know anything about shootfighting?

Shootfighting is a trademark of Bart Vale. He tries to distinguish it from MMA, but for all intents and purposes it's basically MMA with a specific lineage.

The term "shoot" was used in the carnival days of pro-wrestling to denote an actuall match. What you see today in pro-wrestling is called a "work", which has a pre-determined outcome.

In the 1970's, a group of Japanese wrestlers went to the "home" of Catch-wrestling: Billy Riley's Snake Pit gym in Wiggan, England. They studied legit wrestling (not uncommon actually, at the time). Some of them were so impressed that by the 1980's, they wanted to form their own real, "shoot" organizations, or at least an organization with more realistic matches. By the 1990's, after many false starts, organizations like RINGS, Shooto, and Pancrase were featuring legit contests. Vale, an accomplished kickboxer and karate competitor, learned his craft under Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who had studied Muay Thai and Judo before learning Catch-wrestling techniques.

The rules for old-school Shootfighting matches, like those of Pancrase and Rings, were essentially "real" pro-wrestling matches, complete with rope breaks and open-hand slaps instead of close fists to the face.

Read this about Shooto:

http://sherdog.com/news/articles/1/a-blood-called-...

Shootfighting was started by a Japanese pro-wrestler. Shootfighting is mostly used by the pro-wrestling community to describe a real fight, contrary to a "worked" fight.

Yes and I have judged several of those types of fights. It has been overtaken by MMA now. It was basically Maui Thai type fighting with European rules with take-downs and throws but no chokes or submissions.

I believe it was the precursor to MMA.

It started in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shootfighting

it's a mixed martial art style. mostly consists of muay thai, and catch wrestling

no idea