Comments on: PRIDE: 2 Years After

By: seventfourseventyfive

seventfourseventyfive — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:21:49 +0000

Some interesting points raised, but you really are a butcher of prose.

By: Alan Conceicao

Alan Conceicao — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:46:21 +0000

Very nice article. Some concepts left unexplained and seems to lack a thorough conclusion, but some very very good points and thoughts brought up!

The point wasn’t to write some Michiner sized tome, which is basically what you’d need to do to explain what’s happened in the last 4 years or so. The basic points are these:

-For the public goals laid out by Zuffa when purchasing PRIDE, they met almost none of them. The ones they did meet were either totally easy or incomplete. That is not “success”. It is actually the complete opposite thereof. Oddly, they received not much criticism for that, instead successfully deflecting the blame to essentially the entire Japanese business world.

-Japanese MMA survived. It is not 2001 and there are no football stadiums filled with people, but it’s not dead and buried. It may very well be in an irreversible decline. It may also be in a rebuilding phase as it generates new stars. Look at what happened to K-1 last night: two weeks ago the idea of a Japanese K-1 heavyweight champ was borderline laughable if not seemingly impossible. Now they have one, something they have sought since Masaaki Satake back at the start of K-1.

By: Dave Walsh

Dave Walsh — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:20:07 +0000

No, I didn’t mean SHOOTO. SHOOTO, Cage Force and DEEP. When I say “MMA as we know it” I mean the giant, elaborate shows that attempt to draw in the casual fans. The smaller leagues will stick around no matter what, but the bigger ones will keep struggling and I think we could end up with just K-1 running MMA fights on their kickboxing cards or something like that. Who knows, maybe it’ll peak again.

By: Whomever

Whomever — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:01:05 +0000

Yeah, Dave…you know…that fad of Shooto celebrating their 20th Anniversary will definitely go away this year. Guess it won’t peak again until Shooto celebrates their 30th.

By: Dave Walsh

Dave Walsh — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:21:31 +0000

MMA as we know it in Japan could easily die off. I love it, I love the spectacle of it all, the entertaining mismatches and the fighters.. But Japan is a fad-based country, and there is nothing in MMA to make it ‘cool’ right now. All of the big stars jumped ship (Wanderlei, Fedor, Akiyama), are worn out (Cro Cop, Sakuraba, Yoshida), or their 15 minutes are up (Sapp).

By: David

David — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:07:11 +0000

Very nice article. Some concepts left unexplained and seems to lack a thorough conclusion, but some very very good points and thoughts brought up!

By: Whomever

Whomever — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:02:32 +0000

I miss PRIDE. It was definitely the better of the MMA experience, especially at the time and place it existed.

DREAM and Sengoku are putting on some real awesome shows. I think DREAM.5 was the most exciting card of the year in 2008, and the first round of Sengoku’s Featherweight tournament was excellent.

MMA in Japan will never die. And if it does, there’s always the memories.

By: The second anniversary of PRIDE’s death | FightOpinion.com - Your Global Connection to the Fight Industry.

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:25:25 +0000

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