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This time on Fighter Retrospectives, I’ll be taking a look at a Dutch maniac, Bas “El Guapo” Rutten.
This time on Fighter Retrospectives, I’ll be taking a look at a Dutch maniac, Bas “El Guapo” Rutten.
Who is this guy?
Bas Rutten is a guy from Holland that was very good at killing people’s faces. He began his martial arts career in Tae Kwon Do and Kyokushin karate, then later transitioned into Muay Thai kickboxing (I think 80% of all Dutch people are skilled in Muay Thai), before participating in mixed martial arts.
He started in Pancrase, a Japanese organization that had a fair amount of professional wrestling influences (Combatants were allowed rope breaks for submissions during a match, for instance, and closed fist punches to the face were illegal. The rope breaks were in finite supply, though, and once you used them up, the next rope grab would end the fight.). Bas was initially very good at knocking out people with his excellent striking background, but would quickly become lost when a fight went to the ground. One of the top stars of Pancrase, Masakatsu Funaki took on Bas and several other fighters to train submission skills simply to give himself more of a challenge (Rest assured, I’ll be writing about Funaki in the future). Rutten learned the ground game very well and started submitting people with numerous different holds.
Were any of his fights any good?
Boy howdy, were they!
Bas had some very impressive and fun fights with such peoples as Jason
DeLucia, Frank and Ken Shamrock (Individually, of course, this was Pancrase,
not ZST), and Masakatsu Funaki.
Rutten versus Frank Shamrock III - The Fighting Clown, Frank Shamrock
Bas struggled against the Shamrock family, going 2-3 overall with the grappling brothers. This fight is to unify Bas's King of Pancrase title with Frank's interim KoP title. Bas is on commentary because he's awesome. There's a good mix of grappling, striking, and conversation to start things off. Oh, they also spill out of the ring during a takedown attempt by Frank. Crazy times in Pancrase!
It's not really until the latter stages of the fight that Frank starts goofing around. He throws a turtled-up backhand, and during a leg lock attempt, just pulls ridiculous faces as Bas tries to punch his way out. Frank ends up with a cut over his eyebrow, and that's the official reason for the end of the fight, but Bas says, and I'm inclined to agree, that Shamrock just looked like he was done, cut or no cut.
Check out more about Bas after the (splits) jump!
Rutten versus Frank Shamrock III - The Fighting Clown, Frank Shamrock
Bas struggled against the Shamrock family, going 2-3 overall with the grappling brothers. This fight is to unify Bas's King of Pancrase title with Frank's interim KoP title. Bas is on commentary because he's awesome. There's a good mix of grappling, striking, and conversation to start things off. Oh, they also spill out of the ring during a takedown attempt by Frank. Crazy times in Pancrase!
It's not really until the latter stages of the fight that Frank starts goofing around. He throws a turtled-up backhand, and during a leg lock attempt, just pulls ridiculous faces as Bas tries to punch his way out. Frank ends up with a cut over his eyebrow, and that's the official reason for the end of the fight, but Bas says, and I'm inclined to agree, that Shamrock just looked like he was done, cut or no cut.
Check out more about Bas after the (splits) jump!
