EFC - Maurice Smith vs. Murakami Kazunari

[The Rocketmen]

Rare footage of this fight. Was the last PPV for Extreme Fighting Championships, the MMA company that had basically been driven out of business by the government crack down on the sport in 1997.

To date (again, April of 1997) this was considered to be the most devastating KO in MMA history.

A week after this fight, it gets announced that Nobuhiko Takada's new shoot fighting promotion in Japan will be called Kingdom (but actually ends up being called PRIDE) and that it would feature "worked UFC-style matches." Many former UWFI wrestlers have signed on to join the promotion. To date, many early fights are not quite known on which ones were "real" and which ones were "faked" by the performers. Interesting stuff!

Here's the EFC fight between Smith and Kazunari.

[The Killing Joke]

Holy shit, that was vicious

[The Rocketmen]

And for those who are wondering what a "worked" MMA match would look like, it looks like this: (and you can actually see the dude on the bottom blade around the 2:07 mark).

[The Killing Joke]

Aug 29, 2018 8:30:16 GMT -5 The Rocketmen said:

And for those who are wondering what a "worked" MMA match would look like, it looks like this: (and you can actually see the dude on the bottom blade around the 2:07 mark).

That's terrible

[The Rocketmen]

Agreed. Pretty boring and then the audience was SO confused because they'd never seen a match end from tapping/punches before. So to them they were like "oh cool, he's punching him" and then "oh cool, he's bleeding" and then the match was over and the audience is all "uh, okay?"