WWE and MMA traded fighters long before Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey

At WrestleMania 34, we’re going to see the first WWE match of ex-UFC legend Ronda Rousey, and we might just see the last WWE match of former UFC Heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, with one mixed martial arts legend entering the company just as another seems to be leaving, but the impact of mixed martial arts on professional wrestling goes much, much deeper than just Lesnar and Rousey. In fact, the influence of “shoot” fighting in the MMA world has had a profound influence on “worked” wrestling, especially in recent years.

It’s interesting to see MMA start to become such a big factor in the modern world of wrestling, because in a way it was professional wrestling that helped launch the popularity of MMA promotions like the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the 90s. The “worked” or pre-determined nature of wrestling wasn’t quite scratching the itch that fighting fans wanted, but they still found it more entertaining than the doldrums that boxing had found itself in. Enter mixed martial arts, which was able to fill that void left between boxing and wrestling, and absolutely exploded to a degree of popularity that’s turned UFC into a moneymaking machine today.

At times over the last 20 years, wrestlers and MMA fighters alike have gone back and forth between the two worlds, with Lesnar at one point standing as a dominant UFC Heavyweight champion after becoming a two-time WWE champ. Right now we’re starting to see more and more ex-MMA stars entering the ranks of professional wrestling and making a name for themselves, and the WWE arrival of a major former UFC women’s champion in Rousey at their Royal Rumble pay-per-view event showed just how strong that MMA influence is becoming in professional wrestling.

But that influence didn’t just start in the last few years. It dates all the way back into the 1990s, when Ken Shamrock, the first-ever UFC superfight champion (which he won against another eventual WWE wrestler in Dan Severn) and eventual UFC hall of famer, joined the company and brought his hard-striking MMA style, and mixed in a vicious array of submissions for good measure.

In the midst of the Attitude Era where high-flying moves, flashy looks, and submissions like the Sharpshooter reigned supreme, Shamrock’s focus on sharp kicks, carefully targeted strikes, and harsh-looking submissions like the Dragon Sleeper and Fujiwara Armbar brought a degree of legitimate looking — or “shoot” — style that professional wrestling lacked at the time, and made Shamrock immensely popular for how much he stood out from the pack. Shamrock never won the WWE championship — he would eventually win the TNA world heavyweight championship later in his career — but WWE did show him and his style respect by having him win the intercontinental championship, tag team titles, and the King Of The Ring tournament during his two years in the company, before he departed to resume his MMA career.

Even Shamrock wasn’t the genesis of those connections, though, with Karl Gotch and Antonio Inoki working together in the 1970s to help create the genesis of the hard-hitting, fast striking style of wrestling known today as “Japanese Strong Style.” Gotch became an absolute legend in Japan for it, and Inoki is still revered in both wrestling and MMA circles for his intense in-ring style that eventually helped lead to the modern styles of MMA fighting, which he’s worked hard to help promote and support in his native Japan.

A major milestone in that effort came in 1976, when Inoki had an infamous fight with Muhammed Ali that saw him work over Ali’s legs to the point of obvious injury. The rules of the fight limited what Inoki could do, but he still ended the fight winning the judge’s points in the decision — though he gave away all those points via penalties during the fight, which officially ended in a draw.

From there, though, the popularity of Japan’s hard-hitting style grew, becoming the hallmark of all the major promotions in the country, especially NJPW. In recent years its popularity has exploded around the world, bringing a mix of the increasingly popular MMA style to the mostly safer, but still fun to watch professional wrestling style, especially as more high-flying techniques have entered the fray as well.

Shinsuke Nakamura enjoyed a brief and successful MMA career in the early days of his NJPW tenure, winning three of five fights and bringing that hard-striking style with highly technical submissions to the wrestling ring as well, becoming the so-called “King of Strong Style” en route to an incredibly successful NJPW career: a three-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion; a five-time IWGP Intercontinental Champion; and winner of both the G1 Climax and New Japan Cup tournaments. Then he moved on to WWE, winning the NXT championship twice, before heading to the main roster and eventually winning this year’s Royal Rumble for a WWE championship shot at WrestleMania. It’s been a rapid ascent for the massively popular Japanese star in WWE, showing that the biggest professional wrestling company — excuse me, sports entertainment company, sorry Mr. McMahon — in the world believes in what that mix of MMA and wrestling styles can bring.

Nakamura is far from alone in that kind of hybrid style, though, and no one exemplifies that more than the legendary Minoru Suzuki. Still going strong at 49 years old as the IWGP Intercontinental Champion in NJPW, Suzuki also has a whopping 30 MMA wins in 50 fights over a span of 20 years in Japan’s Pancrase promotion. He even has two wins over Ken Shamrock, the only man to beat him twice in the promotion.

Suzuki is just as prolific in the ring, earning so much respect with fans and management alike that he’s constantly involved in major stories, leads a major stable in NJPW’s Suzuki-gun, and has put on dozens of absolute epic matches over the course of his long, illustrious career. He also inspired a generation of hard-hitting Japanese superstars and wrestlers around the world — especially people like Nakamura who have taken his style and evolved it to the next level.

But there’s a whole new generation of wrestlers with hybrid backgrounds coming to the fore, and it goes far beyond the 2012 return of Brock Lesnar — a multi-time WWE Champion before he left for UFC and became a star and champion stopped by diverticulitis rather than any one opponent — and Ronda Rousey, a groundbreaking woman in UFC who was one of the most dominant forces in the MMA landscape for a long time, and a lifelong fan of professional wrestling.

In fact, one of Rousey’s best friends and one of her “Four Horsewomen” compatriots — a group named for Ric Flair’s famous Four Horsemen in the NWA and WCW in the 80s and 90s — Shayna Baszler beat her to the professional wrestling scene by three years. Baszler cut her teeth in the independent scene for two years before making it to the finals of WWE’s Mae Young Classic women’s tournament and earning a full-time contract with the NXT brand. She leans heavily on her MMA experience to create her move set in professional wrestling, and her character work as a cocky, brutal heel has helped speed her ascent —she’s already earned a third shot at the NXT women’s championship at NXT’s TakeOver: New Orleans event during WrestleMania weekend.

But the MMA “revoltion” as it were has been long growing in WWE, even beyond Rousey and Baszler and even Lesnar. Numerous wrestlers lower in the card have varying degrees of MMA backgrounds — Sonya Deville, Jack Gallagher, Rezar from the Authors of Pain, and a number of others who have been working their way through the performance center in the last couple of years have at least some MMA experience, and each of Deville, Gallagher, and Rezar all use styles heavily influenced by that past.

Everything about Deville’s look and moveset screams strike-focused MMA fighter, and she has a small variety of submissions to take advantage. Gallagher doesn’t use that outright MMA styling like Deville does, but the grappling and submission side of MMA is what he leaned towards, and you certainly see that come through when he’s inside a WWE ring, especially since his heel turn last year. Rezar was a heavyweight brawler in European MMA circles, but he won most of his fights by submission. When he’s teaming with Akam — a former Olympic-level amateur wrestler who took a more “traditional” path to WWE — as the Authors of Pain, you see that raw brutality that his background required come through.

There are also ex-MMA fighters scattered throughout independent wrestling, perhaps none more noteworthy than former UFC star and Ultimate Fighter contestant Matt Riddle, who has taken to the pro wrestling world like he was meant to be there all along. His MMA background comes though in a huge way from the moment he starts moving in the ring — much like when Ken Shamrock showed up in WWE in the 90s — and he’s arguably one of the biggest standout talents in all of independent wrestling right now. Just how long he lasts in the independent ranks is an unknown — he has the talent to wrestle for any promotion, including the WWE — but how much he wants to break out of the comfortable, fun, and seemingly profitable place he’s made for himself in the wrestling world is up for debate. But just because he’s comfortable doesn’t mean that Riddle doesn’t push himself, as exemplified by his knockout-or-submission-only match this weekend against Minoru Suzuki.

It’s unquestionable that both MMA and wrestling have had huge influences on each other over the years, and recent times have shown just how strong those influences are. The arrival of Rousey from UFC to the WWE and Brock Lesnar departing in the other direction shows just how big the stakes are getting on both sides of the fence, but WWE has certainly started to learn how to take advantage of the massive popularity of modern-day MMA.

With some of their biggest stars and most important role players of today coming from MMA backgrounds, and with MMA forming important and influential parts of the history of WWE and even the wider world of wrestling, it’s going to be interesting to see just where this road winds up going. There’s a lot of room for even more MMA stylings in the professional wrestling world, and seeing just how far some of these stars can go in WWE will be fascinating to watch over the next few years.