I’m sure I’m not the only one who devoted a large slice of New Year’s Eve to watching the big cross-promotional MMA event in Japan. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have found much to love about said event. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t help but think how far Japanese MMA has fallen.

Don’t get me wrong, the card was fun, and, the first half of it at least, was competitive. Japanese legends Hayato ‘Mach’ Sakurai and Akihiro Gono had an entertaining, fast paced fight that ended via vicious Gono armbar. Korean upstart Jung Man Kim had a fight of the night contender with Hideo Tokoro and Melvin Manhoef TKO’d ‘The Grabaka Hitman’ Kazuo Misaki (yes, it was an early stoppage, but that’s for another rant). Even the obligatory Judo-player face off between Hidehiko Yoshida and Satoshi Ishii was a surprisingly fun slugfest. But so much of the card was a freak show. Shinya Aoki snapped Mizuto Who-rota’s arm with a nasty reverse hammerlock. Alistair Overeem and Gegard Mousasi dismantled career journeymen Kazuyuki Fujita and Gary Goodridge inside the first round. It wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t safe. Nevertheless, overall the card had been a success.

But neither Sengoku or DREAM have yet to officially book their first event of 2010, and here lies the problem. Japanese MMA is not deep enough to survive a comparison with the near-monthly high quality offerings promoted by Strikeforce and ZUFFA in the States. How has Japanese MMA fallen so hard?

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In the 24 months since PRIDE was finally announced to be ending as we knew it, many things have changed in the MMA landscape, though perhaps not to the level that was often argued it would be. In retrospect. PRIDE’s collapse and the subsequent reconstitution of the Japanese MMA scene is seen today as a mixed bag. Do not let the arguments that it was any sort of success sway you: The purchase of PRIDE and the subsequent activity has been nothing less than an unmitigated failure, one given a pass on account of “difficulty” with varying factions, something the companies that have followed in its wake rarely get from English language media.

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While the rest of the MMA world continues to look forward to what will surely be one of the great weekends in the sport’s young history, featuring some of the world’s top heavyweights (Affliction: Banned), lightweights (Dream 5), and middleweights (Ultimate Fight Night), let us continue our look back at our favourite middling and indeed baffling light-heavyweight enigma. That’s right: our completely disproportionate Kazuhiro Nakamura retrospective continues apace! Last week, we followed Nakamura through his triumphs over the ever-ready Dos Caras Jr., the slightly dangerous Chalid Arrab, the hard-done-by Murilo Bustamante, the possibly diving Stefan Leko, and the wildly inconsistent Kevin Randleman. We also bore witness to his second (and presumably last, although who knows what tomorrow might bring?) loss to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, and his freak shoulder injury against Dan Henderson. Recall that the note sounded throughout these early matches was Nakamura’s considerable promise, his potential to develop into a formidable competitor in Pride’s 205 lbs division. At the conclusion of Nakamura’s slightly plodding decision win over Randleman, Bas Rutten strangely proclaimed, “A new star is born!” Stranger still, it sounded like he meant it. “Beautiful victory, unanimous decision — we’re gonna hear a lot from him,” was Bas’s bold prediction. Well, sort of, in that, here we are, right?

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MMA Junkie reported yesterday that Kazuhiro Nakamura has been released from his UFC contract after his second loss in the organization, and his third consecutive loss overall, dating back to the late days of Pride FC. Quite rightly, Junkie suggests that “with his crowd-pleasing and colorful entrances and willingness to fight all-comers, Nakamura will likely be picked up quickly by another organization.” Sengoku seems the most likely destination, given the strong Hidehiko Yoshida connection, and DREAM presents another viable option as well. No doubt he will land on his feet. We needn’t worry; this isn’t the last we’ll see of him. But the end of Nakamura’s UFC tenure is, I think, significant, in that it was Nakamura’s UFC tenure, however brief, that most fully revealed his character: fundamentally, Kazuhiro Nakamura is a guy who wants to do judo and get high, and not necessarily in that order.

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Pride versus UFC is back in the news this week. It’s the war that will never end.

Meltzer

Sherdog

Fight Opinion

Remember when Zuffa bought Pride and we were promised a separately run promotion and yearly dream matches in all the weight classes? How did we go from that to Zuffa not getting Pride’s biggest stars (Yoshida, Fedor, Gomi) and the remnants of Pride’s management taking Zuffa’s money and continuing to promote Pride shows with only a superficial change in name?

Scandalous.

By Dave Walsh

Discuss this article, Nogueira winning the title, Tim Sylvia’s loose bowels and Rampage being on the shelf for a reality show and much, much more at the Total-MMA forums!

When most people think of PRIDE fighters making the jump to the UFC, they will think of the death of the “PRIDE Myth.” If you are unfamiliar with the PRIDE myth, for years the talking point on the internet and through word of mouth was that PRIDE was home to better fighters. When you’d look at rankings on the internet, for years PRIDE fighters dominated them, with UFC being seen as having a shallow talent pool comparatively. Since then, top fighters such as Mirko Cro Cop, Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio Rua, Heath Herring and a few others have had a rough time transitioning to the UFC. Explanations have been everything from atmosphere changes, adapting to fighting in a cage as opposed to a ring to a stricter drug testing policy, implying that PRIDE fighters were all roided up monsters.

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DISCUSS THIS STORY IN THE TOTAL-MMA FORUMS 

It’s safe to say that the deepest, and most consistently entertaining division in mixed martial arts is the lightweight division. Just a glance at fight of the year candidates over the last several years and you’ll see a slough of classic lightweight bouts. Uno/Sato 5/99, Penn/Pulver 1/02, Sato/Nakayama 11/02, Uno/Hansen 3/05, Hansen/Azeredo 4/06, Gomi/Diaz 2/07, Griffin/Edgar 2/07 and Huerta/Guida 12/07 are just a sampling of the fantastic lightweight fights that have taken place over the last several years.
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