gym and teach the classes and all that kind of stuff. Frank went over there for a while, but I had to be here for that.

WC: I was curious about your personal impressions on a few of the Japanese fighters- as people and as trainers- assuming you had rolled with them in that week and a half or so. Like say Funaki for instance- did you have any personal interactions with him? 

SB: Yeah, I mean he was an awesome fighter. He came here to the United States, and sparred with me standing up and then over there and stuff. Dude, I mean he was phenomenal. Awesome. At any time, I think he could have submitted anybody he wanted to, he let a lot of stuff just roll through. Really good, he was really good.

WC: As far as sparring with him on stand up, Bart Vale had mentioned to me that Funaki came from a boxing background. Did you notice his hands were pretty good when you were sparring? 

SB: Yeah, he had really good hands. He had good hands, good movement. He was really good standing up. The only guy I ever saw dominate Funaki was Bas Rutten, and Bas beat him up. But besides that, Funaki always held his own standing up.

WC: And then what about Minoru Suzuki? I saw on Facebook you had mentioned that he had gone to scout Larry Papadopoulos in Australia, and I guess Larry had apparently choked him out, so Suzuki wanted you to get him back in your fight. What were your impressions of Suzuki as a person? 

SB: He was… (laughter) Suzuki was really cool, but he was kind of mean. The only time they ever let me wear pads, like knee pads that were just basically like you slip on to play football, he let me wear against Papadopoulos. But he was a cool guy. He was just mean. He was a mean dude.

WC: I’ve been hearing that across the board. How was he able to communicate to you what happened in Australia and what he wanted you to do to Papadopoulos? Did he have good English?

SB: It wasn’t great. Well, I heard the choking thing from somebody else, because I asked “What’s the deal with Suzuki?” And they told me, but he knew enough English to tell me… like I had my pads and he came in the room and he saw me and said, “Oh, good. Oh, good. Hurt him.” And I was like, “Cool.” And then I remember in my next fight, Funaki saw the same pads and said, “No, no, no.”

WC: Oh, when you fought Osami Shibuya. So he didn’t want you to hurt Shibuya with knees then? 

SB: Well, with Shibuya and Ito- Funaki asked me, Please don’t… If you watch both those fights, I don’t kick or punch once. I think I hit Ito once. Because Funaki asked me Please don’t hurt them.

WC: So Funaki didn’t want you to hurt Shibuya or Ito, but Suzuki was hoping you’d put it on Larry Papadopoulos a little bit.

SB: Yeah.

WC: Correct me if I’m wrong- in Pancrase you had to wear the knee pads, right? But if you didn’t that just meant you couldn’t knee? 

SB: Yeah. You had to wear the knee pads and the shin pads. And if you didn’t wear them, you couldn’t kick or you couldn’t knee.

WC: So the Shibuya and Ito fights- they didn’t want you to rough those guys up too much, but they were still shoots? 

SB: Yeah, they were straight shoots. They just… they just asked me not to beat them up.

WC: Okay.

SB: I guess Ito was supposed to be the new submission guy. And I beat him with a submission where he grabbed the ropes. So, that was cool. But they just asked me… Funaki asked me just don’t beat him up.

WC: One other Japanese fighter I wanted to ask your personal opinion on- Kazuo Yoshiki Takahashi. What did you think of him? 

SB: He was a good guy. All the Japanese fighters were good guys. Takahashi had kind of a mean streak, though. But…

WC: Like, very competitive or just mean in general?

SB: I think maybe just real competitive. He was pretty competitive. He came to the UFC and hung out with us and watched and stuff. They were all good guys. I mean if you had any questions- or you’d walk into the dojo and they’d be like, “Oh, Scott come here.” And they’d show me stuff that happened in the last fight and say Here’s what you need to do. They were really open about stuff. 

WC: Oh, very cool. So they didn’t try to hold back on the knowledge of submission wrestling.

SB: They did to a certain point, but they would want you to not get caught in simple submissions. They didn’t teach you omoplatas and stuff like that. But they would show little stuff to do. They were mostly concentrated on their young boys- bringing them up. Ken was concentrated on us. And at that time it was in order to get into Pancrase for the United States, you had to go through Ken. So they kind of didn’t want to step on Ken’s toes is what I thought. But, they would show us small stuff.

WC: After the fights, I heard the Japanese fighters partied as hard if not harder than everyone else. Is that true? 

SB: Oh, man. When we went out partying, it was crazy. Suzuki would go around after drinking a few beers and stick toothpicks in the young boys’ heads and light them on fire. And just all this crazy… choke guys out at the dinner table. They were really fun to party with. It was crazy. But, we’re all crazy, too. So were the Dutch guys.

WC: Then some of your earlier fights before Shibuya and Ito- when you fought Toon Stelling and Matt Hume- you got choked out, you refused to tap. Was that your attitude from training at the Den? What were your thoughts on tapping? 

SB: Choking isn’t a submission. So, I’m not gonna tap to that. I’ve never tapped. I mean, you don’t tap to a choke. Like with Matt Hume, I had that month off- Ken called me at three o’clock in the morning and said “Hey, the guy that was supposed to fight Matt Hume dropped out. Can you be on a plane in Sacramento at five-thirty?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” So I packed, grabbed some stuff, got on a plane, got to Japan, slept for a couple of hours, went to the fight. When it first started I came out and smacked Matt, I felt great. As soon as I hit the mat, I was done (laughter). I was like Oh, God. So that was rough. But that was legit. Matt choked me out total legit. And then Matt said later he was worried about me, and Todd Bjornethun jumped in- ’cause I didn’t wake up right away. So, that was… not good.

WC: Ken said he originally found out about Matt Hume because Pancrase told him they’d like him to go scout Hume and his group. Did Matt Hume come to the Den and train with you guys at all? 

SB: No, no. I honestly don’t know how Matt got to Pancrase. I could be wrong, I always assumed they got to Pancrase through Maurice Smith- because they trained up there in the Seattle-Kirkland area with Maurice. But I could be totally wrong. Who knows?

WC: Papadopoulos would’ve been your first win in Pancrase, and then that started putting you on a win streak- from him, to Shibuya, to Ito. Then you went to the UFC vs Hood. How motivating was the Papadopoulos fight? Did you feel like you were starting to get the hang of this? What were your feelings at that time? 

SB: That’s when I kind of just decided before that fight, I don’t care if I like this or not. The crowd, or whatever. I’m just gonna go all out and do what I gotta do, and so I did. So, when we did roll around, I just did it. And plus, losing, I just realized that they wanted more of the submission stuff- and Larry shot on me, God, I don’t even know how many times. I just figured, go with it.

WC: In Pancrase- what did you think about the match ups that you were being put in? Did you ever have a say on the choice of opponent? What were your thoughts, in general, on how they matched you? 

SB: No, I never… Bob just told me who I was fighting. I could care less. Put them in a ring or cage with me, I’ll fight ’em. I didn’t care who it was. I had no opinion.

WC: In general, in Pancrase, how much notice do you think you would get- even if you didn’t know your opponent- that you were fighting on a card? How long do you think on average you would have to train, knowing you were fighting? 

SB: I don’t know, two to three weeks. The fights were every month. But see, we didn’t have training camps. We trained six days a week, two times a day, all the time- no matter what. So, you were always ready- whoever it was- to fight. And I didn’t really care who I was gonna fight. It didn’t really matter. You would get in your head “Oh, this is who that is”- but that’s it.

WC: I had a few more questions from your interview for Snowden’s book. You had mentioned that Frank, because of the last name, was worked up the ladder a bit in those early days. And Frank had mentioned also in that book- he had said that even though he fought hard, and for real, he thought maybe some of the upper echelon guys might have given him a win. My suspicion is maybe the Suzuki fight in early ’95, where Frank won via choke. Did you see a big difference in skill between the gym and those matches that made you suspicious that some of his fights were worked? 

SB: Well, once Frank got out of prison and they changed his name from Juarez to Shamrock, I knew something was up. And I’m like, “Okay.” And all of the fights… I’m sure Frank looks back- like the Funaki fight- and you know… they were working him up the ladder. It used to bother me. Then as I got older, I’m like, “You know, Frank had his own problems with Bob and everything else, so…

WC: And then in another segment of that book you were talking about works concerning Ken and Suzuki’s first fight, and then Ken and Funaki’s second fight- where Funaki had choked Ken. Now, Ken had told me that Suzuki and some of the Pancrase management approached him and asked him to be lenient in their first fight. Ken hinted both Suzuki fights, actually. And basically, Ken got angry because there was an agreement, and then he got injured in the submission anyway. Behind the scenes, did you notice Ken training as hard for these fights, or did you know something was gonna happen before it happened at those cards? 

SB: No- you didn’t really know what was gonna happen, but I mean I kind of… you could figure it out, because Ken fought in the UFC right after Funaki choked him out in like fifty-two seconds or something, and…

WC: That was very suspicious.

SB: Yeah, and so, you knew what was going on. But Ken training, it was… in the beginning at Lion’s Den, Ken was there all the time- and then he started to fade away, and… I don’t know if you watched Bellator and his new story about his drug problems and all that, which, I’m not gonna speak on- Ken could talk about that. But he was not at the dojo a lot. I mean, you’d have to ask him the deal, but we’d do our own thing, you know? Or he’d be there in the morning and I’d teach class at night, and it got kind of chaotic- because Pancrase or UFC, and then guys here, guys there- you never knew where guys were gonna be.

Next: Training Like Cavemen and the End of an Era

Part 1: On Entering and Exiting the Lion’s Den

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