In the Original UWF, they held a show on 26th December 1984 that started out with sparring sessions to demonstrate how they train. Later in the evening however came the funny parts. The only match of the show was basically a gimmick battle royal with the wrestlers just goofing off and having a blast, with some Affectionate Parodies thrown in. Hell just the idea of the guys who wanted to present a more realistic wrestling style acting like a bunch of comedy wrestlers similar to Don Arakawa or Ryuma Go is a worth a laugh.
Shooto/Vale Tudo Japan
According to Akira Maeda, after the Shooto factions ousted Satoru Sayama from his company, shootists came calling at RINGS's door to ask meekly if they had any lightweight fighter to pass them, as Sayama was the guy who had all the contacts and they hadn't thought it when disposing of him.
According to Noboru Asahi and Kenji Kawaguchi, when Sayama was still training Shooto fighters, there were so many students at Super Tiger Gym that Sayama couldn't remember all their names, so he started nicknaming them based on their appearance. One hilarious example of this happening was when he forgot the first name of a fighter surnamed Ito at the time of a tournament, so he listed him as "Shiro Ito" (Shiro meaning White) without informing him, and put it in the pamphlet. Ito was shocked when he saw the pamphlet and the other fighters burst out laughing when they all saw it.
What was happening around the ring during the fight between Enson Inoue and Frank Shamrock at the Vale Tudo Japan 1997. Both fighters's cornermen were arguing and taunting each other: Egan Inoue tried to shout instructions to his brother, while from the opposite corner Maurice Smith mimicked what he said and made theatrics at him, making Egan furious, and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka just looked like "seriously, guys?" all the time. The thing got so funny that Frank and Enson themselves stopped fighting for a moment and smiled to each other.
This Translation Train Wreck done by the Shooto production team to subtitle Enson Inoue's post-fight interview after the mentioned fight. Western watchers were left without a bloody clue about what was Inoue trying to say, but the hilariously nightmarish and dramatic nature of the translated text surely made many a viewer roll on the floor.
"Woe for me, woe! Again the agony! Dread pain that sees the future all to well. Behold ye, yonder at the palace roof. The specter-children sitting - look such things as dreams are made on, phantoms as of babies... Horrible shadows, that a kingsman's hand hath marked with murder, and their arms are full, a rueful burden. See they hold them up, the entrails upon which their father fed!"
Enson could have many detractors, but none of them can accuse him of not being a poet in his own right.
Frank himself, as said in his book Uncaged, was really weirded out by the translation, and he actually never found out what Inoue really meant.
After defeating Rumina Sato in Shooto, Joachim Hansen take off his mouthguard and threw it to the crowd in celebration, and it hit Caol Uno's mother in the face.
Nick Diaz's characteristicspeech after fighting famed Shooto puncher Takanori Gomi.
"He kinda just put his head down and looped some fucking punch out there that smacked me. I was like what the fuck? There he is... that little fucker. That little fucker hit me with a Hadouken or something. I beat his ass, but you know, that little fucker, man that fucker is tough. I mean I hit him, but then he comes out with this Karate shit and... Little dude can bang. I mean he fucked up my eye and shit... That's why I went to the ground and gogo'ed him."
Newborn UWF
Masami Soranaka describing to Bart Vale what shootfighting is.
In the opening ceremony for RINGS Mega Battle 92 Semi-Finals event, Maeda accidentally referred to the promotion as UWF instead of RINGS. The crowd laughed at this and even Maeda couldn’t help but chuckle at his slip up.
In 1992, after beat Dick Vrij, Volk Han celebrated by lifting referee Motoyuki Kitazawa in the air. Even the usually no-nonsense Kitazawa expressed amusement while be lifted.
After winning the 1994 Mega Battle Tournament finals against Akira Maeda, Volk Han gets picked up by his cornerman David Khakhaleishvili to celebrate, but when David puts him down, due to exhaustion and not expecting the sudden drop, he trips on his feet and falls on his back.
During the fight between Joop Kasteel and Paul Varelans, the latter accidentally kicks Kasteel in the groin. Joop goes to his corner to rest among his cornermen, Chris Dolman and Gilbert Yvel, clearly affected by the blow. The funny part comes then when Yvel starts rubbing Kasteel's groin himself to reduce the pain, with the crowd breaking laughing.
In the same match, just after destroying Varelans with punches and palms and hearing the bell sound for him, Kasteel collapses as well out of exhaustion.
Another groin incident featuring Joop Kasteel, this time with Tsuyoshi Kohsaka on the receiving end of an accidental Groin Attack nearly 5 minutes into their match. After Kasteel gets the yellow card, it appears that Kohsaka suffered another accidental groin shot about 2 minutes later, except this time Kohsaka indicates that he is fine by jogging a lap in the ring.
Yet another accidental Groin Attack incident in RINGS, in a match under special rules where there were rounds against Pieter Oele, Dick Vrij has a moment after Pieter accidentally knees Vrij in the groin, just before the round ends. During the rest period, he appears to loosen his shorts to allow his cornerman to pour water on his groin. We don’t actually see it happen as the camera pans away to Pieter’s corner, but there were a few chuckles among the audience.
Once again, another Groin Attack incident in RINGS this time in a match with Willie Peeters vs. Kenichi Yamamoto. For context, both are Bratty Half Pints with no respect for each other, with Kenichi refusing to shake Peeters’ hand at the start and Peeters’ taunting and trying to bully Kenichi. Then Kenichi push kicks into Peeters groin, referee Wada lets it slide as accidental, then a few minutes Kenichi does it again, this time it gets him a yellow card and point deducted, then he does it again, this time hard enough that Peeters goes to the mat and Kenichi gets a red card and two points deducted. The funny part is when Peeters goes to his corner to recover and we see his cornerman, Joop Kasteel patting his lower back and one can imagine he must be thinking "Yeah, I’ve been there too man".
In a match between Pieter Oele and Masaaki Satake, the second round begins, but the action doesn't start, because Oele's corner forgot to put back his mouth guard. Then it turns out his cornermen dropped it and they had to search under the ring to find it and quickly put it back in his mouth right after finding it.
At a later event, Kopylov also got into a similar situation with newcomer Pavel Orlov, though the referee manages to get them out of it a lot faster than above.
Fabio Gurgel's dumbfounded, confused reaction after seeing his trainee and world BJJ champion Leo Castello Branco getting submitted in matter of seconds by a guy with the appearance and physical build of a school janitor. Certainly Andrei Kopylov managed to shock the world that night in RINGS.
Later that night, Andrei took on the intimidating Dutch kickboxer Ricardo Fyeet and submitted him in half the time it took to beat Branco.
In Andrei's fight with Minotauro Nogueira, after the 1st round and at their corners to cool down, his cornerman Volk Han tries doing so by taking water into his mouth and spitting it on Andrei, which got a few chuckles out of the audience.
With the match between Kopylov and Ricardo Arona gone to decision, the three judges give their opinions about the bout. All of them declare Arona as the winner, given his domination over a gassed Kopylov, but the funny thing comes when the last of them, Chris Dolman, gives him a ridiculously low 10 points out of 20. The audience breaks laughing, and even Andrei looks amused.
In the middle of his match with Kiyoshi Tamura at the 1997 Mega Battle Tournament, Hans Nijman asked for a time out and went to his corner just to blow his nose.
The afterparty of the RINGS Maelstrom 3rd event in Russia that was shown had a few moments worthy of laughs, like Mikhail Ilyukhin getting kissed by two girls which leaves lipstick marks on his cheeks and Dick Vrij talking to Volk Han while Hans Nijman doing mock elbows and headbutts behind Volk’s back (this is due to Volk holding onto a footlock on Nijman for too long in their match at the event).
Also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment. After the fight between Kiyoshi Tamura and Frank Shamrock, the former's reaction is lying down and getting up slowly in dispond for not having been able to get a submission, while the other celebrates exuberantly for having survived the match. Frank then approaches Kiyoshi and congratulates him warmly, passing his arm over his shoulder and parading with him almost forcefully while Tamura just looks characteristically annoyed for the antics. Finally, after the draw is oficially called, Tamura warms up and goes to formally handshake Shamrock... who instead hugs him. Even though Kiyoshi eventually hugs back and they bow to each other, the awkwardness on his face during all the ceremony is hilarious.
Similarly, Tamura being hugged up in the air by Gilbert Yvel after their own match, who was shining with joy due to his victory while Tamura was understandably somber.
According to Minotauro Nogueira's teammate AJ Davis, they got in trouble when they were sharing a taxi drive with Renato Babalu after an event. Supposedly Babalu got out of the car in a red light and started to urinate on the street, and a bunch of Japanese policemen saw it and came angrily to them. The thing got heated, and they feared a fine or something worse, until Davis told them desperately that they were RINGS fighters. At the moment, the cops suddenly recognized the guys and went completely Squee, bowing to them and allowing them to continue.
In preparation for the his match with Aleksander Karelin, Maeda had drilled endlessly with his apprentice Tsuyoshi Kohsaka and Kohsaka's Alliance teammate Maurice Smith in Seattle, in order to score a takedown over the world’s best wrestler. Once the match began however, he shot a single leg on Karelin, who being built like a Russian redwood, didn’t budge and barely even seemed to notice. Maeda's own account of that moment expresses it perfectly.
Maeda was actually willing to come out of retirement to face Karelin for a second time, though in true pro wrestling fashion, he tried to get Karelin to sign on by claiming the leg kicks he gave Karelin in their match were the reason Karelin didn't win what would have been his fourth gold in the Olympics. Karelin never responded.
UWF International
The footage released by UWF-i showing boxing champion Trevor Berbick getting prepared for his shootfight against Nobuhiko Takada. After he was explained the rules by Ted Pelc, Berbick was interviewed by Jim Daugherty and asked about how he would handle low kicks, and he replied that he would knock Takada out before he tried to kick him out. He also claimed that he would "bring World War III down on him". Cue the match, where Berbick even wears shin protectors, and then Takada comes, kicks his legs to oblivion and forces him to run away without throwing a single punch.
Kazushi Sakuraba once told a funny story about Dan Severn in the UWF-i Snake Pit: Saku went to train in the dojo and he saw Severn at the heavy bag trying to practice palm strikes. What Saku saw was not the shootfighting style palm strikes, but Severn just bitchslapping the bag. Sakuraba almost died from laughter.
Vader also gets another one after his victory over Takada in their second match. This time he has his son with him (also a Heartwarming Moment, as this is the only World Title that his son saw him win in person) who he hoists on his left arm for the celebrations... then just drops him since he was tired, with his son landing on his butt due to not expecting that.
Pancrase
Masakatsu Funaki cornering Bas Rutten during his fight with Ken Shamrock. During all the exchange, Funaki hilariously keeps yelling in broken English: "REMEMBER TRAINING! ARMS INSIDE! REMEMBER TRAINING! REMEMBER EVERYTHING!".
Frank Shamrock vs Bas Rutten III. The ridiculous faces Frank makes near the end of the fight, just to piss Bas off. He gets punched in the face for his trouble and still lost the via TKO.
At the end of Bas Rutten vs Takaku Fuke III, Bas goes to do his patented Rutten Jump, but he can’t spread his legs because he pulled his groin muscles 2 weeks before the fight.
Hell, Bas did commentary on all his Pancrase fights, which can be viewed on his YouTube page. It is full of plugins for his Big Book and DVDS of Combat, Self-Deprecation on his lack of grappling skills at the time, his thoughts during the fights, fun facts on why he did certain things like the Rutten Jump, pointing out his manager Don Clovis whenever he is on screen, etc.
Yuki Kondo after defending his King of Pancrase championship against Jason DeLucia tries to celebrate his victory by doing his best impression of the Rutten Jump, he can’t spread his legs like Bas because he was too tired from a nearly 30 minute match.
An anecdote by Matt Hume tells how he and other Pancrase guys made a joke to Bas Rutten following him through Tokyo and wearing bald caps to imitate his signature bald look. Rutten finally caught them, but up to the moment, the passerby's of Japan were exhilarated.
Others
When Paul Varelans became a bouncer again during his fighting career, there was a similar incident where a guy bit him and then Paul proceeded to throw him so high and hard the guy crashed to the ground and started bleeding. The police arrived and cuffed Paul, but it happened that the police captain who was a UFC fan recognized him and squeed out his Red Baron, telling the other officers to un-cuff him and ask him what happened. After explaining and with police captain writing it off as self-defense by Paul, it eventually ended with him doing photo ops with the captain and the arresting officers. One of the cops even got some hot water and started pouring it on the pavement to wash all the evidence away.
Also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment. After being pinned by Minoru Suzuki in his retirement match, Yoji Anjo is collecting handshakes from everybody in the ring, but when Minoru comes to shake his hand, Yoji pushes him aside apparently to recover his breath. In a rare moment of aquiescence, Suzuki waits patiently and reaches his hand a second time, but Anjo pushes him again, this time clearly pretending to be out of breath. The game repeats itself some more time, but finally Minoru and Yoji have a very tentative hand hold, as if both were expecting the other to suddenly attack. At the end, confirmed that the act is safe, they shake hands and embrace tightly.
Erik Paulson and Josh Barnett's "debate" on Pancrase vs. Shooto that was featured on Josh Barnett's Attacking the Guard Seminar DVD. Erik Paulson's Deadpan Snarker delivery and Josh Barnett's Logic Bombs as well as his failure to keep from Corpsing throughout just sealed the deal.
. It is full of plugins for his Big Book and DVDS of Combat, Self-Deprecation on his lack of grappling skills at the time, his thoughts during the fights, fun facts on why he did certain things like the Rutten Jump, pointing out his manager Don Clovis whenever he is on screen, etc.