Inside the Lion's Den - Ken Shamrock

...at, street fighting for money. Inside the Lions Den gives a good insight and amount of depth into Ken's troubled years in and out of school.

The next major chapter in Ken's life begins with making it into Japanese wrestling and going to Japan. It is hear where Ken begins to see the advantages of learning submission techniques and the effectiveness of them. After a while on the Japan Pro Wrestling circuit he forms the Pancrase Hybrid ...
...today over in Japan and helped develop the style of submission fighting and grappling further.

After this Ken hit the big time and made it into the Ultimate Fighting Championship where he soon becomes a huge star in America. There is a lot of insight into Kens training and fight preparation plus many wise words from the man himself. This is an enjoyable part of the book showcasing Kens UFC career and his many fights and the rivalries ... more

** Introduction **

Many of you will have no idea of who this man is and probably wont care about reading about his life. Just to let you know he was one of the first accomplished mixed martial arts fighters. Anyway this book is not only a great read but it also comes in very handy for fight fans. The reason for this is because it's half biography and half instruction manual. Well not exactly half and half but it gives you two things for the price of one.

** About ken and his life **

I will start by letting you know about Ken Shamrock and some of the things that have happened in his life pointing out what stories you will find in his book.

At the present time Ken is preparing for one of the biggest grudge matches of all time with UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz. Tito is a young and powerful wrestler where as Ken is an older wrestler with great submission skills. This is going to be a great fight and to find out more checkout www.ufc.tv

Ken started as a troubled streetwise kid, he spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the law. This could be put down to bad parenting. The only thing that he did well in at school was sport. He had a natural talent for anything physical and was a tremendous athlete. I don't want to spoil anything too much so all I will say is he almost ends his hopes with injuries and has to resort to other ways of making money. The sort of things big strong guys that like to fight are good at, street fighting for money. Inside the Lions Den gives a good insight and amount of depth into Ken's troubled years in and out of school.

The next major chapter in Ken's life begins with making it into Japanese wrestling and going to Japan. It is hear where Ken begins to see the advantages of learning submission techniques and the effectiveness of them. After a while on the Japan Pro Wrestling circuit he forms the Pancrase Hybrid Fighting Society with Masakatsu Funaki. This event still goes on today over in Japan and helped develop the style of submission fighting and grappling further.

After this Ken hit the big time and made it into the Ultimate Fighting Championship where he soon becomes a huge star in America. There is a lot of insight into Kens training and fight preparation plus many wise words from the man himself. This is an enjoyable part of the book showcasing Kens UFC career and his many fights and the rivalries between himself and others like Royce Gracie and Dan Severn. If you have never heard about this style of fighting then this part will really help you to begin understanding what the sport is about.

** Just to clarify **

I thought I would mention that this type of fighting isn't for the faint hearted. It's as close to real street fighting as you can get. I updated my op with this comment so people wouldn't confuse that fact that Ken going to the WWF meant that he is just a pro wrestler. His style of fighting is realistic and the UFC, Pancrase and Pride Fighting Championship are real fighting events. He went to the WWF because he needed the money, and he got a lot of stick from the real fight fans for doing so.

After this Ken went to the WWF for a while because he was such a great talent and the pay was good. There isn't much in this book about this time of his life, probably down to licences and contracts. The book ends around this time of his career.

The main topics covered in the autobiography These are the most important things that the book covers in the first half, the autobiography half.

• Ken as a kid growing up and his school life
• Moving into a home for boys and his relationship with the others
• His injury during his college years
• Prize fighting locally
• Meeting his wife
• The jobs he had and his small time wrestling career
• Almost being killed
• Trying out and making it big in Japan
• Developing and learning new techniques
• Opening his own Gym the Lions Den
• Coming to the UFC and gaining recognition

Of course they are all covered in detail and there are probably things that I missed out. ** The manual **

For people that train then this isn't going to teach you a lot as it's all very basic stuff. But for people new to the sport it is quite useful to give you an idea of the type of drills and techniques used and developed by Ken Shamrock at his own Lions Den Gym.

The sort of things that are covered are:

Chokes
Leg locks and ankle locks
Ground positions such as guard and mount
Warm up routines and exercises
Standing techniques

Of course everything is very well illustrated and explained step by step so even if you have never attempted anything like this before it will become clear. But please bear in mind this isn't sold purely as an instructional book so it doesn't go into the finer detail you would expect from a pure instructional.

** Summing it up **

"Inside the Lions Den" chronicles Ken's meteoric rise to fame and has an important underlying theme. It tries to show how these types of fighters are not just brutes like they are normally thought of or portrayed. It does very well at attempting to show the human side of the sport and how this is just a job and it's how these people earn their living. Most importantly it explains how Ken has managed to overcome his rage and control his anger to become a calmer more decent human being.

Throughout the book there are great photos that are only in black and white but are still clear enough. I would recommend this book to any martial artist or anyone interested even remotely in martial arts. It's a good educational book for this type of person and quite clearly shows the importance of the style of fighting Ken has brought to the mainstream. For any others I still recommend it as an excellent life story even if you are likely to ignore the instructional section.

A few of the downsides of this book are that Ken isn't the most well liked fighter amongst fans of MMA. Plus this style of fighting and the nature of it is often misunderstood and not always to everyone's taste. Another problem is that if you have never seen this type of thing before then you might find the techniques shown slightly confusing. Finally the first half is a good read and the second half is good but not great, this book has great value for money but isn't the best of both worlds. More a competent mixture of the two.

It's a real life Rocky story....

 

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