Bas Rutten

Control21:

Bas Rutten’s fame comes from his days in Pancrase, where he became one of the best shootfighters in the world and had memorable bouts with the likes of Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock. Beyond that, Bas Rutten had a brief run as a professional wrestler appearing for promotions like BattlArts and New Japan. Bas was a solid worker for both promotions and added legitimacy to both when they were seeking it. He was a solid worker who understood the basics of wrestling and usually had quality bouts to pad the work-shoot spectrum of his resume.

vs Osamu Nishimura (10/14/2022)

vs Koji Kanemoto (10/26/2002)

vs Yuji Nagata (7/20/2002)

vs Carl Malenko (10/14/2001)

w/ Amir vs Alexander Otsuka & Carl Malenko (10/26/2001)

I'm not gonna go into the "what was legit in Pancrase and what wasn't" debate because I feel like that's a dead end. Purely judging on his confirmed pro-style work.

Honestly I would stick Bas on as a potential 100 to 90 pick tbh. He definitely took to wrestling pretty easily and understood how to work really flashy and impactful Inoki-Ism bouts at a time where guys like Tana and co were stinking cards up trying the same thing. He seemed like a bit of a crowbar based on him accidently nearly knocking out like half of the people he wrestled. With that said: you could put him with a more experienced worker and he could do really solid stuff for the time.

His Nishimura match is absolutely one of those where he's definitely semi-carried (especially when you see him do weird incomplete Frankensteiners and dropkicks lol) yet still got how to communicate correctly how to sell Nishimura's holds, scrambling for rope breaks and communicating his frustration at not being able to get the big KO a hell of a lot better than many modern big time wrestlers today. Dude had a unique aura of danger that lent itself nicely to the trope of "anything could end the match" formula that Inoki-Ism lended itself to so much. Control doesn't have it included but also absolutely watch the Nakanishi match as well for a super fun styles clash.