Ken Shamrock Talks About His Return To Professional Wrestling

The name Ken Shamrock is very known by my generation. He was one of the standouts in the late nineties. And, he was one of the first to cross over from Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) to wrestling. He recently spoke with journalist Chris Van Vliet about his career in both MMA and professional wrestling.

Ken Shamrock Returned To Professional Wrestling For The Excitement

During the interview, Shamrock revealed why he returned to professional wrestling. After stepping away from MMA for a year, Shamrock admitted he needed more excitement. He decided to start training again and eventually had a match in Australia at Battle Championship Wrestling.

“I felt like, wow, I feel good, so I went and did a few more over there and ended up catching the tag team titles.”

Ken Shamrock proves that the wrestling bug is something you get stuck with forever. Even if you retire or head over to another sport for a little bit, you always return. 

The First MMA-Professional Wrestling Crossover Star

You will be interested to learn that Ken Shamrock was actually the first crossover star in the WWE. He was a mixed martial artist to be begin with and eventually plied his trade in the WWE. His style was very influenced by MMA as well, just take a look at his WWE highlights from the nineties. He was the first to fine-tune wrestling and MMA, and it shows.

During the interview, Ken Shamrock admits that he feels he’s left out a lot. He particularly referred to the fact that Kurt Angle was featured in their magazines with his Ankle Lock, one of the best-known submissions in the wrestling world. 

“I’m not trying to dis him or anything like that, but he’s never done one for real, like, so, sometimes when I see him put it on, it’s not even done right. But yet they use him as the picture for the finishing hold. And I’m the one that created it and did it for real. So those are the kind of things, and it’s not like they’ve corrected it, or done it and changed it, trying to make sure people understand where it came from.”

Shamrock continues to say that it seems like the WWE is trying to bury where the move came from. It was, in fact, created by Shamrock himself. Of course, it was made famous by Kurt Angle.

His Opinion About AEW And Current Day Wrestling

Ken Shamrock also spoke about modern wrestling and AEW in particular. He mentions how it is heavily influenced by Japanese style wrestling and that there is significant chain wrestling at the moment. 

Shamrock does admit that there is something missing. He claims the current wrestling business needs a mixture of the stories and attitude from the Attitude Era, combined with the chain wrestling of today.

Now, I could get behind that theory.

Ken Shamrock currently has a boxing promotion called Valor Bare Knuckle. The first match was held in September 21, 2019 and featured countless UFC veterans.

Despite his boxing promotion, Shamrock is considered as an active wrestler.