Ken Shamrock vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

[5.0] "Ken Shamrock was wrapping up an active career by then, but the specifics of the match made him feel at ease anyway. He faced the promising newcomer Shinsuke in a 5-minute realistic fight, that, despite its time limit, managed to attract attention and show the skills of both men to a sufficient degree."

[6.0] "It was a shoot fight. It was some realistic fight. They showed higher psychology here, but in some cases their sellings were not as much perfect. It was a small match. It could be more better, if they could show some more higher level psychology in the match. (***)"

[6.0] "We did actually get this recorded.....well some of it, anyway. It doesn't have the full 5 minute match, showing instead most of the match bar the beginning and a small part in the middle. The match itself is pretty good as you'd expect; Ken despite barely wrestling much still knows how to put on a good match and Nakamura despite being fairly green got stuff like this tremendously easy. The actual match conditions are wild: this takes place in some sleazy nightclub with generic club music playing the whole time while a half-interested crowd just randomly cheered in places. While all of that shit is going on these two are rolling around from kneebars into toe-holds and back again and doing pretty slick mat-work for the time. We even get a cool little moment back to the Alright/Takada feud with Naka pulling for a second German suplex but getting rolled into a inverted ankle lock instead. Of course like with most shoot-style work attempted at the time it's hard not to see this as somewhat antiquated to what's already been done: RINGS/Pancrase already pretty much reached the peak of "wait is this fake or actually legit? " everything afterwards was either copying that or doing slower/older versions. Like while this was going on we had U-Style at the same time, and I can't help thinking this just seems kinda behind the times by comparison. Striking looked fairly safe despite some good shots here and there: Shamrock jumping into a sliding takedown to try to snap a ankle lock was a cool spot as was the trading of Achilles Tendon/toe-hold attempts for the finish as the time limit sounds just as the pair are seemingly ready to snap the other person's foot off. This was pretty good as a outing and honestly just shows that Ken could've happily kept doing this kind of shoot-style antics if he wasn't so busy losing in MMA."