Issue 062

May 2010

A short time ago Japan was the biggest, most lucrative, most respected mixed martial arts market in the world. It had the best fighters, sold out 42,000-seat arenas, and drew tens of millions of viewers.

Then in 2007 the country’s largest organization, Pride Fighting Championships, suddenly collapsed amid rumor and scandal.

The shockwave stunned the Japanese MMA community. The glory days have now disappeared, leaving promotions struggling with restrained TV deals, low sponsorship and the taint of the yakuza. Has Japanese MMA really gone from boom to bust? Is it teetering on the verge of collapse, or poised to rise again? The only way to know is to start at the beginning.  

Big in Japan

Though the roots of MMA had begun in Japan during the 1980s with pro-wrestling companies such as UWFi and Rings blurring the disciplines’ boundaries, it was the rise of Shooto and Pancrase in the 1990s that started to draw huge amounts of attention to mixed martial arts in Japan. Bas Rutten, legendary Dutch MMA fighter and commentator, fought in Pancrase during that time and distinctly recollects his experiences. “I beat up my first [Japanese] opponent and the next day people stopped me in the street for pictures; it was wild. Even after I KO’d him they were actually cheering for me. That was weird.”  

The Japanese fans’ love for combat drew them to the new Pride Fighting Championships in 1997 and they immediately embraced the organization. Throughout the following years Pride grew in strength and popularity. Borre Martinsen, the man behind the ‘Japan MMA’ website, moved to Japan from Norway in 2004 after attending multiple Pride events since 1999. He recalls the wide reach and appeal of Pride. “When Pride was on Fuji TV, the big-name fighters were famous in Japan. Everyone knew names like Kazushi Sakuraba, Bob Sapp and Fedor Emelianenko.” So popular were Pride events they sold out the 42,000-capacity Tokyo Dome numerous times, soundly drubbing the UFC’s current attendance record of 21,000. Kickboxing promotion K-1 even began its own brand of MMA shows dubbed HERO’s, signing stars such as ‘Kid’ Yamamoto, BJ Penn and JZ Calvancante.  

The Japanese didn’t just watch Pride though; they obsessed over it. With Pride events on ‘free to air’ television MMA became incredibly popular, something filmmaker Justin ‘Juggs’ Dee, whose film ‘JuggsVSJapan’ chronicles his experiences in the Japanese MMA scene, can attest to. “It was in the newspapers daily, on billboards everywhere, fighters on ads for products on TV, fighters on TV shows. Anything you could think of, Pride fighters were plastered on it. Hell, I even bought a Bento meal with Sakuraba’s face on it!” However, that popularity turned out to be fragile.  

Today, Pride is gone. Standing in its place are two organizations, Sengoku and the K-1-owned Dream, both holding separate, sizeable chunks of the talent pool available to Japanese MMA. Though Pride boasted stars such as Wanderlei Silva, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fedor Emelianenko, they and other former Pride fighters eventually left Japanese MMA after Pride’s collapse, leaving the resurrected scene without much of the draw power that built it into a success. Even some of the stars that stayed behind, such as Denis Kang, Yoshihiro Akiyama and Takanori Gomi, took their draw power overseas in the convening years. Although stars such as Kazushi Sakuraba, ‘Kid’ Yamamoto and Shinya Aoki remain, they have been unable to pump sufficient life into the Japanese MMA scene as yet. Furthermore, essential TV deals like Pride held with highly viewed Fuji TV have eluded these new companies now relying on slots on lesser channels.  

Australian photographer Daniel Herbertson, who regularly sends photos from Japan to this magazine, explains that while Dream and Sengoku are available on basic TV stations, coverage varies wildly. “Every second Dream event is aired during prime time in a shortened version. The other Dream shows and the Sengoku shows are aired after midnight usually, so they often have terrible ratings.” With less exposure Sengoku and Dream suffer unstable attendance figures and uncertain futures. So, how did Japanese MMA go from selling out mega arenas with ease, to graveyard television slots?  

In Bed with the Yakuza 

In April 2006, Shukan Gendai, one of Japan’s biggest-selling weekly newspapers, published a series of revealing interviews with a man named Seiya Kawamata. He admitted to being involved with the yakuza (Japanese organized crime) during his work as a promoter within K-1 HERO’s, and in 2006 he made a deal with the Shukan Gendai newspaper to begin a negative campaign against Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE), the owners of Pride, based on the shady events surrounding the hugely competitive New Year’s Eve MMA events in 2003.  

Traditionally the highlight of Japan’s MMA calendar, New Year’s Eve has often seen separate fighting organizations battle for fans’ attentions. In 2003, not only were K-1 and Pride holding competing events, wrestling legend Antonio Inoki also hosted his Bom-Ba-Ye show. Seiya Kawamata was hired to produce the event and managed to lure the immensely popular Fedor Emelianenko onto the Inoki’s Bom-Ba-Ye event despite Fedor being exclusively tied to Pride, who were holding their own Shockwave event in direct competition. Pride’s president, Nobuyuki Sakakibara, was irate. It was alleged by Kawamata, through the Shukan Gendai interviews, that Sakakibara arranged for yakuza to threaten Kawamata before the Inoki show, to prevent Fedor’s appearance. After the event the Pride president paid off Kawamata’s own yakuza henchmen to directly intimidate him. Another man responsible for Fedor’s defection, agent Miro Mijatovic, was also threatened, this time in a hotel room with a gun put to his head. Mijatovic was forced to leave the country with his family.  

The publishing of these revelations in Shukan Gendai confirmed long-running rumors of yakuza involvement within the Japanese MMA industry. This extended back to the suspicious death of former Pride president Naoto Morishita, found hanged in his hotel room shower in early 2003. Shukan Gendai made further accusations that Pride was apparently a front organization for the yakuza, and that Nobuyuki Sakakibara was backed by the elusive loan shark Mr I, also known as Kim Dok-Soo, a yakuza with Korean heritage. 

In Japan any involvement with the yakuza brings an incredible amount of shame – and honor is still vital to the spirit of the country. Following the exposure of Pride’s alleged dealings, pressure built upon Fuji TV, the terrestrial carrier of the company’s events, from the public and shareholders about Pride’s involvement with the yakuza and the company was forced to ax all the organization’s programming. Fuji TV had brought Pride the hardcore and casual MMA fans that made the company so successful. Without the partnership, Pride’s income became greatly reduced. Ultimately, in April 2007 Pride-owners DSE were forced to sell Pride Fighting Championships to Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC.  

Despite Zuffa’s attempts to continue the Pride brand, the obstacles surrounding the company were too great. “When the UFC bought the Pride assets, it essentially kept Sakakibara’s staff around,” says Zach Arnold, founder of the Fight Opinion website and considered one of the leading analysts of the inner workings of Japanese MMA. “Eventually the UFC sent over a representative to run the Japanese office, a man named Jamie Pollack. He ended up back in America within months due to a hostile work-environment. Zuffa would later lay off the Japanese employees.”  

Although Pride was now officially defunct, MMA never ended in Japan. Pancrase, Shooto, DEEP, ZST, they all continued their events, but the death of the country’s greatest MMA brand had an impact. “I went to Tokyo for a training trip a few months after the demise of Pride and I could just sense the feeling of loss within the MMA community,” recollects Justin ‘Juggs’ Dee. “Sure they were still competing, training, putting on the same shows, but you could really feel the heart of MMA was missing.” Borre Martinsen agrees: “I think the loss of the TV deal and eventual death of Pride took MMA out of the minds of the general public. That was a big change, and it has not bounced back.”  

After an independent one-off New Year’s Eve show in 2007, titled Yarennoka! (headlined by Fedor), two new companies looked to fill the void left by Pride. K-1 rebranded HERO’s as Dream and new outfit World Victory Road created Sengoku. Both began operation in March 2008, continuing in the Pride vein. However, today’s MMA climate is significantly different to that experienced by Pride.  

It has been speculated this harsh environment now experienced by Dream, Sengoku and others could be due to the yakuza scandal tainting the attitudes of the Japanese public towards MMA. “I don’t think the public have changed their views, but it is not as available as it once was,” suggests Borre Martinsen. “Gyms are still doing well, and there is still a solid fan-base there, it’s just not mainstream anymore.” Zach Arnold agrees: “I don’t think the attitude of the fans has really changed, but the money involved has. K-1 always has been involved in a more casual-fan product versus a hardcore product mass-marketed like Pride.”  

Japanese MMA on the brink?

If there’s truth to the rumors that certain Japanese promotions are struggling financially, are Dream and Sengoku close to collapse? Although notoriously inflated, announced attendance figures for Japanese MMA events are often the only data available to draw any kind of conclusion. Although Dream started well, averaging crowds of around 18,000 during 2008, that number slipped to 13,000 for 2009, not including New Year’s Eve events. Sengoku, however, is in even worse shape. While its first event pulled 15,000 spectators, the second saw a 40% drop. The company has since chosen not to release attendance figures. When J-Rock, the management company of many of Sengoku’s stars such as popular Olympic judoka Hidehiko Yoshida, left the company’s power structure in the closing months of 2009 it added to speculation the company was in severe difficulty.  

If the yakuza scandal failed to waiver Japanese fans’ support for MMA, but new promotions are still struggling, why were the new promotions not able to continue Pride’s success? Zach Arnold suggests that after Pride’s fall the company’s fans failed to transition to K-1’s particular brand of MMA: Dream. Daniel Herbertson agrees: “They were selling a different product. Freak-show fights had always rated well, but for a time [Dream owners] FEG made that their entire product and eventually people stopped caring because the fights were just so stupid.” The numbers support that idea. While Pride events drew 26,000 spectators on average during its last calendar year of operation, the FEG-owned HERO’s only managed just under 17,000 on average during its lifetime. When HERO’s changed to Dream after Pride fell, that number only improved to just over 18,500. Perhaps Pride fans were only Pride fans. It seems that both television and the kind of fights MMA fans are given have been the architects of the Japanese scene’s slow progress.  

Mixed martial arts’ origins lie in Japan and the country will always be the sport’s spiritual home, but focus is now drawn to the strength of Japanese MMA’s future. When Dream and Sengoku co-promoted an event on New Year’s Eve 2009, fans began to talk of a permanent merger between the two being the best way to improve both companies’ fortunes. Borre Martinsen and Bas Rutten support that idea, although Daniel Herbertson says, “A single recognizable product would certainly help. Name recognition with the events isn’t great.” He suggests twice-yearly crossover events could be more fruitful. But Justin ‘Juggs’ Dee isn’t a fan of a merger at all: “If they did, and it went under, they’d be back to square one again. If they stayed separate promotions and one went under, the other could carry on the banner and be stronger with the help of the former fighters and employees [of the failed company].”  

An alternative suggestion is that the UFC, with its recent acquisitions of Japanese stars Takanori Gomi and Yoshihiro Akiyama, could make a successful play for a share of the MMA market in Japan. “No I don’t think so,” says Herbertson. “They have no regular exposure on TV so they can’t capture any casual fans, which is where the money is. Their product just isn’t what Japanese fans are looking for,” he reasons. “They are still perceived as the company that destroyed Pride, no matter how incorrect that is.” Zach Arnold thinks it unlikely also: “They would have to sell a stake of their company to a TV network to even get it to happen. Even if that happened, that TV network would want matchmaking control and the UFC refuses to do so.”  

The future of Japanese MMA is incredibly hard to predict but it’s certain that Pride’s glory days placed Japan at the center of the MMA world. Could that happen again? “Of course, it’s still the ‘land of the samurai’, that’s imbedded in that country,” says Bas Rutten. “They need a new superstar like Sakuraba again though. Sure they have really good fighters right now, but Sakuraba was something else.” Justin ‘Juggs’ Dee is slightly less hopeful. “It will be huge again here in Japan. It’s just that the UFC is now globally recognized as the epitome of what MMA is and the UFC has the fans and the finance to back its future. So MMA in Japan will always be second largest. But that is totally cool with the Japanese because, as selfish as it sounds, they only really care about what’s happening in Japan.”  

1989

May: Shooto holds a professional event for the first time with a unique emphasis on real ‘shoot’ fighting. 

1993

September: The first Pancrase event is held, the fantastically titled, ‘Yes We Are Hybrid Wrestlers’. 

1994

July: Rickson Gracie wins the first Shooto-initiated Vale Tudo Japan tournament. 

1997

October: Pride FC promotes its first event.  

2000

May: Royce Gracie fights Kazushi Sakuraba in a 90-minute battle during the first Pride Grand Prix. 

2000

December: Smackgirl, a female-only MMA promotion, organizes its first event.  

2003

August: Chuck Liddell and Ricco Rodriguez represent the UFC by competing at Pride Total Elimination 2003. 

2005

March: K-1 kickboxing promotion owner, FEG, starts its first pure MMA organization: HERO’s. 

2006

April: Allegations of yakuza involvement with Pride are made in weekly newspaper, Shukan Gendai.

2006

June: Free-to-air channel Fuji TV terminate their television contract with Pride due to the yakuza scandal. 

2006

October: Las Vegas hosts Pride 32: The Real Deal, the first Pride event held outside of Japan. 

2007

March: Zuffa, parent company of the UFC, buys the troubled Pride FC. 

2007

June: FEG promote Dynamite USA in Los Angeles, featuring the MMA debut of Brock Lesnar.  

2007

October: Zuffa officially closes Pride’s offices confirming the organization’s end. 

2007

October: The formation of Sengoku, a new MMA promotion, is announced. 

2007

December: One-off event, Yarennoka! is held on New Year’s Eve by a conglomerate of Japanese promotions as a farewell to Pride fans. 

2008

February: FEG announces a partnership with former DSE executives that sees HERO’s become Dream.

2008

March: New promotions Sengoku and Dream hold their first events ten days apart. 

2009

October: Dream holds its twelfth event in a cage, only the second Japanese organization to use the structure, after Cage Force. 

2009

December: Dream and Sengoku hold an inter-promotional New Year’s Eve event.