With the surprise announcement at WrestleMania that Brock Lesnar has re-signed with WWE while also actively pursuing the UFC heavyweight title, it’s fair to say that this is the most consequential MMA/pro wrestling crossover since Kazuyuki Fujita entered the PRIDE Grand Prix in 2000.
It’s extremely rare for an active MMA fighter to be wrestling at the same time. It’s even rarer that the fighter is signed to the top organizations in both sports while holding or pursuing their respective top belts. But that scenario coupled with Bellator fighter Bobby Lashley’s reappearance on Raw is a feat almost never seen outside of Japan.
In fact, the Brock/Lashley signings are one of the only times two active MMA fighters in the top two promotions are fighting under the same pro wrestling banner. Of course, Japan’s history of shoot fights, possible worked shoots, and MMA/wrestling sub-promotions in K-1, New Japan Pro Wrestling, HUSTLE, FMW, W*ING, and RINGS muddies this quite a bit.
In many cases in Japanese MMA, it’s large eastern stars that are in relatively big promotions. This is nearly unprecedented in the west. Nothing quite like it has happened since Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn was a part of the WWF Attitude Era. But Ken Shamrock was wrestling full-time while Severn was still racking up wins in barns across the country. This is active fighters being active wrestlers.
Granted, Bobby Lashley hasn’t fought since 2016 and won’t be fighting anytime soon, but it’s still worth taking a look back at the last time MMA invaded wrestling in such a prominent fashion.
In order to truly appreciate this weird little piece of history that’s playing out in WWE, we have to look back at others who successfully made the jump back and forth to MMA and wrestling. One of the first was Yuji Nagata, who fought prime Fedor Emelianenko and Cro Cop around in 2001 and 2003 at Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye, which is insane. No man has ever fought stiffer competition over 100 percent of his career, but he was also actively wrestling in NJPW at the time.
Still, it’s not quite Lashley/Brock-levels. We need these men fighting under a universally-accepted major promotion. Does fighting a relatively-unknown Fedor or Cro-Cop at Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye equal being a WWE and UFC/Bellator star? Let’s keep looking.
While plenty of Japanese fighters dabbled in both MMA and wrestling at the same time, Kazuyuki Fujita may be the most active. He fought in NJPW while taking multiple fights in PRIDE. Even though HUSTLE had Akebono and Bob Sapp intertwined with K-1, those were still esoteric freakshows, unless we can just admit that Brock is a freakshow of a different degree. Sapp’s thrown fights over the last few years also don’t help peg him as a wrestler/shoot fighter, considering Brock takes on the toughest competition in MMA.
It’s best to look at it like this: the era from 1998-2004 is full of these MMA/wrestling crossovers. Some bigger than others. Heres’ an easy to digest list.
- Shamrock and Severn Join WWE in 1997. This is the last, great combo of MMA and pro wrestling forces until Fujita joins PRIDE.
- Yasuda is losing a bunch of matches in Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye events while wrestling for Zero One from 1999-2003
- Naoya Ogawa is in NJPW Zero-One and HUSTLE
- Shinsuke Nakamura is fighting in NJPW, Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye, and K-1 from 2002-2004
- Tank Abbott “wrestles” in WCW from 1999-2000, but isn’t actively fighting legally in a cage at the time.
- Some would think Josh Barnett is doing his thing in Inoki’s IGF while fighting in PRIDE, but he didn’t join IGF until PRIDE folded, and he dabbled in NJPW in 2003-4 while fighting in Pancrase, Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye, K-1, and PRIDE. He was a former UFC heavyweight champ at the time, and certainly popular, but he wasn’t a massive star like Brock. Probably not even Lashley at the time.
As the years go on, the death of PRIDE divides MMA and pro wrestling blood brothers. World Victory Road and DREAM do their best to carry the torch to a degree, and we get Katsuyori Shibata vs. Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Kendo KaShin) in a real fight.
All of these examples are something that makes up the intertwined fabric of history that MMA and pro wrestling enjoys, but none truly illustrate the impressive signings of Lashley and Lesnar as they compete in MMA. Of course, it’s not 1:1, and Brock is fighting much tougher competition than Lashley, but this is definitely the first time WWE has employed two active MMA fighters from different major promotions. This is just an extreme rarity, and there’s possibly only one historical moment that is slightly its equal: 2002’s PRIDE 21 matchup between Don Frye and Yoshihiro Takayama.
In 2002, Frye was still with NJPW, but was back focusing on MMA. That year, Takayama was Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s no. 27 wrestler in the top 500. Frye was a massive star in PRIDE and was over in NJPW as a top heel. This is possibly the closest an eastern promotion can get to a Lesnar/Lashley-type situation. Two huge wrestlers, fighting in the world’s biggest MMA promotion at the time.
And it still doesn’t fully equate to Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley in WWE while fighting for UFC and Bellator. That’s how rare this is.
So now it’s time to watch Dos Caras Jr. vs. Cro Cop, which is merely a footnote in this whole thing, but it’s still worth watching again:
