Don't Feed The Shootists
AKA Shooto Pacific Rim
"Rebirth of Pankration, Respectable Sport, Real Fighting."
— The 3 R's of Shooto's Philosophy
As a whole
- Amateur Cast: The promotion started out as an amateur sport before officially promoting pro fights in 1989. The amateur events before the 1989 are usually referred to as Pre-Shooting or Pre-Shooto.
- There are now four categories of shootists that are differed by Classes. Class C and D are the amateur classes with headgear and a special point system. The classes are differentiated by time limits, Class D is 2 rounds with 2 minutes per round, while Class C is 2 rounds with 3 minutes per round.
- Class A and B are the professional classes, Class B is 2 rounds with 5 minutes per round, while Class A is 3 rounds with 5 minutes per round.
- When G-Shooto was created, Class C+ was created due to the lack of professional female shootists. It is basically Class C without headgear.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: In its beginnings in accord with its shootfighting roots, matches featured fast grappling exchanges as due to having a 30 second time limit on the ground. This changed when Rickson Gracie won the Vale Tudo Japan tournaments, so Shooto modified its rules to allow more position based ground fighting.
- Badass Crew: The most prolific MMA promotion in Japan, which gave birth to both the best native grapplers and the first well-rounded fighters.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Notably for the prevalence of bishie types.
- Clothing Combat: Sayama once experimented with what was called "Jacket Shooting", basically Shooto bouts with competitors wearing sambo kurtkas (this was in a time before combat sambo became an official sport). It never made it into events except for demonstration bouts, but several shooto fighters have competed in other "MMA while wearing with dogi" competitions like Daido-juku, the Lumax Cup: Tournament of J events, and GCM (Greatest Common Multiple) Communication Co. Ltd. "ORG rules" bouts (competitors wear sleeveless dogis and fight under MMA rules at their The Contenders events and even its own devoted events, its name apparently comes from "origin").
- Cool Helmet / Cool Mask: Before professional bouts, part of the gear used in Pre-Shooto fights were these mask-like helmets that looked quite similar to the Supersafe head guard or the "space helmet" that were first used by the Daido-Juku guys in the 1990s and the Koshiki Karate guys before them in the 1980s.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Shockingly, unlike the other UWF offshoots and other MMA promotions, palm strikes are illegal in Shooto, their reason for this is to prevent accidental eye pokes (they did however use palm strikes to the head only at some of their earliest Pre-Shooting events before they introduced gloves). Also weirdly, forearm strikes were banned while punches to the back of the head were legal, at least until the 2009 rule changes.
- Amateur Shooto banned ground-and-pound until 2019 where it now allows punches to the body of a grounded opponent.
- Distaff Counterpart: G-Shooto, which unfortunately only ran for 2 years.
- Dragons Up the Yin Yang: It's on their newer logo.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Modern Shooto is quite different compared to pre—Vale Tudo Japan Shooto as other tropes point out.
- Four Is Death: The "Shooto Shitenno" consisting of Noboru Asahi, Hayato Sakurai, Rumina Sato, and Enson Inoue.
- Insistent Terminology: Shooto's product used to be advertised as not MMA, but Shooto, many of the old fighters still think of it as this as they kept a distinctive ruleset compared to other promotions and consider it Serious Business. Some detractors (?) even believe Shooto isn’t MMA because their rules are different, among other things like their gloves are different compared to ones used in most promotions.
- In the same vein, practitioners did not call themselves fighters or mixed martial artists, but as shooters or shootists.
- King of Beasts: An Eastern example with the Super Tiger Gym logo.
- Lighter and Softer: They briefly held a few grappling-only matches, contested under either a single round of 4 minutes or two rounds with 3 minutes each. These type of matches were unfortunately discontinued in 2012.
- Meaningful Name: Shooto’s name in Japanese is "修斗", which can be translated into "learn combat".
- Older Than They Think: The original Shooto matches were held in an octagonal ring in the early eighties, a decade before the UFC. They only switched to a squared ring in 1996.
- Panthera Awesome: The original Shooto logo (aka the Super Tiger Gym logo).
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Unlike the rest of promotions from the U-system, traditionally centered in the heavyweight division (technically openweight since they didn’t use weight classes), Shooto is centered around low weight classes.
- Spin-Off: Vale Tudo Japan, Shooto Americas (includes Shooto Brazil [aka Shooto South America], Shooto Hawaii, Shooto USA), Shooto Europe (includes Shooto Belgium, Shooto Belarus, Shooto Bulgaria, Shooto Estonia, Shooto Greece, Shooto Holland, Shooto Ireland, Shooto Italy, Shooto Kings [aka Shooto Germany], Shooto Latvia, Shooto Lithuania, Shooto Poland, Shooto Russia, Shooto Scandinavia [includes Shooto Finland, Shooto Norway, and Shooto Sweden], Shooto Spain, Shooto Switzerland), Shooto Australia (aka Shooto Oceania), and Shooto Hong Kong. Shooto also influenced promotions like the United Full Contact Federation, HOOKnSHOOT, Icon Sport (formerly known as SuperBrawl), The Ironheart Crown, Midwest Fighting, RSF Shooto Challenge, TUFF-N-UFF, World Freestyle Fighting, Mannidog Productions, Linebred LLC, Fight Club Productions, S.H.O.O.T., Cage Wars, BUSHIDO MMA, Viking Fight, etc.
- Tiger Versus Dragon: Weirdly, their newer logo has a dragon on it while originally Shooto used the Super Tiger Gym logo, which is still used by the Japan and USA Shooto Associations.
- Tournament Arc: What the first two Vale Tudo Japan shows were.
- Underwear of Power: Inverted in its beginnings. Shooto bouts had its fighters wear pro wrestling-esque long tights like shootboxing, at least until 1995.
- Ur-Example:
- Is the first professional MMA promotion in history and the first to regulate the use of fingerless MMA gloves.
- It also introduced weight classes and championships according to weight classes in pro MMA.
- The 1994 Vale Tudo Japan event introduced ground-and-pound to Japanese fight scene.
- It also created the first amateur MMA championships.
- Vestigial Empire: In a sense, given that its founder Sayama ended up leaving the company after disagreements with the directives.
- World of Action Girls: G-Shooto.
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Debuted in The Original Era
Debuted in The Next Generation Era
Debuted in G-Shooto
Debuted in Vale Tudo Japan
