PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 決勝戦（プライドグランプリにせんさん けっしょうせん）2003年11月9日

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シリーズ PRIDE（PRIDE GRANDPRIX）
主催 DSE
開催年月日 2003年（平成15年）11月9日
開催地 日本
東京都文京区
会場 東京ドーム
開始時刻 午後3時
試合数 全8試合
放送局 フジテレビ（地上波）
スカイパーフェクTV!（PPV）
入場者数 67,451人（超満員札止め）

HEY IS ANYBODY ELSE SUPER STOKED FOR THE RIGHTLY ESTEEMED AND CORRECTLY VENERATED PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 決勝戦（プライドグランプリにせんさん けっしょうせん）IN WHICH 決勝戦 / せんさん けっしょうせん / KESSHŌSEN CONSISTS OF THREE KANJI THE FIRST MEANING "DECIDING" THE SECOND MEANING "VICTORY" AND THE THIRD INDICATING "MATCH" WHICH WHEN ALL COMBINED UP IN A MANNER NOT UNLIKE VOLTRON (it occurs to me that all such and like allusions to the formation of Voltron [known too of course as Beast King GoLion {百獣王ゴライオン / Hyaku Jūō Goraion / The King of Hundred Beasts GoLion}] are also almost inescapably Wu-Tang allusions as well, and it occurs to me further and only just now that the Voltron series aired only nine years before Raekwon's reference to that particular way in which he is likely to form when one sees him on the real [he speaks this words on a track, which, when speaking its name aloud, I refer to exclusively as "Shame on a Fellow"] which seems like a quicker turnaround than I would have guessed before I took a sec and performed the [advanced] math[ematics] by which this revelation was reached) COME TOGETHER TO MEAN "FINALS" (makes sense)? Because I know that I for sure am. I will admit that our recent experience of PRIDE 武士道 -其の壱- (プライド ぶしどう そのいち / puraido bushidō sono ichi / PRIDE Bushido 1) left me wearier than I think I have ever been of at the end of any of these shows, and I am including here (loosely recalled, from years-back memory [we've been at this a while! {we really took quite a break for a bit there didn't we}]) even the earliest PRIDEs that famously go on forever (and for so little), despite how much I enjoyed (really quite a bit!) bouts featuring both Carlos Newton and 中村和裕 Nakamura Kazuhiro in the early going of that last one. It isn't even that it was terrible! It was just wearying! "The really bad movies you can write about with some passion and anger," Pauline Kael wrote pretty late in her life. "It’s the mediocre ones that wear you down." (She went on to say that "[t]hey’re disgusting to write about because you can feel yourself slipping into the same mediocrity and stupidity," which is pretty rough even for Pauline Kael! Let's not let little problems turn into big problems, Pauline Kael!) 

THE GOONIEST AFTERMARKET SHITROCK IMAGINABLE ONCE MORE WELCOMES US TO AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRESENTATION OF PRIDE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIPS AND OH NO DAMON PERRY IS BACK and he is once again identifying himself as "The Dog." I had mistakenly thought that, for good or ill, we had fully entered the Mauro Ranallo era? Of saying things? About the matches? And yet no, here is Perry, next to a combat-fatigued (in the sense of his attire, rather than his state of sleepiness [although who can say]) Bas Rutten, who is sending this one out "to the troops in Iraq," and to further this show of solidarity, he offers a poster he has had commissioned to indicate this support (selflessly, it is a poster of him with his championship belts). They are joined by UFC light-heavyweight champion Randy Couture (he is part of a visiting contingent of UFCists including Dana White and at least one Fertitta in support of Chuck Liddell), who carries on with them lightly. This is all thoroughly charmless however I remain confident that once we are into the show proper and also mostly tune out the commentary we will start to have just a tremendous time together.

OKAY YES THAT IS IN FACT MUCH MORE LIKE IT NOW THAT WE FIND OURSELVES AMIDST THE 67,451人 HERE ASSEMBLED IN THE  東京ドーム  TŌKYŌ DŌMU (that's probably a little high as far as 人-count goes [I'm sure Dave Meltzer will let us know below) and our first contest sees the large Gary Goodridge (who was in good spirits in his recent Dark Side of the Cage appearance) and the larger-still Dan Bobish, a former collegiate wrestler known for his really very quick fights, both in victory and defeat. This bout turns out to be heavily "Bobish-coded," too, as our very large friend is felled in but eighteen seconds, punched a great deal while attempting to indicate to referee 島田 裕二 Shimada Yūji that he is having a problem with his eye. Replays would seem to suggest, but of course cannot entirely confirm, that he was perhaps not poked in the eye so much as he was punched in it in a manner that is entirely in keeping with the rules of the sport but not, I hasten to add, in keeping with the rules of being nice (hands, let us never forget, are for helping).

Altogether too much (like ten minutes) in the way of taped bits and bobs before Quinton Jackson's semi-final contest with Chuck Liddell (oh hey both the semi-finals and the finals of the Middleweight Grand Prix will be contested this same night, which is a thing I may have neglected to state explicitly thus far, but there you go) and they're not any good to watch. Also Perry and Bas Rutten have this running "gag" where they are pretending to be soldiers of some kind and are barking things back and forth at each other cartoonishly. Joining us on commentary is Dana White, and—at the risk of spoilerz, and with all due respect to Chuck Liddell, with whom I neither have nor can truly imagine cause for quarrel—I am eager to hear how sad he gets in this one (I have no clear memory of the sadness). Jackson walks out in a lucha mask of some sort (if it is reference to a particular luchador, it is one unknown to me [I am largely ignorant in such matters]); Chuck Liddell, for his part, arrives in a UFC hockey sweater, an absurdity in that they do not even have a team of that. My assumption is that these semi-final bouts will follow the "two-round, ten-minute-five-minute" format recently introduced in PRIDE BUSHIDO, but I am not sure we have been told that just yet (perhaps we have, and I missed it for all my typings). AWAY WE GO THEN and both fighters look comfortable to box in the early going, and Jackson is actually tagging Liddell pretty squarely with the jab. Liddell's punches are many things, but "straight" does not rank first amongst their virtues, so I suppose it stands to reason that a well-placed jab could give him trouble? Who is not given trouble, though, by a well-placed jab, probably? I don't know anything about any of this, to be clear. White laments that Liddell is not kicking more, and worries that this is "turning into a boxing match," which seems to him "a bad move." Liddell throws his ludicrous (and often ludicrously successful!) overhand right for the first time, and not only does it not connect, but Jackson counters with a shot that leaves Liddell backtracking wobblingly against the ropes. Chuck Liddell is super tough, as you may have heard about, but Jackson is a much, much more skilled boxer, it would seem, and halfway through this ten-minute opening round, Liddell looks tired and hurt and overmatched, and Dana White is very sad and quiet (oh no). The crowd ooooooohs in anticipation as the fighters clinch in the corner and Jackson reaches low as though to slam, scoopingly (are you familiar with the Azeri 掬投 sukui-nage? one of the neater 手技 te-waza [hand technique] lifts you're likely to see! we worked through this approach over two recent sessions at the club and everybody did great! although spectacular, it is less demanding in execution than you might expect! [and really it's like anything else: you gotta get low and dig]). The slam does not come, but, after further punching, Jackson does dump Liddell to the mat with a 双手刈 morote-gari two-hand reap despite Liddell's rope-grabbing (for which I generally find fighters blameless the first time [or so] in any bout, as it is pretty instinctive I think). One of Liddell's great strengths, you will perhaps recall, though, is his ability, once grounded, to just plain-old get back up, and he does so here: from guard, to turtle, to right back up (note the important step in the middle there [I will continue to extoll the virtues of the turtle, as you have no doubt learned throughout the many thousands of words we have shared together, even though we are long past the point where anyone of substance has anything of substance to say against this important position that also has a friendly and likeable name). Oh man Liddell is in rough, rough shape, staggering and stumbling back from an uppercut, and no sooner does he regain his feet but he is grounded once more by a lovely 大内刈 ouchi-gari finish to a 双手刈 morote-gari that comes in a little high to start. And then we have the elbows, just all of the elbows, all directed to the body (elbows to the head are not permitted in 寝技 newaza under PRIDE FC rules), and Liddell is utterly spent. As Jackson moves effortlessly into first the half-guardity of 二重絡み niju-garami and then the right-up-on-topness of 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame, encountering no resistance along the way, Liddell's corner wisely throws in the towel at 3:10 of the second round. That was even more decisive than I remembered. Yikes.

In a backstage "bit," Damon Perry, assuming the rôle of at best a fool, and at worst something a good deal uglier, refers to Bas Rutten's Big Book of Combat (it really is a very big book [of combat]) as "my Hong Kong Book of Kung-Phooey [sic]" which, first of all, is not even an accurate allusion, in that the mail-order kung fu manual in Hanna-Barbera's at-least-lightly-problematic (depends on how you feel about Scatman Crothers making mock-Chinese-language sounds in the mid-1970s, I suppose, but I don't feel great about it) Hong Kong Phooey was called The Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu. It wouldn't make sense for Hong Kong Phooey to look up new techniques in it every week if it was his book that he'd written! Get your shit together, Damon Perry (and also maybe settle down dude). Perry further notes that "nobody thinks [吉田 秀彦, Yoshida Hidehiko] has a chance against Silva here, and as a matter of fact this fight might be a little too easy for Silva heading into the finals." Haha okay! "This fight is over early," Perry says definitively, which is weird because of how it is yet to transpire, but we know that when it does, it ends up being Silva's first match to go the distance in three years, and, if I am not mistaken, one that Silva was probably losing at the end of the ten-minute first round. Perhaps I am mistaken in my recollection of that last detail but I guess we'll just see. Rutten is not so sure about all of this: "Do not underestimate this man," are his final words on Yoshida before the bout begins, "I tell you, do not underestimate him,"  whereas Perry's reply is "Bas, I'm gonna underestimate him." I really, really don't like Damon Perry, for really any number of reasons so far (more to come I bet!). 

Hey would you believe that Yoshida is cornered by 高阪 剛 Kōsaka Tsuyoshi, he of our titular scissors? And that young 中村和裕 Nakamura Kazuhiro is here too? You would? Okay than let us not dwell on it as we are underway! And everybody is almost alarmingly stoked! Yoshida survives Wanderlei's just-getting-warm micro-flurries in the early going, then clinches, judoingly, and not only puts Silva on his back with a scooping 双手刈 morote-gari, but, after the initial lift, calmly turns and sets Silva down precisely where he would prefer him to be (so as not to get all tangled in the corner, one assumes). 

The crowd delights in this, somewhat. Silva, often a little better on the ground than you might expect, starts to turn his hips in search of an 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame that, understandably, he does not find, as Yoshida flattens him out quite squishingly, but it was totally a good try. Perry says that this contest has already gone longer than "some" expected (I wonder who[m{st}]?), and does concede that there do exist several confirmable human persons—both Gary Goodridge, for one, and his second, Tom Erikson, to name but two—spoke well of Yoshida's chances ahead of this. Yoshida lands some seemingly solid punches (though the stalwart Silva is unfazed) before Silva connects his legs in a fairly crafty 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime attempt that Yoshida does well to weather and, to enormous applause, stack towards a near-side escape (some say always go near-side! others say always go far-side! others say it depends!). During Silva's searching application of the technique, Bas explains several approaches to finishing the strangle, or transitioning to the closely related 関節技 kansetsu-waza (joint-lock) of 腕挫三角固 ude-hishigi-sankaku-gatame (the triangle armbar), to which Damon Perry responds, "yes, you can see that in the Hong Kong Book of Kung-Phooey [sic]," which he must legitimately think is a really funny thing to say, and not completely dismissive of Bas' analysis (I mean, just for starters); Bas brushes it off with no reaction (indeed the reaction of no reaction) and returns to talking about, like, holds and such. 

As the fighters are repositioned to the centre after a stop-don't-move-stop-don't-move situation, the crowd briefly thrills to the faintest indication of Yoshida's already-signature 袖車絞め sode-guruma-jime sleeve-wheel choke, but before you know it, Silva has fought his way back into the relative safety of the turtle position and, from there, employs the principle of 双手刈 morote-gari to put Yoshida on his back, which excites Perry on Silva's behalf, but Bas insists that this is not a good position for Wanderlei, which Yoshida's credible attempts at 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame would seem to confirm. Silva sneaks the occasional punch through, but on the whole, Yoshida keeps Silva's arms tied up pretty well, and keeps his hips fairly active (and thus fairly threatening). Silva understandably wearies of this, and chooses to stand up out of Yoshida's guard and kick the legs until the referee calls for a restart standing. Not long thereafter, Yoshida throws with a 腰技 koshi-waza (hip technique) perhaps indeed a 腰車 koshi-guruma (hip wheel [it's a good one! great for beginners!]):   

Yoshida maintains his 釣手 tsurite (lifting hand) grip around Silva's head and, even though he has not yet passed the legs, squeezes tight and cuts his hips in 腰切 koshi-kiri fashion as though he was already, in a sense, executing the scarf hold of 袈裟固 kesa-gatame (which he is not, as he is still all tuckled inside Silva's guard). This approach with one's hips, this cut that seems too early, participates in the Tozi (after Roberto Toziat)/Sao Paulo approach to passing one sometimes sees in response to an overhook in the 小室 宏二 Komuro Kōji / コムロック KOMUROKKU / Komlock mode. A great pal and I were talking about this just the other night as we addressed matters arising from a particularly crafty entry into the シバロック Shiba Lock (jump to thirty seconds into that excellent clip to see two-time Olympic [and plus also world] champion [-78kg] Kayla Harrison bested Shiba-lockingly by Olympic and world champion 濵田 尚里 Hamada Shōri [who also picked up a world championship in sambo, I think just to see about it mostly, and further: "As of July 2021, her rank in the Ground Self-Defense Force of Japan is captain.[9][10] She is often referred to as the "Newaza no Jouou (Queen of Newaza)" or "Newaza-shi (Newaza Master)" in Japanese media.[11][12][13]. She also favors using various shimewaza (choking techniques) to finish her fights. In Japan her relentless newaza attack is often compared to an ant-lion larvae attacking ants.[15][16][17]"] that enigmatically first appeared on YouTube years ago as "Mysterious Newaza" (UPDATE: at judo just last night, in spare moments I took aside too other old guys in separate instances, applied the Shiba Lock entry first depicted in "Mysterious Newaza" [years before anyone in the west was saying Shiba Lock], and when I asked "is this familiar?" they were both like "is this the Mysterious Newaza"? an absolutely incredible moment shared amongst old guys at judo). You really really really don't want beginners cutting a hip to the mat before they have passed at least one of 受け/uke's legs (even though they often really seem to want to), because it gets them swept and pinned pretty much immediately! And yet it is a crucial element of this Tozi/Sao Paulo approach, which offers important options against the Komlock (a position which Komura himself describes as simply 腕挫腋固 ude-hishigi-waki-gatame, but he accepts that it is the Komlock now [his cross to bear I suppose]). When to introduce, or rather reintroduce, this seemingly-too-soon hip-cut into an early-newazaist's repertoire? It's hard to say! There's so much to consider! But for now perhaps we will return to the matter more immediately before us, in which we see Silva work his arms back inside the true mess of Yoshida's squishing, as he establishes, in time, Silva does, a conventional open guard. Yoshida stands up and out of it, and as he tries to figure how best to engage, the first round ends, clearly in Yoshida's favour. "You see that Wanderlei is breathing heavily," Bas notes. "He had a bad first round." Silva does look tired in his corner, but he is no one's fool of mixed fighting, and has certainly been through worse. In the other corner, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka is low-key hyping up his boy.

After a two-minute reprieve (a sensible special allowance of an extra minute between rounds for tournament matches), we begin the second and final five-minute frame as Bas acknowledges Kohsaka in Yoshida's corner, and speaks highly of him as he recalls their UFC fight of yore (we addressed it here as a little treat alongside RINGS 1/23/99: WORLD MEGA-BATTLE TOURNAMENT 1998: GRAND FINAL). The crowd: stoked! Me: too! 

As round two begins, Yoshida comes in low for a single-leg 朽木倒 kuchiki-taoshi (a rotted-tree drop! that's pretty vivid!) but Silva deftly sprawls atop him and connects with two solid knees, and maybe a glancing punch, too, as Yoshida comes back to his feet, smiling and shaking his head in a gesture that manages to communicates at once both "oh it's no bother" and "lol Jesus Christ" (will you join me in reflecting upon how we might best keep a holy lent?) which feel like complete opposites and yet this thesis and antithesis find their synthesis in this little moment that the crowd digs on deeply (I too am the crowd). "Yoshida is tough," says Bas. (Should you wish to consider these moments more closely, they begin at this point in the Japanese-language broadcast of this bout that I am pleased to have found just on YouTube [it is always worth checking]). As round two deepens, things get nuts: Silva connects with a left high-kick that just totally, completely gets through, and Yoshida's sizeable bean is lit up by this left high-kick, and that selfsame bean is then at least lightly gotten-to by a huge right hook that follows just after, and yet Yoshida remains very much standing, and as collected as you could ever imagine given the overall circumstance. But, at the same time, he would clearly prefer this literally never happen to him ever again, and so Yoshida drops low to again try the double (no dice), pops right back up, and wildly slugs his way into that same 釣手 tsurite (lifting hand) position that he threw 腰車 koshi-guruma from previously. Silva's no doubt super slippery head (they are both quite sweaty guys at this point) pops out of this headlock grip pretty quickly, though, and here comes the punching. They meet in the centre of the ring with what I can only imagine to be like maybe two-and-a-half minutes left? Wanderlei begins to think about kicks to the leg, which are of course a huge, huge vulnerability for Yoshida, in that his knees have largely been ground to dust by decades of gentleness. Rather than hang at distance and eat any more of those, Yoshida keeps coming forward behind deeply untutored punches that are nevertheless giving Silva trouble. Silva, for his part, flails somewhat wildly too (there's nothing remotely straight about any of these punches) but obviously with infinitely greater ménace than Yoshida is capable of. "What a fight!" Bas yells as the fighters take the centre of the ring again. "My god. Who could have expected this?" It really, really is quite a thing. 

With two minutes to go, neither athlete looks like they have a whole lot left, but I would say Silva looks the fresher, and he is also bleeding from the mouth way, way less than his opponent. Yoshida again drops low, but it does not work out for him, as he eats a knee and ends up in the bottom portion of 二重絡み niju-garami with no more than a minute to go. AAAAAAAAND YOSHIDA SWEEPS FROM HALF-GUARD IN THE DYING SECONDS BECAUSE OF COURSE HE WOULD OH MAN I HAD FORGOTTEN THIS PART. As the final bell rings, Yoshida's face is an absolute mess aside from his smile; Silva raises both arms aloft as though he is sure of the win, or at least to create the impression of that certainty (hey, either way). I agree with Bas Rutten's assessment that even if Yoshida were to take the decision win—a plausible outcome, given his winning performance in the ten-minute first, and his ability to stick around throughout a battering second and finish positionally strong, although he definitely took far more damage for sure—it would seem unlikely he would be able to compete later that same night in the tournament final. It is totally fair, totally appropriate, and ultimately for the best that Wanderlei Silva takes the unanimous decision victory in this, the fight that is I believe at the heart of the assertion of my dear old friend TOM—who long maintained hundreds-deep mixed fighter rankings that surpassed by an order of magnitude what anyone else was doing in that regard (and yet this, again by orders of magnitude, is almost certainly the least remarkable thing about TOM, a man who contains vast multitudes)—that pound-for-pound, or I suppose minute-for-minute, Hidehiko Yoshida may have had the most entertaining mixed-fight career of anyone so far/ever. I agree with TOM! About that!

A reasonable wonderance about which you might well be wondering about might well be, "I wonder (about) what would happen were one of the semi-final-bout winners unable to compete in the tournament final this selfsame night?" Well, I'll tell you (he's going to tell): there's an alternates match! And it sounds like a good one, too: Dan Henderson and Murilo Bustamante! I don't remember this one at all, but clearly recall their second match, a closely contested welterweight title fight on the 2005 New Year's Eve show. This one is contested less closely, in that Henderson stops Bustamante with a knee and then many, many punches in less than a minute, and really I think it could have been stopped after the initial knee. Yikes. 

We turn now to a supplemental file taken from the Japanese-language broadcast so that we might enjoy the works of the redoubtable Heath Herring (entrance music: "The Man Comes Around") and the oft-baffling 山本宜久Yamamoto Yoshihisa (entrance music: Gary Moore's "Speak for Yourself"), who has oft-baffled us since earliest Fighting Network RINGS days (Fighting Network DAYS). These 東京ドーム  TŌKYŌ DŌMU entrances, man; they are really something. 

I am inclined to say that it's hard to think this can go well at all for Yamamoto—a fighter whose career record ends up, in time, at a troubled and troubling 15W-26-1D (and that record is at least lightly padded by a number of RINGS bouts that were not quite on the level [in that they were totally fake {compellingly so though!}])—but it must be said too that nobody expected him to last the better part of twenty minutes against Rickson Gracie, did they? Things can be very surprising. And you know what, Yamamoto does really well here! Shows what I know! He spent a few early moments very much self-entangled in the ropes so as not to have to actually fight very much (he must have been feeling shy), but when he really set to it, he actually had Herring in some pretty bad (in fact genuinely terrible) positions at times in both the ten-minute first round and the first five-minute round that followed. Who would have figured? For sure not me! Something I have tended to overlook at times is Yamamoto's sheer size: he's six-three, and a true heavyweight, which is somehow not how I think of him. It is also possible, I suppose, that thirty fights into his career, and coming off back-to-back emphatic losses to first Fedor Emelianenko and then Mirko Cro Cop, Heath Herring, though still a young man, has maybe lost a step? A little? In the hard-fought third round, though, Herring finds his way to the naked strangle of 裸絞 hadaka-jime (after like a squillion knees and assorted other happenings) to end this much, much more entertaining match than I ever would have guessed. Shame on me! (for any number of reasons but at present this one principally). Herring honestly doesn't look thrilled with his performance, and I can understand why, but also I think he shouldn't be too hard on himself. 

Ahead of his bout with 桜庭 和志 Sakuraba Kazushi, Kevin Randleman tells the horrible tale of an awful automobile accident that followed his recent seizure? And now he is going to do more professional fighting? Seems bad to do, man. At least he is unlikely to be hit to any great extent in this one, as that is not really Kazushi Sakuraba's game, is it? I'm not sure why it isn't included in the file(s) we have before us (and for which I am ever grateful), but this is the occasion of Sakuraba's celebrated Super Mario entrance, which seems about as charming as it gets, but which then gets way, way less charming once you read about the extent to which Kevin Randleman was likened to Donkey Kong in all of this (guys guys guys hear me out: let's just go with Bowser on this one, please [they did not hear me out]). A surprisingly uneventful first round—given that these are two eventful guys—sees Kevin Randleman caught for several minutes inside the "diamond" leg configuration that so often precedes the front-facing triangle choke of 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime but, in this instance, that is not what it ends up preceding (I have no doubt Sakuraba is trying). This is the longest I think I have seen any single grappling position held without the referee's intervention since the earliest, endlessmost PRIDES. Sakuraba is making no significant moves towards a finish, and Randleman is ignoring all opportunities for passing (or even for hitting) that this position provides. The crowd is flatly like "huh," and I join them in this. 

The most interesting occurrence in the second round occur[ence]s when Randleman bites so fully on Sakuraba's feinted takedown that, in effect, he sprawls on air. Also there is a nice camera angle that shows a whole bunch of screens. 

And that's about it. The crowd's "huh" only deepens. How about the third, though! Maybe it will rule! Hey good news, it kind of does, in that Sakuraba secures a 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami/reverse-arm-entanglement/double-wrist-lock/Kimura-grip once Randleman takes his back, rolls through in the manner of 隅返 sumi-gaeshi, and finishes, in time, with 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame. Tidy! 

Oh hey I had honestly forgotten about the INTERIM HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH that is between ANTONIO RODRIGO NOGUEIRA and MIRKO "CRO COP" FILIPOVIC and which therefore SHOULD BE GOOD. Pride's heavyweight champion, Фёдор Влади́мирович Емелья́ненко / Fyodor Vladimirovich / Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko Yemelyanenko / Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko, has a broken thumb (he broke it first uponst the dome of Gary Goodridge, and aggravated the injury in training), and in his absence, this is clearly the match to make, even if Filipovic fought only a month ago (it took him mere seconds in that recent outing to kick Dos Caras Jr. / Alberto very much atop the head). Cro Cop, you will recall, has been beating everyone, and beating them quickly; Nogueira, you will also recall, is significantly better at this than everyone in the world who is not Fedor Emelianenko. And we're off! The first half of the ten-minute first round goes reasonably well for Nogueira, in that, although his early takedown attempt is sprawled upon, he is able to hug Cro Cop close and swing through to guard, and keep him there for three minutes or so, eating the occasional short right hand, sure, but also staying active with his hips an threatening sweeps that, alas, do not come, but he's doing fine! Once Cro Cop stands up and out of that guard, though, and decides he does not wish to return there, but instead would much prefer to out-strike Nogueira, and then sprawl upon his takedown attempts so forcefully as to make the sit-through to guard unworkable, step away, and wait for Nogueira to stand back up so as to out-strike him further, well, things are very different then, and this is the way things go for kind of a while. In the final seconds of the first, Cro Cop half-connects with a high-kick that puts Nogueira on his back, and as the referee intercedes to signal the end of the round, you can see Nogueira at first upset because he thought the referee was ending the match entirely. Fedor looks on.

Round two starts quite differently, in that Nogueira is able to "turn the corner" and finish his early low, tackling 双手刈 morote-gari, and to move immediately to first 横四方固 yoko-shiho-gatame and then 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame, all just as easy as you please. It's not that Mirko defends poorly here so much as he simply does not defend, and accepts the positions. As Nogueira settles in and starts to land fairly minor (easy for me to say!) but consistent punches, Bas doesn't understand why Cro Cop does not explode right here: "He should start bucking, I'm telling you." There is actually a pretty good reason not to do that right now! But I will hold off on that for a second because things are happening pretty fast, and actually now Bas is very pleased because "that's what I say, there's the buck!" but before he can even finish his thought Cro Cop has been finished with a belly-down 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame which, that's why you wouldn't necessarily just buck when the guy whomst you wish would cut it out and just quit it is Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, a guy who is probably thinking juji from that position from the instant he achieves it (the position I mean), and who can definitely do more than think it. What a match! The crowd is like "oh boy!" and Fedor, in his way, joins them in this. There are tears at the Japanese commentary table, 小池 栄子 Koike Eiko's for sure, plus possibly other ones too (who can say). 高田伸彦 Takada Nobuhiko presents Nogueira the interim championship in a nice little ceremony. So much is happening!  

Well that was great! And we still have the Middleweight Grand Prix final to go! 

Randy Couture joins the English-commentary team for the main event, and, asked about his rival Liddell's underwhelming performance earlier in the evening, Couture answers a little more broadly, and admits that he'd thought Silva had the easier half of the semi-final bracket, but that as it turned out, Yoshida had given Silva a much tougher fight than Chuck Liddell had given Jackson (insanely true, Randy "The Natural" Couture; insanely true). As Jackson is likely to be the fresher fighter, Couture likes his chances. After Silva and Jackson make fairly scary faces at each other during the referee's instructions, the opening moments of the bout are actually light and breezy, in that Silva grabs hold of a 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime in response to Jackson's mighty lift, and they stay in this modified standing front-pack baby-carrier/boost-me-up embrace for the better part of a minute, which is actually a fairly comical amount of time to be like that. 

When they eventually settle down to the mat, Jackson does a reasonable job staying busy with punches here and there, as Silva mostly looks to tie him up. There's a great camera angle that shows SIlva's coach making an "uppy uppy? like, up?" hand-gesture request over and over again, pleading his charge's case, but Jackson is probably doing enough to keep things here indefinitely. 

And actually Silva just came closer than you might expect with an 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame from the bottom! That was neat! But mostly it is Jackson punching here and there, and Silva trying to tie up the arms. 

Here's a curious turn of events, and one that might give us pause: on account of all of this tying up and clinching and holding from the bottom position, referee Yuji Shimada offers Wanderlei Silva the caution and guidance of 指導 shido, a minor, yellow-card penalty. But he also restarts the fighters on their feet. Jackson is, I think understandably, like, what the heck? You are penalizing Wanderlei Silva by giving him exactly what he wants? Not long thereafter, just as one might fear or expect, Silva finishes with a true barrage of awful things, knees and kicks and punches of just the hittingest kind, and although the ever-game Jackson attempts to protest the stoppage, he falls very much over whilst doing so.      

     

Hey what a tournament! Hey what a show! I wonder what DAVE MELTZER HAD TO SAY ABOUT IT: 

 

November 17, 2003:

Poll results, and then a lead story on the coming New Year's Eve broadly, which flows quite naturally into an event recap (great job, Dave!):

"PRIDE FINAL ELIMINATION POLL RESULTS

Thumbs up 281 (100.0%)

Thumbs down 0 (00.0%)

Thumbs in the middle 0 (00.0%)

BEST MATCH POLL

Wanderlei Silva vs. Hidehiko Yoshida 128

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Mirko Cro Cop 74

Wanderlei Silva vs. Quinton Jackson 34

WORST MATCH POLL

Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Kevin Randleman 110

Gary Goodridge vs. Dan Bobish 70

Based on phone calls, e-mails and fax messages to the Observer as of Tuesday, 11/11.

What will likely turn out to be the most heavily publicized non-boxing combat sports match of all-time will headline the biggest one-night promotional war in history.

The 11/6 announcement by K-1 of a New Year’s Eve match pitting Bob Sapp against legendary sumo Akebono (Chad Rowan) was the biggest press conference in company history. More than 17 television stations and 300 reporters attended the press conference where promoter Sadaharu Tanigawa announced the ultimate checkmate in a brewing New Year’s Eve war. The news was so big in Japan that three of Japan’s six networks (TBS, NTV and TV-Asahi) broke into regular programming to telecast the press conference live. It was carried in major newspapers throughout the U.S. and was the topic of conversation on numerous sports talk shows (many of which reported, including the London Times, Los Angeles Times and New York Post that Akebono’s opponent would be Mike Tyson; and the Los Angeles Times reported that K-1 was “so brutal that it is illegal just about everywhere”). While hardly a match that would interest hardcore fans, it will be the biggest match of its kind since the very different 1976 match with Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki. In more of a freak show, the promotional idea right now is that the winner would be set up for a match in April against Tyson. While that would be a huge match for Japan, under anything other than MMA rules, which Tyson isn’t interested in, he would slaughter either of them in ugly fashion.

The rules of the Sapp-Akebono match have not been determined. While not official, it is believed the match will take place at the Nagoya Dome (K-1 does have a hold on the arena already for that night), and be the biggest of three head-to-head MMA spectaculars on network television. K-1 had signed with TBS for the rights for the show, as counterprogramming for NTV’s Inoki Bom Ba Ye (with its own attempt at what, under normal circumstances, would be a huge ratings match with Mirko Cro Cop against either Naoya Ogawa or Yoshihiro Takayama) and the Fuji Network’s broadcast of a Pride spectacular.

The one-night war has led to nearly as big a story, the departure of Antonio Inoki from Pride. Inoki had been working with Pride, both supplying name pro wrestlers and in a matchmaking and producer role, and on many shows, it was the appearance of Inoki that drew a bigger reaction than any of the participants. Inoki and New Year’s Eve had become, over the past three years, something of a Japanese tradition, with Pride being behind three successful shows.

The split was made apparent during the 11/9 Pride show when Nobuhiko Takada was thrust into a public role as almost a new Inoki, complete with his new catch phrase, “You are the man,” which he first said to Kiyoshi Tamura last year after Tamura beat him in his retirement match. Takada buried Inoki publicly during a speech at the show when Pride made the official announcement of being the third group running that night. He asked why on such an historic night in the history of the industry that Inoki made famous, he wasn’t there. He said that Inoki wasn’t there, and brought up that Inoki would have a show on NTV and K-1 had a show on TBS, and asked the fans if Pride should join this war. Of course the fans cheered, and he then called out an executive from the Fuji Network to ringside to announce the show.

At this point, the match between the 6-4 ½ and 350 pound Sapp against the much larger 6-8, 462 pound Akebono (who competed in sumo as heavy as 512), is the only match announced. It is more the ultimate “Celebrity Boxing” style match than a fighting showdown between the top fighters. But the notoriety of the two guarantees incredible curiosity. No pro wrestling or MMA match in history has generated close to this interest in Japan, and under normal circumstances, one would expect it to draw the biggest television rating for an event of its type since the 54.6 rating that Ali vs. Inoki drew live on June 25, 1976. However, it’s going against a traditional NHK musical show which usually the biggest television event of the year in the country, plus two other fighting shows. Unlike a local promotional war, which can create new fans, while this may draw lots of casual fans because of the war hype, ultimately, there are only so many ratings points possible. With networks all throwing blockbusters at each other, there are going to be at least one or two big losers. Still, there are those in Japan TV that are predicting Sapp vs. Akebono will be so big that for the minute or two that match takes place before they both drop from exhaustion, it will get as high as a 50 rating (with the NHK special, that sounds unreasonably high, although I’d believe it could get in that range on a night with less competition). The belief is that almost nobody is going out that night due to the four major television shows.

The New Year’s Eve tradition started in 2000 for the first Inoki Bom Ba Ye, a live worked pro wrestling event featuring shootfighters at the Osaka Dome. Because the gimmick of shootfighters doing pro wrestling had not yet been overexposed, an announced sellout crowd of 42,753 fans (which may be slightly inflated but it was a legit sellout) broke the all-time record for pro wrestling in Japan’s second largest city for a Keiji Muto & Takada vs. Ken Shamrock & Don Frye main event The show also included pro wrestlers Inoki, Kendo Kashin, Yuji Nagata, Naoya Ogawa, Tadao Yasuda, Great Sasuke and Shinya Hashimoto, and battling famous Pride and other MMA stars like Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Gary Goodridge, Renzo Gracie, Bas Rutten, Caol Uno and Ricco Rodriguez.

One year later, Inoki and Pride sold out the Saitama Super Arena with a sellout 35,492 fans, for a show headlined by Yuji Nagata vs. Cro Cop in the match that could have made Nagata into the biggest star in Japanese pro wrestling. But instead, it ended with a Cro Cop high kick in 21 seconds, which got his gimmick over as “The Pro Wrestler Hunter.” This was before people realized how much upper body power Cro Cop had to power out of a clinch from a former national Greco-roman wrestling champion. The other big match put Tadao Yasuda on the map, beating K-1 star Jerome LeBanner, which Yasuda won with a forearm choke to set him up for an IWGP title run. More important, NHK every New Year’s Eve runs the Red & White sing-off, which is a television show with popularity equivalent to the Super Bowl in the United States. Two years ago, that show did a 48.0 rating, but Inoki’s show on TBS did a 14.9, making it the biggest counter-programming success against the show in the history of Japanese television.

Last year, Pride and Inoki joined forces again, drawing a sellout 35,674 to the Saitama Super Arena for a show headlined by Sapp vs. Yoshihiro Takayama. This was a unique situation where the first and second place finisher in nearly every Pro Wrestler of the Year awards that had just been announced, were going to face off under Pride rules in a shoot. Sapp won in 2:16 with an armbar. The NHK special did a 47.3 rating, while Inoki’s special did a 16.5 on TBS, and the main event did a 24.5.

The success of the Inoki shows saw Fuji and NTV both attempt to gain the Inoki show for this year. NTV got Inoki for a three-year contract for the Bom Ba Ye show. The first thing they did was sign Cro Cop to a deal for all three shows. They are also making a play for Peter Aerts, whose contract ends this year. Aerts, a past-his-prime K-1 legend who has one of the biggest names of any foreign star from his heyday from winning three World Grand Prix’s. At the 11/11 press conference at the NTV offices, Inoki, Cro Cop and Cro Cop’s agent, Miro Miyatobich announced the show. Inoki also announced the theme of the event would be Japanese pro wrestlers vs. real fighters from all over the world. He announced Takayama, Ogawa and Kazuyuki Fujita, and even through out the wild card of negotiating with Rickson Gracie. However, that appears to be premature aside from Cro Cop, as Takayama’s manager than announced that they had received no offer from Inoki’s side. He said Takayama was willing to fight on New Year’s Eve, and was open to fighting for which ever of the three groups ended up offering the best deal.

With Pride no longer working with Inoki and the K-1 show a guaranteed winner, as much as it could possibly be given the night and competition, Inoki is the best bet to be the big loser. Maybe not on the 12/31 date if they can put together an intriguing full line-up, but in the long-run, looking at the financial disasters some of the pure Inoki MMA events have been in recent years.

TBS checkmated everyone with Sapp vs. Akebono, plus they are looking at a big fight from Masato, the middleweight K-1 fighter who has become a big star this year. Inoki will run his show from Kobe Wings Stadium, a soccer stadium that would hold just under 50,000. He was planning on building around a pro wrestler facing Mirko Cro Cop in continuation of a big money program. There had been talk of putting Josh Barnett as Cro Cop’s opponent, because Barnett would have a chance to win, and theoretically that would make him a big star for New Japan. However, there were television people who felt Barnett didn’t have the name appeal to draw ratings and didn’t want a foreigner vs. foreigner main event. The network wanted a name Japanese wrestler like Takayama or Ogawa, who would garner interest but would get slaughtered, against Cro Cop. Takayama has always been game for taking a beating for the cause, but Ogawa, a 1992 Olympic silver medalist in judo at 286 pounds, has been reluctant in real shoots (he’s had tons of money thrown at him, and I’m skeptical he’s ever done a real match). I’d consider it an extreme longshot there is enough money in this world to get him in the ring with Cro Cop. Ogawa has a great track record as a television draw, putting big numbers on the board for matches with the likes of Riki Choshu, Shinya Hashimoto, Masaaki Satake and Matt Ghaffari. He was the premiere mainstream television draw in the Japan wrestling world before the rise of Bob Sapp.

Inoki seemed to come out as big a loser as Dana White and UFC at the Pride Tokyo Dome show when Cro Cop was submitted by Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. But maybe not, as in another interesting statement, after Nogueira won, in the Pride ring, he thanked Inoki and his company. Pride came out of the show with several big guns available, in particular Hidehiko Yoshida, who got over bigger while losing to Wanderlei Silva, along with Silva and huge arena draw Kazushi Sakuraba. There had been talk of rematching Yoshida and Royce Gracie, but it depends on how badly banged up Yoshida was coming out of the Silva match. Yoshida vs. Silva, if they wait several months for it, could be another Dome sellout, although 12/31 seems a little fast for a rematch. Silva has already announced he would be fighting on that show, but didn’t know his opponent, and then wanted to face Randy Couture in March. Kazushi Sakuraba said that he wanted to face Silva, but wanted to spend New Years Eve with his family and wouldn’t be fighting that night. The competition from the three shows is serious enough that NHK is now trying to contact more higher profile musical acts for its show.

Akebono, 34, signed a multi-million dollar contract for a number of fights after officially sending in his resignation to the Japanese Sumo Association on 11/5. In the strange sumo world, once you leave, you are never allowed to come back. The press conference was very different for Sapp, who usually goes over the top and does pro wrestling style angles to build television ratings for his matches. Instead, he was subdued, and photos were run in every newspaper in the country of Sapp with a man who is much bigger than he is. Akebono, who grew up in Waimanalo, HI, of Samoan descent, joined sumo in 1988,and became a major star in 1992 when he won his first tournament. He became one of the three biggest stars in that sport the next year (along with Japanese brothers Takanohana and Wakanohana). He garnered a ton of U.S. publicity in 1993 when he became the first foreign Yokozuna, and 64th in history. Yokozuna is basically the equivalent of being selected to the Hall of Fame, except it comes while still active and when a competitor is in his prime. There have been only 66 Yokozunas in the century plus long history of the sport. He retired two years ago due to knee problems, which caused him to lose regularly. He claims the two years of rest have done his knees good and was returning to competition so his son could see him fight. Akebono sported a 566-198 career record, winning 11 tournaments, and was the second most popular sumo of the past 15 years. In the sumo world, there is a hierarchy, and when a Grand champion starts to lose, he is phased out as an active competitor in order for him to maintain his legend.

No matter what the rules are, at 462 pounds, he is likely to gas very quickly. He started training four hours a day this past week under South African Steve Caracota, the trainer of both Francois Botha and Mike Bernardo. If it’s K-1 rules, he’d be brutalized by any decent fighter as sumos don’t have the movement nor defensive skills to avoid being anything more than heavy punching bags. In MMA, he would be almost impossible early to knock off his feet with grappling, but wouldn’t have movement for very long at avoiding strikes to the head. As a fight itself, it’s something of a joke. Years ago, Japanese were fascinated by “sumo power,” with the idea of the television behemoths that were national celebrities could beat anyone in a real fight situation because of their balance. However, fight fans are sophisticated enough to know that people who train and specialize in real fights will usually destroy huge novices, even if they are great at specific sports. The fact the public is getting smarter was noted in a national poll on TBS which had 67% of the fans believing Sapp would win. While judo with throws and submissions, wrestling with takedowns and control, and kickboxing can be adapted to MMA, sumo only gives the guy an ability to avoid being bulled and taken down, but without striking offense and defense, there is no finishing skill involved.

While there are no plans for Akebono to do worked matches at this point, all the Japanese media articles labeled him as the fourth Yokozuna in history to join to join the martial arts world. The other three were all short-lived pro wrestlers. Azumafuji, the 40th Yokozuna in history, who retired from sumo in 1954, started pro wrestling in Hawaii in 1955 as the tag team partner of Rikidozan (who was also a star sumo before pro wrestling, but like Genichiro Tenryu, never made it to Yokozuna level). Azumafuji helped popularize pro wrestling in Japan, but was slow moving and a poor wrestler, who didn’t last long. The 54th Grand champion, Hiroshi Wajima, who retired in 1981, garnered tons of publicity when he started in 1986 for All Japan Pro Wrestling. While his early matches drew big ratings, most notably a 23.5 rating, the highest for All Japan in the past two decades for his match with Tiger Jeet Singh. Wajima had many big matches, including once even challenging Ric Flair for the NWA title. But he only lasted a little more than two years before the experiment was deemed a failure. The 60th Grand Champion, Koji Kitao, who was kicked out of sumo in 1989, debuted with New Japan on February 10, 1990 at the Tokyo Dome. Again, his debut, against Bam Bam Bigelow, drew tremendous interest, and the 25.3 rating is the biggest any pro wrestling match has done in Japan of past 16 years. But ultimately, he was also a failure, both in pro wrestling, and later in MMA (although he did get a worked win over Nathan Jones on the very first Pride show on October 11, 1997.

Sumo, which has decreased in popularity in recent years due to the lack of a native born superstar, but is still a huge part of the history culture like baseball would be in the U.S., only bigger, is also rumored to be in danger of losing its current two biggest stars, the only two Yokozunas that have been promoted to that level since Akebono ten years ago, ironically both also foreigners. Musashimaru, a 32-year-old Samoan-born Hawaiian, has just returned after being out for several months with chronic wrist problems, and is in danger of sumo retiring him unless he does well in the current tournament. It is rumored he would also be heading to K-1. The top star in today’s sumo world, Asashoryu, a native of Mongolia, whose two brothers are pro wrestlers, is always rumored to at some point be wrestling-bound.

If the Pride Shockwave/Dynamite show last summer was its equivalent to Wrestlemania III, with the amazing visuals and record attendance, Pride’s Final Conflict on 11/9 was Wrestlemania X-7, the event generally considered the greatest show in the promotion’s history.

With the backdrop of the political situation in Japan, with the Inoki/Pride split and the New Year’s Eve war, Pride put what was, on paper, the strongest show in history. And it largely delivered, with amazing performances in both winning and losing.

When it was over, 27-year-old Wanderlei Silva (it is pronounced Vanderlei, but since he himself spells it with a “W” than that’s what we’ll go with) of Curatiba, Brazil, came out the winner of the toughest tournament in the history of MMA. Silva continued a three-and-a-half year winning streak with wins over Hidehiko Yoshida and Quinton Jackson. Yet even in defeat, Yoshida not only shut up, but made fools of his critics that had labeled him a phony, giving Silva his toughest fight since his 2000 loss to Tito Ortiz. In a sense, with Yoshida losing in what was a close fight, it also shut up critics of Pride who beforehand labeled the judging and promotion itself as a fraud. The match was more than close enough that a decision for Yoshida would have been, well, wrong, but hardly to the level of daily bad decisions in boxing. Yoshida, who decidedly had won the first round before making the mistake of getting caught in a street fight in the corner during the second and abandoning logical strategy and reacting with a savage instinct that played Silva’s game. With Pride’s system of judging the entire fight, Silva did more damage in the shorter second round that he won than Yoshida did in the first. Still, Yoshida was a bigger star in losing, and the fight was such that a rematch would be bigger than the first match, so they’ve established the Japanese “hope” in what has largely come across as a pro wrestling like program building the quest to hand Silva a loss. The show also featured the first loss in the MMA career of Mirko Cro Cop, in a come-from-behind manner by Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Ultimately, what the night proved is that fighting is a game of both skill, luck and timing. The Silva-Yoshida winner was determined more based on when the time limit expired. Yoshida took a pounding in the second round, but had reversed Silva just before time ran out and the fight was close enough that any serious damage from those positions would have wound up with a different result. Cro Cop had Nogueira seconds from being out, with only the bell at the end of the first round saving him. But that fight went exactly as most had thought. Standing, Nogueira would take a pounding. But if he could get Cro Cop down for any length of time, Cro Cop would not be able to withstand the incredible quickness and submission skill. Cro Cop, much like Ortiz after his loss to Randy Couture, was so believing of his hype that it appeared he truly didn’t think he could lose, and was in tears after tapping out.

“My lack of concentration gave Minotauro a chance to take me down,” said Cro Cop in an interview with his local newspaper. “I don’t think I was in real danger while I was mounted. It was a mistake. I tried to get out of it. I should have waited for the end of the round and just taken his punches. I went for a reversal and gave him my hand. That was enough for one of the world’s greatest submission masters. He was a master of BJJ before I even knew what that was. Against an opponent with that much skill, power and grip, one mistake is crucial.” When asked if he could have gotten out of the armbar, he said, “There wasn’t the slightest chance of that. My arm started breaking already. If I didn’t tap, with that kind of injury, I would be out for a year. If he was choking me, I would have taken it as far as I could and risk being put out, but a broken bone is too serious.” He also said that if he was to get a rematch with Nogueira, he would travel to the U.S. and train at one of the best submission schools to learn from real masters of submission. Cro Cop noted that K-1 has offered him a fight on 12/6 at the Tokyo Dome, even though the two were on the outs, and he speculated their advance may not be strong, but he is turning it down to fight on the Inoki Bom Ba Ye show instead.

UFC had a big presence on the PPV, with Dana White commentating in the Chuck Liddell vs. Jackson match, which was a disappointing showing by Liddell, when the corner threw in the towel in the second round. The company’s biggest star, Randy Couture, appeared in a pre-show vignette where he started choking out announcer Damon Perry (he should have finished the job because the announcing, a former strong point of the show, was a weakness here as Bas Rutten lost so much effectiveness when no longer with Stephen Quadros). Perry asked Rutten to help him but Rutten said he didn’t want to hit an old man. Couture said the last guy who called him an old man got spanked, and took Rutten down and spanked him. Perry was particularly annoying in making fun of Yoshida, and he and White at times were largely calling it a three-man tournament and how Silva would have the edge going into the finals. Even wrestling fans I knew who didn’t buy Yoshida having a chance couldn’t believe the way the Pride announcer was burying him before the match started, although it did make for a more dramatic presentation when Yoshida nearly won the fight. Couture came back at the end of the show doing the announcing in the tournament final, Jackson vs. Silva. The show ended with the viewers wanting to see Silva vs. Couture in what would be the next ultimate showdown, which is a style match-up that seems to favor Couture if they ever make it.

The ultimate showdown many had looked forward to, Cro Cop vs. Emelianenko Fedor, will be put on hold for a while. Nogueira became the company’s interim world heavyweight champion, and will face Fedor to basically unify the title tentatively on 2/1 at Osaka Castle Hall. Fedor won the title from Nogueira in convincing fashion on 3/16. The way they match-up, it’s a tough fight for Nogueira as Fedor has the takedown skills and is brutal at G&P. Fedor has years of training at avoiding submissions, Nogueira’s best weapon, and was never in danger during their previous match. During the broadcast, they talked about a 12/21 PPV date (which will be a tape of the 10/5 show but they tried to position it as a new show featuring Team Gracie vs. Team Japan), and a February date, meaning that the New Year’s Eve show will likely not air in North America.

The show was compared by many in the U.S. and Japan to the best Wrestlemania show ever. The crowd at the sold out Tokyo Dome was announced as 67,451, which is a fake number. Previous Pride sellouts at the Dome have announced 53,000ish, and there were more, not less, seats blocked off for the huge screens, the entrance way (which kills all outfield seating), and even a full orchestra that played the entrance music, so a good estimate would be to take 15,000 of that number. The gate was not announced, but it is likely very close to the all-time record of $7.45 million set at Shockwave last year. Why they make up a fake number when the real figure is impressive enough is because of Japanese tradition at this point. Since this show was much bigger than the previous Dome events, I guess the feeling was the attendance had to be equally impressive. Also, K-1 announced 74,500 for its Grand Prix finals last year, and New Japan has announced 70,000 for its biggest shows in the building of the past.

While this will likely pale next to the Sapp-Akebono match, this show had more press coverage than any event of its kind in recent memory. In Japan, the main coverage was built around the Yoshida vs. Silva match, with it removing Sakuraba coverage from the front page of the sports dailies. In all, there were 500 reporters from around the world covering the show, including 50 from outside Japan. Reporters came from the U.S., Brazil, England, South Korea, China, France and Croatia.

Pride is looking at doing an eight-man heavyweight tournament for next year, similar to this one. The tentative plan is to start it around April, with four first round matches on one show, and a semifinal and final a few months later. Silva has talked about moving up to fight heavyweights, which is a big mistake, because he’s a superstar and doesn’t need to get cocky fighting bigger guys, which in this game is the kiss of death. Yoshida would likely go with him since he was cutting from 225 to 205 for the middleweight tournament . Three other slots are givens, Cro Cop, Nogueira and Emelianenko, and on paper that could equal the excitement of this year’s events. Sadly, because of his drawing power, it looks as though Sakuraba is going to attempt to put on weight and also compete in that tournament, as he’s asked for a first round match with Silva.

If there was a complaint, there was too much with the announcers. It was seemed like it was 45 minutes into the show and there had only been 18 seconds of fighting because of all the previews of the tournament and vignettes. Worse, since none of the vignettes were all that entertaining, they cut out many of the ring entrances, which are always a highlight of the Pride show for atmosphere, and eliminated the entire Heath Herring vs. Norihisa Yamamoto fight.

1. Gary Goodridge knocked out Dan Bobish in :18. Bobish greatly hurt his role as the monster foreign star for the dying WJ group. This match was something of a farce, as Goodridge appeared to accidentally put his pinky in Bobish’s eye. The ref didn’t see it. Bobish backed off, looking for a time out and calling attention that his eye had watered up and he couldn’t see. The ref didn’t stop it and Goodridge started wailing on Bobish, who wasn’t fighting back, and the match was stopped. Bobish came off looking bad, but this was bad officiating. Bobish and WJ owner Masaji Fukuda were furious at how this went down. Fukuda then also said he wanted to gain revenge for the company by sending Riki Choshu and Kensuke Sasaki to Pride, which sounds like a horrible idea.

2. Quinton Jackson beat Chuck Liddell in 3:15 of the second round (13:15). Jackson came out wearing a Luchador mask. Liddell came out and early on appeared a little flat and perhaps overtrained. It was an excellent first round and this would have been the fight of the night on most shows. They spent most of the round boxing, with Jackson getting the better of it. For some reason, Liddell didn’t execute the game plan, which was to soften Jackson up with leg kicks, and when they started taking affect, go for the kill. Dana White was doing commentary, and claimed to have $250,000 riding on Liddell winning the tournament (there are many different stories going around about that bet, and I’ve got no idea if it’s legit or not, but from the sound of White, is appeared to be). He let us know the game plan. I’ve been watching wrestling for so long that I was waiting for the run-in. Jackson hit Liddell with solid shots, but Liddell can take a punch. Liddell was cut about the left eye and had his nose bloodied. Jackson went for a takedown, but Liddell blocked it by grabbing the ropes for balance, and was warned about the violation. Jackson got a knockdown right at the end of the round. There was an egg under Liddell’s right eye. Second round was Jackson take Liddell down, and was throwing hard elbows and punches to the ribs and head. Liddell was taking a lot of punishment and finally his corner threw in the towel.

3. Wanderlei Silva beat Hidehiko Yoshida via decision after two rounds (15:00). Not only fight of the night, but maybe of the year. Yoshida took Silva down, and the place went nuts. He went for an armbar, but Silva escaped. Silva from the bottom got a triangle and held it for a long time. Yoshida had it barely blocked, but finally escaped and wound up on top. Yoshida did damage until Silva got up and started kicking his legs hard. Yoshida got up, took Silva down, and was going for a choke, but Silva escaped. Second round saw Silva block a takedown and hit some punches. Yoshida made a mistake in the corner after being hit, as he reacted like he was in a fight and started punching back. Big mistake as he got hammered and was getting tired. His mouth was bleeding bad (he needed five stitches in the mouth later that night) and Silva was doing damage punching on the ground. Yoshida reversed him just before time ran out and appeared in good position to get another choke. Silva got the unanimous decision, but it was a close fight and considering Silva’s experience edge under these rules, it was an amazing performance by Yoshida.

4. Dan Henderson defeated Murilo Bustamante via ref stoppage in :53. In his entire career, Bustamante has never been stopped, as his only losses were decisions to Liddell and Jackson. The two bonked heads. Bustamante went low to get Henderson down, and was met with a knee to the chin. Henderson started throwing punches and it was clear Bustamante’s eyes were glassy and the match was stopped. Henderson winning wasn’t a huge upset, but his winning in this fashion was a shocker. Henderson came out of this deserving a shot at Silva. They met once before with Silva winning a split decision in a war, which was Silva’s second toughest fight of the past three years. Bustamante is protesting the decision, saying he was hurt by a head-butt (it was an inadvertent bonking of the heads and not a head-butt) and that the ref stopped it prematurely (his eyes were glassy). He has sort of a leg to stand on in that the bonking heads, which is a foul, may have partially stunned him, but it was less blatant than in the Sakuraba vs. Nino Schembri fight, and that was a Sakuraba loss that wasn’t overturned (in fact, Sakuraba never once complained about the result). I can see Bustamante’s point, but this was more an example of things that happen in a fight. Of the two, I think Bobish has the more legit gripe because he clearly stopped fighting and needed to clear his eyes, and the ref did nothing, and the replay showed the pinky to the eye. Bustamante kept fighting after the head bonking and it was the knee that knocked him out.

5. Heath Herring beat Norihisa Yamamoto in 2:29 of the third round (17:29). Herring had a big weight advantage, at 245 pounds to 217, but the fight, expected to be a blow-out, was very competitive. Yamamoto was able to stop his takedown with a guillotine, and evade his high kicks. Both got behind the other, but failed to do major damage. Yamamoto took Herring down and mounted him in the second round. In the third round, Herring went for a takedown and Yamamoto grabbed the rope to avoid it. He was given a yellow card, which means there goes 10% of the purse. Herring finally got the North-South and started throwing knees to the head. He got a mount and was pounding, and when Yamamoto turned his head to avoid the punches, he was choked out. This was said to have been a good match.

6. Kazushi Sakuraba beat Kevin Randleman in 2:36 of the third round (17:36). This crowd went nuts at the start of the match, but overall this was long and boring fight. Sakuraba didn’t come out as Hawk, but instead as Super Mario with a big video games entrance, saying he was going to beat Donkey Kong, his nickname for Randleman. Randleman told a story that he was recently in a major car wreck and took 180 stitches to the side of his head. Randleman won the first round with two takedowns, and outwrestled Sakuraba, but didn’t do anything with his position advantages. Randleman opened the second round decking Sakuraba with a straight right. They mostly stayed on their feet and Randleman did damage kicking Sakuraba’s bad knees. Sakuraba threw a wicked kick to the head that connected, but Randleman managed to grab the kick and get a takedown. One thing that was notable was just how good Sakuraba’s balance was, as it wasn’t easy for Randleman to get the takedowns. Randleman took Sakuraba down in a side suplex to open the third round. He continued to outwrestle Sakuraba, until going for a position change, and Sakuraba took advantage and got an armbar. Of course, the place exploded with a big win for Sakuraba, but he did not look good most of the match.

7. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira won the interim Pride world heavyweight title beating Mirko Cro Cop (Mirko Filipovic) in 1:45 of the second round (11:45) in another excellent match. Before the match started (and this didn’t air on the U.S. version), Emelianenko did an interview saying that he would be facing the winner to unify the titles in February. This was a simple match. If it was standing, than Nogueira had almost no chance. If it went to the ground, it was doubtful Cro Cop could avoid submissions from such a skilled guy for very long. It was gripping, because Cro Cop’s shoulder power was enough to avoid a clinch takedown, and his footwork and reflexes for a 220-pounder are awesome in both sprawling and dancing away from a low takedown. Still, Nogueira failed a takedown, but pulled guard right away to neutralize Cro Cop. Cro Cop finally got up at 3:44. Cro Cop took over with punches and liver kicks. Nogueira got a bloody nose quickly. Cro Cop was slowly taking him apart with high and middle kicks, and got the nose again to bloody it worse. Then he went with leg kicks and high kicks. He ended the round with a left high kick followed by a right punch that knocked Nogueira down just seconds before the bell saved him. Nogueira was done. However, the first thing in the second round saw Nogueira surprise Cro Cop with a double leg takedown, then got the side mount. He then got a full mount and Cro Cop was out of his element. He started throwing punches. Cro Cop went for an escape, but Nogueira was ready and snatched the arm and got the armbar. Cro Cop took the pain for a while but finally tapped. The place went nuts at another Nogueira come-from-behind win. Cro Cop couldn’t believe it, looking like Tito Ortiz after the Couture match.

8. Silva beat Jackson in 6:28 to win the tournament. Even though Jackson seemed to have had the easier fight, you could tell when both men got into the ring that Silva was going to win. Jackson was not confident, with abrasions under both eyes. Silva was like a shark that smelled blood. The one thing about Silva that has to be noted is that his stamina on this night was incredible, because he was able to beat Yoshida in the second round partially because Yoshida got tired first. Jackson went for a big slam, but Silva blocked it by trying to get a guillotine. Eventually Jackson managed to place Silva down. Jackson escaped. Silva went for an armbar, but Jackson punched him in the face to break it and threw some knees. Silva was bleeding from the right eye. Jackson was on top, but did little damage. After a stand up, Silva went wild, with 14 knees to the head. Jackson took them and grinned, almost like a movie monster. Silva connected with three hard punches and another knee and the monster went down to end Pride’s greatest night."

from a long "state of the business broadly" story:

"Looking back one year ago, we had just finished a second bad year in a row for the industry as a whole after three of the hottest years ever for the U.S. business. Even though WWF did two of the biggest shows in history in 2001, Wrestlemania X-7 and the Invasion PPV (in which the most buys for any PPV event in wrestling history except for the biggest Wrestlemanias is more a sad reminder of what should have been as opposed to something looked back on as a successful angle), its business overall went down hard as the year went on. Far worse, the industry constricted with the loss of ECW and WCW, and WWF picked up no new fan base even though it was the only game in town. 2002 was a year of declines in business, but it did appear that two groups, Pride and K-1, albeit both in Japan, were strong and were looking like 2003 would be even bigger. UFC was coming off its biggest show in years. Pride put on a Wrestlemania III-like show in August, and K-1 had its most successful event in history in the Grand Prix finals, with the Bob Sapp phenomenon looking to dominate 2003.

As 2003 ends, we don’t even have the optimism. Pride and K-1 both had an alarming start of the year. Pride’s owner, Naoto Morishita, committed suicide under conditions that aroused much speculation, which opened the eyes of people that all wasn’t well. K-1’s owner, Kazuyoshi Ishii, who was largely responsible for the creation of Sapp, was indicted on tax evasion charges and will be sentenced in a few weeks. Sapp spent the year drawing huge television ratings for kickboxing matches, MMA matches and pro wrestling matches. But he was also exposed as a kickboxer, and was booked stupidly as a pro wrestler, and it’s highly doubtful his drawing power will continue at this level for another year. Because of the success of Sapp, K-1 made the pro wrestling mistake of copying a winning formula until it becomes death, and started turning into a freak show. WWE went farther in the direction of a personal vehicle to get family members over as stars. Pride had a big year, but its meal ticket is on his last legs and while there are rising stars, none have been established as huge drawing cards. Going into 2004, there is no major promotion that enters the year with an optimistic vibe. WWE has so much cash reserves that they are in no danger, and the wrestling end of business has still been profitable. But there is no sign at all of wrestling regaining popularity. Perhaps Pro Wrestling NOAH is stable, and Toryumon and ROH, at a much smaller level, have cult popularity as strong indies. The Mexican business will likely stay in the same shape it has been in as long as television remains. New Japan got worse, and for the first time in years, looks to be in real danger. The U.S. indies have gotten weaker. TNA survived the year, which beat the odds, but didn’t get a television deal. Nor did UFC, which also survived the year and there were rumors about them not making it as well. The only thing that will change the U.S. business is someone getting a strong television deal. And then catching on. There are no signs right now the first will happen. It has now been around three years since TBS and TNT canceled wrestling, and USA Network lost a court case for WWE, and neither of those stations, nor any of the dozen or so cable networks that matter haven’t touched a product that has been a dominant part of cable television since its inception. UFC had talks with Fox Sports Net, ESPN, and probably others, but its only deals came on minor regional networks like Sunshine and Empire, where lifeless tapes of old shows failed to garner the audience the original shows did when airing in England. Keiji Muto and K-1 gambled big on the idea that fantasy shows mixing wrestling, MMA and K-1 stars with Nitro like production values would become television spectaculars, copying the Eric Bischoff theory of star power and production. But in Japan, quality of the matches mattered, and the horrible matches with big names who couldn’t wrestle was an incredible failure to the live fans, which translated into no television deal."

and 

"Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta and Randy Couture, while in Japan, held a press conference on their arrival at Narita Airport. White talked about the idea of an annual “Super Bowl of MMA” which would feature annual UFC vs. Pride unification matches, and holding the first in March in Las Vegas. This was touched on during the PPV and anyone who saw the PPV would be clamoring for a Couture vs. Wanderlei Silva match. A March date is tough because the idea of a Super Bowl would be Couture (fighting 1/31) vs. Silva and the Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Emelianenko Fedor winner facing a top UFC heavyweight, since UFC will likely not crown a heavyweight champion until March. Maybe they can put Tim Sylvia against the Nogueira-Fedor winner as the last champion.

White also said he’d like to get Kazushi Sakuraba to fight on the 1/31 UFC show, and to get Kazuyuki Fujita to face the winner of the Tank Abbott vs. Cabbage Correira match. UFC officials want to put Sakuraba vs. Phil Baroni, since Baroni is a good puncher and it gives him a good shot at a win in what would be a high profile match from an international perspective.

Tito Ortiz is now saying he will face Chuck Liddell in April. It should be noted he said it before Liddell lost to Jackson.

The political parties in Croatia are trying to get Mirko Cro Cop to agree to run for office. Cro Cop’s fight with Bob Sapp in March drew a 70 rating on Croatian television, and the visual of him knocking out such a gigantic specimen made him the national sports hero. His match with Nogueira aired live in that country."

February 24, 2003:

"The 11/9 Pride show set the all-time record for PPV in Japan, breaking the mark set by the Shockwave show (which did about 125,000 buys).

The number doesn’t sound like much compared to U.S. numbers, but there are less than three million homes in Japan that have PPV as opposed to nearly 54 million in the U.S. The show was also more profitable than the Shockwave show last year, even though Shockwave drew a bigger live crowd.

We didn’t get a breakdown, but the company was expecting to possibly top the 90 million yen ($8.3 million) mark when it comes to all forms of revenue from the show. In the heyday of New Japan, some of the biggest Tokyo Dome events like the 1995 Keiji Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada and the 1998 Riki Choshu and Antonio Inoki retirement shows between live gate, television revenue and merchandise, even without PPV, would have been in that ballpark. At press time, Pride officials contacting In Demand were unable to even get an estimate on how the show may have done in the U.S.."

from the ZERO-ONE section:

"The 1/4 major show, working with Pride, at the Saitama Super Arena is pretty much confirmed. That means three huge televised and major stadium events on 12/31, followed by two more on 1/4. The 1/4 shows are going to be very tough to make fly because all the hype and interest that you need for a big show will be focused on 12/31. It’s such a big risk because the W-1 experiment last year showed that people are past the stage of buying tickets to see Pride and K-1 guys in worked matches. There is no demand for such a show, pro wrestling’s popularity has declined greatly with Pride and K-1 taking most of the market share and 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome (New Japan show) is still the biggest pro wrestling tradition."

and

"As far as the New Year’s Eve war goes, TBS has announced a 9 p.m. to midnight time slot for the K-1 event. Besides the pro wrestlers, it is expected that two other headliners on that show will be Masato, the company’s middleweight star, and former heavyweight boxing champion Shannon Briggs. Pride is going on the idea that it has no chance to win the TV ratings war, but it is the only group running a live show in the Tokyo market. There is a feeling that it’s hard to get people in Tokyo to travel to Nagoya, so they won’t be going so the city with the biggest fan base won’t be attending the K-1 show, and it would draw from the smaller Osaka and Nagoya fan base. This would work against Inoki’s show, since Kobe is located closer to Osaka, and he’s got a 50,000 seat stadium.

Royce Gracie vs. Hidehiko Yoshida is being talked about for the 12/31 Pride show main event but Yoshida is iffy about doing it because he’s banged up from the Silva fight. Royce’s day is over and this match should cement it if Yoshida is healthy. For Japan, it would be a great comeback win for Yoshida to the public, even if it really doesn’t mean anything as a fighter to beat a guy in this day that you outweigh by 35 pounds or more. At this point there are no plans for this show to air in the U.S."

and

"Unless Pride sends Wanderlei Silva to UFC for a match with Randy Couture, or something substantive at that level, I can see the UFC/Pride thing crumbling. UFC didn’t come out strong when Chuck Liddell lost in the tournament, and they’ve yet to get any stars committed from Pride. While Kazushi Sakuraba was mentioned by Nobuhiko Takada on the UFC show as coming, there has been no movement toward that happening, and it makes no sense for Pride to waste one of Sakuraba’s few remaining serious fights in a venue where his drawing power will be nil. Kazuyuki Fujita was offered for the January show, but it looks less likely to happen because of the price being asked for him.

Kevin Randleman suffered a torn right biceps in his 11/9 match with Kazushi Sakuraba. He didn’t get it from the armbar submission, but actually got it throwing a punch during the second round of the fight.

In the Dan Bobish vs. Gary Goodridge match, it was actually a thumb and not a pinky by Goodridge to the eye of Bobish that caused him to not be able to see. The injury was pretty bad, as Bobish was blind in the eye for two hours and in a ton of pain. He still had a hematoma in the eye a week later, his vision hasn’t fully recovered and the upper right quadrant of his face is still numb. The officiating at that point left a lot to be desired, as with the injury, either Goodridge should have been disqualified or it should have been ruled a no contest. Goodridge was teeing off on the blinded Bobish, which wasn’t entirely his fault, as the ref needed to call a halt when he saw Bobish couldn’t see. Then the ref stopped Goodridge and declared him the winner. Nobuhiko Takada did apologize to Bobish afterwards and Bobish was told he could get a second fight as long as he didn’t ask for a review of the fight to get he decision overturned. Mark Coleman, who was in Goodridge’s corner, apologized to Bobish and Dana White told him that they would never use Goodridge in UFC."

and

"Don Frye is scheduled for the final fight on his current Pride contract on 12/31."

and

"Neither Pride nor Antonio Inoki have been in contact with people in Nevada about finalizing any dates for next year. There is a potential MMA rule change being looked at in Nevada, which the commission would have to vote on. There was a Shooto show over the weekend, and when they have knockdowns, they do a ten count like in boxing. The changes are that it eliminates guys being knocked down and the foe jumping on them and pounding them while stunned. A good knockdown shot in MMA often ends the fight because of the follow-up of the guy having gotten the jump. This gives a downed fighter a better opportunity for a comeback. They are going to look at the films of shooto and look into the idea."

December 1, 2003:

New Year's Eve looms large:

"The TV schedule for New Year’s Eve in Japan at this point looks to be the K-1 show on TBS from 9-11:30 p.m., the Inoki show on NTV from 8-11:15 p.m. and the Pride show on Fuji Network from 6:30-11:30 p.m. as a five hour special. As things stand right now, none of the shows are scheduled to air in the U.S. as the next Pride PPV dates are 12/21 (tape of the 10/5 show headlined by Mirko Cro Cop vs. Dos Caras Jr.) and 2/8 (tape of the 2/1 show at Osaka Castle Hall tentatively featuring a return world heavyweight title match with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Fedor Emelianenko, which won’t air same day because of the Super Bowl).

The Inoki Bom Ba Ye show from Kobe Wings Stadium announced a Mirko Cro Cop vs. Yoshihiro Takayama main event, as was expected. The feeling in Japan is this will be an entertaining homicide since Takayama can take a punch, and his face swells up impressively with each shot. Cro Cop, 29, was a few days later was elected to political office in his native Croatia. He was going to likely devastate whomever he faced next, unless it was a strong takedown guy. Takayama, who while big and a pro wrestler, is not a great takedown guy.

Cro Cop, recruited by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia since he had become a national sports hero from his win on 3/30 over Bob Sapp, which aired live in the country and drew a 70 rating. He was elected in the first electoral district of Zagreb, Croatia in the general election on 11/23.

Takayama is 37, plus he’s got to be closing in on 290 pounds at 6-5 ½, and is in terrible shape, plus his only skill as a fighter is that his face swells up incredibly, he has no defensive skills, little offensive skills (other than a cool kneelift in pro wrestling), but can take an incredible beating and never quits. Because of his size, and that he’s considered one of Japan’s biggest pro wrestling stars, he’s got a drawing power when he’s put in this situation. His match last New Year’s Eve with Bob Sapp, which he lost quickly to an armbar of all things, was, at the time, the highest rated MMA match on TV since Ali vs. Inoki (at a time when no such term as MMA even existed).

The match also continues what has been one of the best drawing programs in history, that of Cro Cop vs. pro wrestlers. Cro Cop has a 7-1-2 record in MMA, which includes matches with pro wrestlers Kazuyuki Fujita (two wins; one via blood stoppage quickly when Fujita was IWGP champion and the other via decision on last year’s New Year’s Eve show), a terrible draw with Nobuhiko Takada (which means nothing to MMA fans, but Takada is an all-time great in pro wrestling), a win over Ryushi Yanagisawa (formerly Pancrase, now New Japan mid-carder; a knockout under K-1 rules), a win over Yuji Nagata (New Year’s Eve two years ago, a knockout in 21 seconds), a win over Kazushi Sakuraba in one of the highest profile MMA matches in history, and a win over Dos Caras Jr. (one high kick and it was over)

Takayama, 0-5, is without a doubt the most famous MMA fighter who has ever lived when it comes to people who have never won a fight. He’d had losses to the likes of Kimo, Sapp, Kazuyuki Fujita, Semmy Schilt and the legendary Don Frye match, but the latter four were all action entertaining matches and the final one was the ultimate example of getting over by losing. Cro Cop, on the other hand, is coming off his first loss, to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. This is as close to a sure bet talent wise, conditioning wise and stylistically as you could possibly get, but on a night of the freak show, this is a fitting main event.

The other main event has New Japan’s Josh Barnett (30-1, only loss coming to Pedro Rizzo, and a former UFC heavyweight champion who was stripped of the title after testing positive for steroids) defending the King of Pancrase open weight division championship against former champion Schilt (8-3-1 in MMA rules, 14-9 in Pancrase rules matches), who never lost the title. These two have faced off in the past, with Barnett winning with an armbar on June 29, 2001, at the Continental Airlines Arena, at the time when the 6-11 ½, 265-pound Schilt held the title. Schilt, 30, hasn’t fought in Japan since a loss via submission to Nogueira more than one year ago. Barnett, 26, is coming off matches with fighters he’s had more than 50 pounds in weight over in Yuki Kondo and Yoshiki Takahashi in Pancrase title bouts. However, Schilt’s weakness has been an inability to avoid a takedown, and unless Barnett has a bad game plan, that will be his goal and he should be able to execute it, meaning a fight similar to the first meeting. They are trying to get K-1 legend Peter Aerts to make his MMA debut against Kazuyuki Fujita, which would be a good match for the war since Fujita should win and Aerts is a mainstream celebrity.

Pride, which is the only group yet to announce its main event, is expected to announce some matches later this week. Nobuhiko Takada, who is the figurehead of the group, announced they were trying to put together Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, which would, on a normal night, be a gigantic match that would do both a sellout crowd and a strong TV number. On this night, all bets are off, but if nothing else, the period when the match is on will do well as I’m guessing lots of sports fans will be watching MMA all night and switching channels, and as the big event in the Tokyo market for the night, if the match is put together, it would probably draw well. There is the natural fall-off after such a big show as 11/9, but that match with a strong undercard would probably still sellout."

from the Naoya Ogawa files:

"Naoya Ogawa, who was very much in demand, particularly by Antonio Inoki, won’t be fighting on 12/31. It’s pretty clear he has no interest in doing real matches, even though he can make a ton of money right now doing shoots. The announcement was made in conjunction with the first official announcement of the 1/4 show at the Saitama Super Arena and that Ogawa would headline the show. Since Pride guys will be doing the show and Pride is co-promoting it, Hashimoto is positioning it as Ogawa staying to defend pro wrestling and to show wrestlers aren’t second class fighters as loyalty to pro wrestling, as opposed to not wanting to shoot. While not announced, the idea is that show would include Goldberg, Dusty Rhodes, Keiji Muto, Satoshi Kojima, Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, Dos Caras Jr., Choshu, Joe Son (early UFC guy who always loses in shootfights and did one horrible match years back with Hashimoto in pro wrestling, but people know him because he fights wearing a thong) and debut a new masked star, Zebra Man. They also want Mick Foley."

and

"There is a lot of talk in the Japanese industry of the autobiography of Nobuhiko Takada that was released this week. We don’t have a lot of details, other than he talked openly about working matches in New Japan, UWF and UWFI. Japan is a decade behind the U.S. when it comes to this subject, and when former New Japan ref Pete Takahashi came out with a book talking about giving finishes, it was considered akin to what U.S. promoters felt about Eddy Mansfield and Jim Wilson on 20/20 in 1984, that they had committed an act of wrestling treason. With Takada, it’s even more controversial, because many fans who believed pro wrestling was worked, believed the 80s UWF (which in many ways would be considered the missing link in sports entertainment evolution between strong style pro wrestling of New Japan and actual shooting matches in Pride and Pancrase) was the real deal."

December 8, 2003:

"The Deep promotion, which has used a lot of small-name pro wrestlers in shoot fights as a money losing marketing (this is the group that has used Luchadores besides Dos Caras Jr., like Canek, Porky, Solar and others), is apparently leaving the shootfight part out on its 12/28 show at Korakuen Hall. It did an angle where Gorgeous Matsuno, the IWA heel manager of Tiger Jeet Singh, attacked Deep owner Shigeo Saeki (who is also involved in the Pride Bushido shows). This is leading to a tag match with Shoichi Ichinomiya & Saeki vs. Matsuno & Kazuki Okubo (a Kiyoshi Tamura guy who has done both shoot matches as well as worked matches with U-Style). The main event will have Super Delfin & Ebbesan in a tag match against two shootfighters, one of whom will be Dokonjonsuke Mishima, who was on the Pride Bushido event."

and

"For whatever this is worth, here are the Japanese published rumors regarding New Year’s Eve and thoughts. Pride SP was reportedly being built on “Matches we want to see once again,” or an all-rematch show. Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Royce Gracie is the scheduled main event, a rematch of their August 28, 2002 match at Tokyo National Stadium. In that match, Yoshida was awarded the victory via choke, although he did not have the move locked on and it was a premature stoppage by the ref. The Gracies had demanded a rule that the referee couldn’t stop the match, but he did it anyway. Yoshida was very close to victory when this happened. The previous match was with limited striking, basically no head punches were allowed. This will be under full MMA rules, and Yoshida will have a sizeable weight edge. Gracie’s edge is that he’s likely all healed up, while Yoshida was banged up in his last two fights. The stips for the match haven’t been determined, but Gracie is asking for no time limit and the only way the match can end is submission or corner throwing in the towel and the referee can’t stop the match. In order to get maximum viewership for the fight, the plan seems to be to have this fight take place at a time when K-1 has a less marketable match in the ring. I’ve got a feeling all the fight fans are going to be switching back-and-forth that night, so the battle will be over quarter hour ratings as opposed to the overall number. Nobuhiko Takada, who last week was talking about Yoshida vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, said Sakuraba has a bad right knee, which he injured early in the Kevin Randleman fight. Silva has a bad elbow and bad left knee (the one that connected to Quinton Jackson’s head 15 times), and said he felt they shouldn’t do that much until both men are healthy. Sakuraba’s doctor told him he wouldn’t be ready by 12/31. He said he’s still going to fight. Sakakibara said it’s 50/50 while Takada said Sakuraba’s match would be announced this week. In actuality, Sakuraba hurts just standing on his feet for any length of time, let alone walking, and it’s less than a month away and he still has to train to get into shape. Silva had arthroscopic elbow surgery after winning the Grand Prix (he went into the Grand Prix with the injury, which only makes his performance that night even more impressive). Other names batted around include Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (interesting, because Inoki claimed he’s have Nogueira fighting on his show), Ryan Gracie, Silva (announced at a 12/1 press conference), Don Frye, Mario Sperry, Heath Herring and Hayato Sakurai, and will have eight or nine bouts for a five-hour live TV special. Since Nogueira is fighting on this show, there is talk that the 2/1 show may instead have Mirko Cro Cop vs. Fedor Emelianenko, with Nogueira facing the winner to clear up the title situation later in the year. Of course, how does that make any sense since Cro Cop is also fighting, or at least demolishing, on the same day? Pride is now targeting 3/26 for its U.S. debut in Las Vegas, and then do the heavyweight Grand Prix in with the first round in late April and the finals in mid-June. Sakakibara said that despite Inoki claiming Nogueira would do his show, that they have Nogueira under an exclusive contract. You mean Inoki would lie about something like that? Next thing you know he’ll make up that Tyson and Ali are coming (he’s done both in the past). The 12/31 Pride show will not air on PPV in the U.S., because they didn’t decide to do the show until early November, and missed the deadline of making it happen. The plan is to get the DVD out to stores ASAP. They also announced that the second Bushido show (supposed to be a middleweight show) will take place on 2/15 at the Yokohama Arena, and a third will take place in May."

and

"Silva winning the Grand Prix was covered on one of Brazil’s biggest television news shows, their equivalent to “60 Minutes,” and not only that, it was a positive piece and was viewed by 30 million people. Even though Vale Tudo has been around in Brazil forever, it’s really UFC and Pride that have made the top Brazilians into celebrities in their own country."

and

"Pride is apparently trying to put together a rematch from the finals of the 2000 Olympics in judo. The final was France’s Dave Douillet winning his second gold medal via controversial decision over Shinichi Shinohara. Shinohara got a lot of publicity for being robbed of the gold. Douillet had been talked with in the past about doing MMA and had never been interested. Shinohara is said to have not agreed to terms yet." [This is one of the wildest things in the history of notions—ed.]

December 15, 2003:

An enormous story about the coming New Year's Eve shows—the unseemly doings that will prove PRIDE's end begin to come together:

"The New Year’s battle in Japan has become among the most competitive nights in Japanese television history with even the established Red & White sing-off, a national tradition on New Year’s Eve on NHK, feeling the pinch.

Two of the biggest names in Japanese baseball history are apparently now being wooed, and there are threats that the courts are going to get involved in the high-stakes battle. NHK is trying to get Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees, the most popular current Japanese star, to appear, along with booking more major concert acts than ever before, faced with the challenge of three different shoot shows. In addition, NTV, determined not to finish in fourth place behind the Red & White show and the TBS Network’s Bob Sapp vs. Akebono K-1 show, is attempting to get Shigeo Nagashima, who is the Babe Ruth of Japan, to appear at Inoki Bom Ba Ye. Nagashima, the catcher for the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants in the 60s and 70s, who was the most popular player of all-time in the Japanese Baseball League, has remained the face of the Giants as manager. The Giants are a leading ratings draw on NTV, which romanced Inoki away from TBS for a three-year contract, expecting to dominate New Year’s second place, only to find it started a three-way network war that has gone insane.

The best description of this is that NTV, which has now decided to back Antonio Inoki to start a regular promotion with several prime time specials during the year, is bankrolling Inoki to start a major promotional war with Pride. Inoki’s group has reached a deal with Miro Miyatobich, the manager of Mirko Cro Cop and Fedor Emelianenko, who were scheduled, along with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira to do a three-way program over Pride’s World heavyweight title (which is now disputed as Emelianenko holds the original belt and Nogueira won a new belt against Cro Cop on 11/9 when Emelianenko was out with a broken thumb and missed a title defense) in 2004. Cro Cop is a free agent, but Pride believed it had exclusive contracts signed with the other two. Inoki then announced Emelianenko, who supposedly was not recovered from his thumb injury, would be appearing on his 12/31 show after he was given a significantly better financial deal. Then, when Pride claimed it wouldn’t happen due to an exclusive contract it had with Emelianenko, the Inoki side released a photo to the media of Emelianenko, wearing an Inoki Bom Ba Ye t-shirt, signing a supposed contract for the show, sitting next to Miyatobich.

According to those close to Emelianenko, the exclusive contract with Pride was signed by the Russian Top Team, which he was with, but recently quit to join the Red Devil team. Emelianenko said the contract with Pride was in English and he can’t read English, and was misled by his old management team. He claimed that when Pride said he needed to wait until February for his broken thumb to heal, that it wasn’t true and he wanted to fight on New Year’s Eve. He said he was shocked at how much money Inoki offered him, and wants to face Cro Cop wherever the match could be made. Miyatobich has since claimed that the planned Cro Cop vs. Emelianenko match on Pride’s 2/1 show in Osaka would not take place in Pride.

Pride held a press conference on 12/10 and announced that they would file suit, claiming to have an exclusive contract not only with Emelianenko, but also with Semmy Schilt.

Inoki had also hinted at using Nogueira on 12/31 (this won’t happen, because it turned out in his match with Cro Cop, Nogueira suffered both a broken nose and a cracked wrist and will be out for three months). Inoki has also claimed it would have Wanderlei Silva, Pride’s middleweight champion, on his show. Pancrase officials were told they were going to match Silva against Yuki Kondo, who is the Pancrase champion at the same weight. It was a great potential match for Pancrase if it does happen, because Silva is hurting and no Japanese fighter has ever beaten Silva, and the chase is almost three years since Silva beat Sakuraba for the first time. The first that does will become an instant superstar. Brazilian sources claim this isn’t happening as Silva, who underwent elbow surgery to remove floating cartilage after winning the Grand Prix, is said to be on vacation and not training. Everyone remembers Inoki in the past making claims of people like Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali coming to his big events, only to find an excuse the day of the event when they didn’t appear. It was also confirmed the extent NTV is going to raid Pride, as they offered Alistair Overeem five times the money Pride was paying him, to face UFC’s Rich Franklin (since UFC is now signing people mainly to one fight contracts, in a three-way MMA war, since K-1 is establishing an MMA division, UFC may be getting raided the worst), as a way to woo Holland’s Golden Glory team away from Pride.

The down side of this is many are predicting this will do more harm than good over the years as MMA is similar to pro wrestling in that it can’t maintain a hot period over the long haul with too many big shows diluting interest. The higher salary structure which started with bidding wars over talent and multiple groups, will lead to money losing shows with the higher fighter costs during the year. The competition will make the business stronger than ever at first, but the example of the U.S. wrestling wars is one that the wrestling people are noting, particularly with the WCW mentality among NTV officials of overspending for talent in a goal of placing third for one night in the ratings. The comparisons of this mentality are similar to Eric Bischoff’s decision in 1998 to put the Hulk Hogan vs. Bill Goldberg match, which at the time would have been one of the bigger PPV matches in history, on free television. In doing so, WCW, which had fallen behind in the weekly ratings battle, won the night. In doing so, they gave up an estimated $7 million in revenue that match would have delivered on PPV, and because Hogan didn’t want to do a second job, no rematch on PPV ever took place.

As far as Japan goes, K-1 is planning to do more MMA next year, which looks to move UFC from No. 2 to No. 4 from a financial standpoint.

Pride, with plans for the tournament, the Bushido shows and three major pro wrestling style events, has its most ambitious year planned, with ten events on the schedule between now and June, including a planned Las Vegas debut in March and the heavyweight Grand Prix. Pride right now is on strong financial footing after the success of the Grand Prix finals at the Tokyo Dome being the biggest money show in MMA history and setting a national PPV buy rate record. But these plans may be too ambitious given the rising salary structure the war is causing and talent raids. K-1, even with the Kazuyoshi Ishii problems, is very successful due to all the money rolling in from the Sapp gravy train. However, K-1 is totally understaffed trying to run three separate companies (the original company on Fuji Network, K-1 Japan on NTV and K-1 MAX middleweight promotion on TBS, so focusing on a fourth group doing MMA will stretch things badly.

NTV, which was the first network in Japan to broadcast pro wrestling, which was at some points the most popular television show in the country during the Rikidozan era, is looking at this as the extension of its nearly five decades with the product. During the 70s and 80s in particular, Inoki, the star of TV-Asahi’s highly rated prime time show, was the network’s enemy. The feeling among television people is that pro wrestling is dying, and this is the new wave of the business that will lead to another boom period.

As things stand, here is how the battle lines up.

Inoki Bom Ba Ye 2003 takes place at Kobe Wings Stadium, and will air from 8 p.m. to 11:15 p.m. on NTV. The main theme seems to be New Japan Pro Wrestling against outside fighters. Announced at this point are Mirko Cro Cop vs. Yoshihiro Takayama (NWF world champ in New Japan), Josh Barnett (New Japan) vs. Semmy Schilt for the Pancrase open weight heavyweight title and Stefan Leko (who just left K-1 after a dispute) vs. Kazunari Murakami (New Japan). Also advertised as being on the show are Emelianenko and pro wrestlers Kazuyuki Fujita and Tadao Yasuda. Overeem vs. Franklin is expected to be announced this week as a mythical Pride vs. UFC battle. Fujita was expected to face Peter Aerts, but Aerts suffered an elbow injury in the K-1 Grand Prix on 12/6. The opponent for Emelianenko has been talked about as being pro wrestler Tsuyoshi Kosaka, who is the only man ever to beat Emelianenko on a blood stoppage a few years ago in RINGS, or possibly new IWGP champion Shinsuke Nakamura in a battle of mythical world champions like Inoki and New Japan used to promote in the late 70s when Inoki had matches with people like Muhammad Ali and judo world champ Willem Ruska. Brazilian Ricardo Liborio has been talked with about facing Yasuda, and there is still talk of Silva vs. Kondo, although others have said that’s not happening. Another match not announced but being negotiated is Alexander Emelianenko, Fedor’s bigger and younger brother, facing Angelo Araujo.

K-1 Dynamite takes place at the Nagoya Dome and on TBS from 9-11:30 p.m. It is readily accepted that this show will be the ratings winner, because of the advertised “Match of the Century,” which is more freak show of the century, with Bob Sapp (6-4, 360) vs. Akebono Taro (6-8, 460). Sapp’s television drawing power for a major fight has been proven time and time again over the past year. However, in 1993, a three-way sumo tournament final with Akebono involved drew a peak rating of 66.7. Other pro wrestlers officially announced for the show are UPW/Zero-One’s Tom Howard and The Predator (Sylvester Terkay), as well as UPW’s Stefan Gamlin, who was the other half of the all-time record setting MMA rating on 9/21 for his match with Sapp. The plan was to match Predator (6-6 and 315 pounds) with Jan Nortje, the K-1 Giant (6-9 and 330), but after Nortje was destroyed in 1:06 by Martin Holm on the 12/6 K-1 show, that’s out. The latest opponent for Predator looks to be David Khakhaleishvili of the Republic of Georgia, who destroyed Naoya Ogawa in 1:04 to win the gold medal in the superheavyweight division in the 1992 Olympics in Seoul. Khakhaleishvili later became a pro wrestler with RINGS, and the last time I saw him, he’d gotten terribly overweight, looking to be around 340 pounds. Another match talked about is an ultimate freak show match under K-1 rules with Genki Sudo, who is 160 pounds, against Butterbean, who was 390 in his last fight. This wasn’t finalized at press time. Former world heavyweight boxing champion Shannon Briggs is expected to debut on this show (possibly against Pedro Rizzo from UFC), and there is talk of a K-1 rules match with new Grand Prix champ Remy Bonjasky facing K-1’s all-time greatest fighter, Ernesto Hoost, in what would theoretically be a passing of the torch type of match. During the week, the plan was for Fujita to actually try and do a ridiculous double, as another p.r. stunt. The idea was for him to fight on both the Inoki show and the K-1 show, which are 140 miles apart. However, that fell through when K-1 offered him Yoshihiro Nakao as an opponent. Nakao, 31, is a better wrestler than Fujita as a three-time national champion. He competed, but didn’t place, in both the 2002 and 2003 World freestyle wrestling championships and was expected to go the Athens and represent Japan in the 213 pound weight class. However, with all the money being thrown around, he decided to retire from amateur wrestling and sign a long-term contract with K-1, which will attempt to promote him as a new national star in MMA matches.

Pride, promoting a show called “Pride SP,” has gotten a five-hour time slot on the Fuji Network, from 6:30 to 11:30 p.m. The show would include both a live event from the Saitama Super Arena, as well as replaying Pride’s best matches of all-time. The main event will be Royce Gracie vs. Hidehiko Yoshida, with rules as far as time limit goes, yet to be determined. There have been hints that the stipulations will be that the referee or doctor can’t stop the match (if this is the case, the doctor not having the right to stop it takes it from sport to freak show) and it can only end via knockout, submission or if the corner throws in the towel. It will either be a match with unlimited ten minute rounds, similar to the legendary Royce vs. Sakuraba match that went 90:00 in 2000, or it will be a 20:00 time limit but it would be ruled a draw if there was no finish and judges wouldn’t be allowed to render a decision. The only other match that appears to be finalized, but wasn’t announced at press time, is Don Frye vs. Mario Sperry, a Brazilian grappling expert. Both are older, as Frye is 38 and Sperry is 37. Sperry is a top level grappler, but Frye was a good enough wrestler to keep things standing and is probably the better stand-up fighter, depending upon his injury situation. Because they need him at this point with the weakest line-up of the three shows, it looks likely that despite having a foot injury, Kazushi Sakuraba will end up fighting on the show. His latest rumored opponent, now that Silva has fallen through, is Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, the twin brother of the more famous Nogueira. This is another example of Sakuraba facing someone who is naturally 30 pounds heavier (no doubt they’ll be closer in weight come fight time as Nogueira will be asked to cut some and Sakuraba will bulk up), and unlike Kevin Randleman, someone not as likely to make a stupid mistake."

from the ZERO-ONE section:

"Officials from both Zero-One and Dream Stage (Pride) were there on 12/4 for the press conference which announced the 1/4 Saitama Super Arena show that will compete with New Japan’s traditional biggest event of the year. The promotions at this point are planning a series of shows called “Hustle,” with this being “Hustle I.” The foreigners announced as appearing are Bill Goldberg, Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, Dos Caras Jr., El Sicodelico Jr. (who is the nephew of Mascaras & Caras), Joe Son (the former manager of Kimo. Son is best known for losing lots of MMA matches in Japan while wearing a skimpy thong outfit), Dusty Rhodes, Mark Coleman, Kevin Randleman (who isn’t going to be there because he just had surgery to repair a torn biceps suffered in the Sakuraba match on 11/9 and was told four to six months of recovery time), Don Frye (this would be four days after a shoot match), Heath Herring and Zebra Man, which is a cartoon character aimed at kids. They also announced plans to do similar big shows on both 3/7 and 5/23, as Hustle II and III at the Yokohama Arena. They said that the Fuji Network would broadcast the show. Unfortunately, this sounds too similar the W-1 show last year at the Tokyo Dome which was among the most disastrous major shows in history. At least of the MMA guys brought in, only Herring and Son on this list are bad at pro wrestling. It is rumored that Goldberg will make an appearance at the Pride 12/31 show to shoot an angle building up this card, and that the planned main event is Naoya Ogawa vs. Nobuhiko Takada, which would have been a gigantic match had it happened a few years back. There had been attempts to make this match years ago in Pride (at the time when there still were worked matches in Pride), but it never came to fruition because Takada never wanted to job for Ogawa and pass the torch. This has become controversial because Takada’s new book talked about pro wrestling matches not being real fighting and that the winners and losers are decided in advance. He said UWFI was also like that, but that Pride is the real deal, which in 2003 shouldn’t be controversial, but Takada is now hated by a lot of people in pro wrestling for it. Even though everyone is well aware that pro wrestling is what it is in Japan, unlike in the U.S., the code of not saying so publicly still exists and the feeling is Takada broke the code. There have been several books written on the subject that state that, most notably the book by former New Japan ref Pete Takahashi and the mid-1980s book by Satoru Sayama, but none in recent years by someone of the star power as Takada. Takada was one of the greatest pro wrestlers ever, with his heyday being 1992-96 with the UWFI promotion, for whom he was the big draw for and was a hot item for a few years. Pride was originally formed in 1997 to put together a match with him against Rickson Gracie at the Tokyo Dome stemming from interest in it from pro wrestling fans. Takada’s last pro wrestling style match would have been on December 31, 2000, at the Osaka Dome, for a match that broke the all-time attendance record in that city of 42,756 when he and Keiji Muto beat Ken Shamrock & Frye. In other Takada news, he and his wife were able to get twins from a surrogate mother this week which was a pretty decent news story in Japan. His wife, Aki Mukai, who was a famous Japanese actress, suffered from uterine cancer a few years back and was unable to have children of her own

There is quite a bit of concern about Pride running two shows in a 35,000-seat arena in four days. Nobuyuki Sakakibara of Dream Stage said he believes both shows will be successful because they are different styles of shows. They did a worked angle to start a Zero-One vs. Pride feud for the show, as Sakakibara said that pro wrestling was easy, which got Hashimoto and Ogawa mad. Ogawa snatched Sakakibara and challenged “crybaby” Takada. Ogawa said he was mad about Takada’s book saying wrestling was fake, saying Takada made his living and his fame as a wrestler. Takada later said that Ogawa snatching Sakakibara was gangster-like punk behavior and his throwing a table at the press conference was immature child like actions. Sakakibara and Takada said they would show a new style of pro wrestling on 1/4."

and

"Pride’s negotiations with Shinichi Sinohara, the 2000 Olympic judo silver medalist, fell through." [lol well there you go—ed.]

December 22, 2003:

New Year's Eve, coming in hot: 

"New Japan Pro Wrestling is taking a major risk, and Antonio Inoki is seeing his show fall apart at the seams as the New Year’s Eve war seems more confusing than ever, as just two weeks before show time, only one of the three line-ups is close to being fully announced.

Inoki show at the 50,000-seat Kobe Wings Stadium is crumbling, as Mirko Cro Cop has pulled out of the show, claiming a back injury. His opponent, Yoshihiro Takayama, has also pulled out of the show, and there are legal questions as to whether or not Fedor Emelianenko will appear. This leaves three matches involving New Japan Pro Wrestling vs. outsiders, Kazunari Murakami vs. Stefan Leko, Josh Barnett vs. Semmy Schilt (which may even be in jeopardy since Pride claims to have Schilt under an exclusive contract) and Tadao Yasuda vs. Rene Rozee (a rematch from an August 19, 2001 match where Rozee knocked Yasuda out cold with a high kick) announced. There have been newspapers suggesting the show should just be canceled at this point, but NTV is so deep into this highly publicized war and in using Inoki to create a new sports franchise, plus Inoki Bom Ba Ye has become a New Year’s Eve tradition so neither is expected to want to go down without a fight.

But New Japan’s biggest risk was announced for the K-1 show, an MMA rules match with new IWGP champion Shinsuke Nakamura, facing K-1 star Alexey Ignashov. On the surface, this is reminiscent of the gamble that backfired two years ago, when New Japan, figuring that all things being equal, a wrestler is going to beat a kickboxer under mixed rules, put Yuji Nagata in the spot to become a national hero, facing Mirko Cro Cop. Cro Cop had become a super heel at the time and the first Japanese star to beat him would be an overnight sensation. Nagata, New Japan’s best in-ring performer, was missing the charisma and name appeal to carry the top spot in the company. The problem with that match was Nagata, a great college wrestler with three national titles in four years, had not wrestled competitively in nearly ten years. The other problem was Cro Cop was a ringer, in that he was not just a kickboxer with no other skills, but was deceptively powerful in locking up, and trained in all forms of fighting. But at the time, the extent of Cro Cop’s ability in MMA wasn’t known, and Nagata was knocked out in 21 seconds in the most watched most of his career. While Nagata’s in-ring abilities were such that he’s bounced back to become a major star in pro wrestling and even set a record for most IWGP title defenses, he never broke through mainstream to be the drawing card to carry the company.

Nakamura, on the other hand, is a decade younger than Nagata was at the time. He’s also not removed from competition, as he left amateur wrestling in April of 2002, but has done three Vale Tudo rules matches over the past year. But he was also fourth in the collegiate nationals as opposed to a national champion caliber amateur. He’s got a 2-1 record with a high profile win over 6-9, 321-pound kickboxer Jan “The Giant” Nortje on 5/2 at the Tokyo Dome. Nakamura was easily able to take down and take away all his skills. Nakamura has appeared to have one of the quickest and smoothest takedown of any MMA heavyweight, but was not impressive when it comes to ground and pound and submissions, as it took him 8:12 before he finished Nortje, who has nothing once he’s off his feet, with a guillotine choke. Also, he has trained between New Japan tours in San Jose, and the reports are that despite his record, he’s in reality only at the beginner level and his wrestling was said to be not at the level of Kendo Kashin when he trained here before the second Ryan Gracie match. Still, if the 6-4, 240-pound Ignashov is a pure kickboxer, Nakamura would have the odds in his favor. His previous Vale Tudo matches weren’t a risk, since he was considered a rookie pro wrestler who was just learning, so losing to Nortje or Daniel Gracie wasn’t going to hurt him (and he was actually made a star one year ago in his decision loss to Gracie on last year’s New Year’s Eve Inoki Bom Ba Ye). Ignashov, even if he’s nothing but a kickboxer, would still have the punchers’ chance if he can get the big blow in before the takedown, or on a re-start. But this time the stakes are high, because Nakamura is the IWGP champion, so looking bad makes the entire promotion look bad, which has happened with New Japan in these situations far too often. A win would give Nakamura strong momentum going into 2004 because Ignashov is a rising star in Japan, and was the favorite among Japanese fans going into the 12/6 World Gran d Prix. He ended up losing a decision to Peter Aerts in the first round.

An even bigger story is that Inoki’s show itself is falling apart. Dream Stage Entertainment (Pride) announced that Semmy Schilt, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fedor Emelianenko, all of whom had been announced as appearing on the Inoki show, had signed exclusive contracts with their company. Nogueira was unavailable for 12/31 due to injuries suffered in his 11/9 match with Mirko Cro Cop. DSE claimed they had not received an inquiry from either Inoki’s side or NTV about the contract and said they didn’t believe the promoters or network should have advertised fighter’s names without a contract saying the false advertising was against both civil and criminal law. In particular, DSE produced a contract signed by Emelianenko on June 4, 2003 valid through October, 2004 and claimed he could not participate in any event until then unless authorized by DSE. At that point, Emelianenko and Cro Cop’s manager, Miro Miyatovich, claimed it was a contract DSE made with the Russian Top Team. Emelianenko had quit the RTT for the Red Devil team, and on 12/5, Miyatovich signed a multi-fight deal with the Red Devil team for Fedor Emelianenko, Amar Suloev and Alexander Emelianenko in both English and Russian. Fedor Emelianenko claimed to have not signed a contract with Pride, didn’t know the contents of the contract Pride showed and had never agreed to the deal the Russian Top Team had put together. It was then said, which Miyatovich denied, that due to the problems, he wasn’t going to book Fedor Emelianenko or Cro Cop with DSE in 2004, where they and Nogueira were set for a series of matches to determine the world heavyweight title.

On 12/15, Cro Cop (who does not have an exclusive contract with any promotion) put on his web site that he would not be fighting on 12/31 because his doctor ordered him to refrain from intense training for two weeks due to a nagging back injury that he wanted healed for his big fights in 2004. He also said that he would negotiate his fights from this point forward, directly, which indicates this is looks to be a break-up with Miyatovich as an agent, and that he seems to be focusing on the Pride belt and doesn’t want politics to get in the way. Takayama’s people then announced if Cro Cop really isn’t fighting, then Takayama wouldn’t either. Basically, Takayama is expected to lose an exciting slugfest with Cro Cop, which due to the nature of his character, won’t hurt him as a pro wrestling world champion because it’s Cro Cop. However, against an opponent with a lesser reputation, if Takayama were to lose, and he’s never won a real fight, it could damage him. Inoki and NTV are at press time desperately trying to get Cro Cop to reconsider his position, but it also appears that they won’t be able to use Emelianenko because of his contract situation because of the threat of a lawsuit against both them and NTV. Wanderlei Silva is also off as he’s not fighting 12/31 after elbow surgery, leaving Inoki Bom Ba Ye with nothing that could compete with the huge shows Pride and K-1 are having.

Pride itself is having a tough time putting together a show, as at press time, only three matches have been announced, two of which have no gate value. The Royce Gracie vs. Hidehiko Yoshida main event still hasn’t had the rules finalized. There have been hints of unlimited rounds with no judging and only a conclusive finish, making the fight a potential battle of long-term attrition, similar to the legendary 90 minute Royce vs. Kazushi Sakuraba match from 2000. The match has gotten heated with Gracie claiming Yoshida is a “f***ing liar” when he said, “I did not want to kill Royce, that’s why I told the referee thee times that he had passed out. I was on top of him, so the referee could not see Royce’s face.” Royce also tried to claim that all of Yoshida’s matches except his match with Silva weren’t real, which is hilarious, because that would mean Gracie would be indicting the credibility of his own match. The other matches announced at a 12/17 press conference were Zero-One’s Wataru Sakata vs. Ryan Gracie, and Daijyu Takase vs. Hayato Sakurai. There has been talk of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, but it has been said they are having trouble finalizing a match for Sakuraba. Don Frye is also expected to fight on the show, and those close to him have said that Pride changed the match nearly finalized last week against Mario Sperry. Another match seemingly agreed upon is Alexander Emelianenko vs. Angelo Araujo of Brazil, although it has not been finalized.

The only show close to a completed line-up is K-1, which held a press conference on 12/16announcing seven of a proposed 10 matches. The theme of the show is that they will have legitimate world champions in sumo (Akebono), boxing (Francois Botha and Shannon Briggs, each of whom held a recognized world heavyweight title), K-1 (Ernesto Hoost), Karate (Francisco Filho), Judo (David Khakhaleishvili, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist as a superheavyweight) and pro wrestling (Nakamura) as well as two national champion amateur wrestlers (Yoshihiro Nakao, a three-time Japanese national champion, and Sylvester “Predator” Terkay, the 1993 NCAA heavyweight champion).

The Bob Sapp vs. Akebono main event does not have rules finalized yet as to whether it would be K-1 rules, MMA rules, or a mixture. Four matches announced are MMA rules, which three five minute rounds. They are Nakamura vs. Ignashov in New Japan vs. K-1, Predator (MMA debut) vs. Cyril Abidi (second MMA match with his first being a loss to Don Frye) in Zero-One vs. K-1, Tom Howard (Zero-One wrestler in MMA debut) vs. Kristof Midoux of France (who has a 2-3 MMA record with an interesting win via armbar in less than 1:00 over another pro wrestler, the late Anthony “Pitbull II” Durante) and a freak show match with potential scary implications with 160-pound Genki Sudo, a top-rated MMA fighter in his weight division, against Butterbean, who was 390-pounds in his last fight, horribly out of shape, with no MMA experience, but who hits very hard. While many favor Sudo, because he’s far more skilled. If Sudo can’t take Butterbean off his feet (and if he does, he probably would beat him), and Butterbean clocks him, he could hurt him badly. With Butterbean being a known commodity in the U.S., if there was a serious injury, the nature of the visual of the tape could get around and be a huge black eye for MMA in the U.S. Freak show matches like this are going to backfire at some point.

Khakhaleishvili and Nakao will also be on the show under MMA rules, possibly against one another.

Under K-1 rules are Hoost vs. Montaha Silva (the Brazilian giant pro wrestler who has fought a few K-1 matches this year as a freak show attraction) and Filho vs. Toa the Samoan Beast (the New Japan pro wrestler). In both cases, the K-1 fighters should be far too skilled against somewhat novice fighters. Matches for both Botha and Briggs are expected to be added. While not announced at press time, insiders claim Rickson Gracie will be announced as appearing at the show (not fighting) as a late p.r. coup."

and

"Mauro Ranallo (who started as a pro wrestling announcer for Stampede Wrestling and debuted with Pride on 10/5 for the show that airs 12/21) and Bas Rutten are scheduled to do English commentary for both the 12/31 and 1/4 Pride shows."

and

"Pride is talking with Frank Shamrock about a deal for 2004. There is once again talk of a match with Kazushi Sakuraba, which has been talked about for five years, possibly for the 3/26 U.S. debut show in Las Vegas. Shamrock has only fought twice in the past four years after being fighter of the year in almost all awards in 1998 and 1999."

December 29, 2003:

We are so New Year's Eve:

"While most matches are confirmed, both the Pride and Inoki Bom Ba Ye shows are negotiating to put together last minute matches involving big name pro wrestlers to attempt to have a final impact in ratings. Some of the legal issues seem to be resolved, while others are not. And K-1, which, because it was Bob Sapp vs. Akebono, is expected by everyone to win the ratings war, still has two tricks expected up its sleeve that are expected to be announced in the final days.

It is also clear that over the past week there have been negotiations between the groups going on. K-1 clearly has had talks with Antonio Inoki, since both Shinsuke Nakamura and Masayuki Naruse of New Japan Pro Wrestling, a company that Inoki is the majority owner of, are appearing on their show. In addition it is rumored backdoor deals were made by Pride and Inoki, since Inoki’s side had admitted that Fedor Emelianenko would not be appearing on its show because of his exclusive contract with Pride, but that things have bene cleared for Semmy Schilt, who had a similar deal with Pride, to work as announced. And going down to the wire is Inoki’s attempt to land a late home run by putting together an Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Yuji Nagata match. Inoki’s side offered Nogueira twice the money he gets under his current Pride contract to take what is a huge name fight for Japan, but in reality should be an easy fight. However, Nogueira also has an exclusive deal with Pride, which has not agreed to let him work the show. Still, Nogueira, who was injured in his 11/9 win over Mirko Cro Cop but is still far too experienced both standing and on the ground for Nagata, has been working to get a last minute visa and Inoki is desperate to add the match at the last minute. Nagata had earlier been slated to be sacrificial lamb for Emelianenko, before his appearance fell through, which was a terrible match for New Japan because the odds are he’d be brutalized either standing or on the ground and the injury risk would be high, and the odds of losing close to a sure thing. With Nogueira, the injury risk isn’t as high, but the odds on winning are equally as astronomical.

It also shows just how bad things must be for New Japan to allow one of its biggest stars, who has credibility as a major star in pro wrestling with his Mr. IWGP nickname from his record-setting title run, to be put in a position where reputation being destroyed looks to be almost a sure thing going in. With the other New Japan wrestlers fighting that night, Nakamura and Naruse on the K-1 show, while both would certainly get knocked out if they can’t take their much larger kickboxing foe down, either has a chance to win if they can score a takedown. In the case of Naruse, he’s an undercard junior heavyweight facing 330-pound Jan “The Giant” Nortje, so he’s got nothing to lose getting knocked out, and a lot to gain, since Nortje, a giant blob, has no skills on the ground, and Naruse has done many legitimate matches in the past and has real submission skills. With Nakamura, the current IWGP champion, it’s is the ultimate risk, because he’s a beginning stage fighter who really isn’t very good, but has a strong takedown. If K-1 superstar Alexey Ignashov has no ground skills, which is likely but unknown, and can be taken down, Nakamura should beat him. That would be a huge victory for both his career at this point and for the company at the present time because of the huge television audience that would see a pro wrestling champion beat a K-1 champion. If he does get knocked out standing, it hurts because he’s IWGP champion (if they hadn’t put the belt on him and just put him in this match, because of his age, it would have been a smarter match because he’d have more to gain than to lose as a 23-year-old rookie pro wrestler than as a the company’s world champion), but it is against a top flight striker. Nagata, on the other hand, is out of his league in a match where he could be humiliated no matter how the fight goes. Showing heart and losing a thrilling match won’t hurt him, but this match doesn’t look to be thrilling or competitive, and being squashed before such a large audience will hurt him and the company’s falling former rep in pro wrestling fans’ mythical beliefs they were taught for years as the place where the toughest real fighters come from.

One of the reasons so many matches are negotiated and you hear different rumors is that while a lot of fans believe certain things, fighters themselves are far more aware of their style limitations. For example, boxing people would argue that a real boxer with the years of training and the small gloves who have too much punching power for an MMA fighter to handle. However, one of the matches K-1 tried to put together was Francois Botha, a former heavyweight champion boxer, against Kimo, who is in reality a so-so MMA practitioner with little stand-up ability. The reason this fight didn’t happen is because Kimo refused under K-1 rules, knowing he’d get slaughtered. Botha refused under MMA rules, knowing the reality that a lot of boxing supporters don’t know.

Attempting to throw together matches at the last minute with fighters who aren’t fully prepared is the one difference between UFC and the Japanese groups that is never mentioned but is very important. UFC, which makes it matches well ahead of time, with two main events confirmed for March and another being talked about for May, has the fighters with adequate time to train to get into peak condition and scout their opponent. In Japan, you often have the name, but they often don’t know their opponent far enough in advance to develop a strategy, and many times you get the big name, but he’s not at 100% condition, which makes all the difference in the world after a few minutes.

At press time, this is the current scoreboard:

K-1 DYNAMITE AT THE NAGOYA DOME

This will be a 10 or 11-match show, with four or five matches under K-1 rules, which will be three 3:00 round matches, and six under MMA rules, with three 5:00 rounds. The show is being built around the idea of having world champions in six different fighting sports (boxing, kickboxing, judo, sumo, karate and pro wrestling) all competing in one show.

The biggest marquee match of the night, pitting Bob Sapp vs. sumo legend Akebono is officially under K-1 rules. It will pit the two biggest men ever in a K-1 ring, against each other and the first time Sapp will be greatly outsized in a fight against a 6-8 man who will weigh well over 400 pounds. At their size, the fight is almost guaranteed to see one or both blow up quickly and if a strong blow isn’t hit early, a knockout may come as much from who gets exhausted faster, although both will hit the wall quickly. Sapp is the favorite since he’s had real kickboxing matches and two years of training, while Akebono will go in with only two months of training. There are predictions that the one or two minutes this fight lasts will garner a 50.0 rating, and it would on a normal night, but on this night that kind of a figure seems unreasonable since NHK has owned New Year’s Eve with its concert that is the Japanese television equivalent to the Super Bowl in the U.S.

Also under K-1 rules are Ernesto Hoost, the all-time greatest heavyweight in kickboxing history, against Montanha Silva, a 7-foot, 300 pound Brazilian freak show; Botha vs. Yusuke Fujimoto, a prelim level kickboxer; and Francisco Filho, a former karate world champion and popular K-1 star on the downslide, against Toa the Samoan Beast, a 295-pound freak show pro wrestler who should make a colorful victim. The fifth K-1 rules match-up will likely include former heavyweight boxing champ Shannon Briggs.

The MMA rules line-up is completed, with Nakamura vs. Ignashov having the most interest in Japan as New Japan vs. K-1 stars. Also there is the total freak show match which does have its curiosity, but is also dangerous, with 160-pound Genki Sudo, experienced in MMA, against out of shape Butterbean, at 390 pounds, with no MMA experience, but a wickedly powerful punch. Four years ago at Wrestlemania, a younger Butterbean destroyed Bart Gunn (now Mike Barton in New Japan) in a Brawl for All rules match which did allow takedowns, although Gunn, who thought he could out box Bean, was knocked out before he could even attempt one. Pro wrestler The Predator (1993 NCAA heavyweight champion Sylvester Terkay), who will be doing his Bruiser Brody ring entrance as the nostalgia moment of the show, faces K-1’s Cyril Abidi. Predator has no MMA experience, while Abidi is 0-1, losing his only match via submission to Don Frye two years ago, where he did acquit himself well . Pro wrestler Tom Howard, who will be doing his Green Beret gimmick, also in his first match, faces 2-3 fighter Kristof Midoux. Nortje, who is 1-3 in MMA matches against pro wrestlers (a win over Tadao Yasuda, losses to Norihisa Yamamoto, Gary Goodridge and Nakamura), faces Naruse, who will be giving away probably 120 pounds and a foot or more in height, but is far superior on the ground. David Khakhaleichivili of the Republic of Georgia, the 340-pound 1992 Olympic judo gold medalist as a superheavyweight, faces Yoshihiro Nakao, the 2002 Japanese national champion in freestyle wrestling at 213 pounds, in both men’s MMA debut.

Two other things not announced at press time, but are either close to finalized or finalized to be announced at the last minute to spur late press, is that Rickson Gracie would be appearing at this show, and Stevie Wonder would sing the national anthem.

This event will air on Eurosport on 1/19.

PRIDE SP AT THE SAITAMA SUPER ARENA

Rules for the main event of Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Royce Gracie were finalized this past week. It will have three 10:00 rounds, and if it goes the time limit, no matter who dominates, it will be ruled a draw. The match can only end via submission, knockout or if the corner throws in the towel, as the referee and doctor are not allowed to stop the fight.

The rest of the show, under normal Pride rules with three rounds of 10-5-5, has these confirmed matches: It will be the retirement match of Gary Goodridge, who turns 38 next month, a charismatic fighter whose career dates back to 1996. Goodridge, who said it was time to pack it in due to all the injuries he’s accumulated during his career, was allowed to pick his final opponent. He picked Don Frye, 38, who has suffered far more serious injuries due to spending years as a pro wrestler in New Japan. Frye beat Goodridge twice when both were rookies (both started on the same night in a UFC one-night tournament where Frye beat Goodridge in the finals, and both were made instant stars due to the extensive coverage of that event). Frye’s contract with Pride expires with this fight. The fight should be a slugfest. Yuki Kondo, the Pancrase light heavyweight champion, facing bigger 37-year-old Brazilian Jiu Jitsu veteran Mario Sperry in what should be a submission battle on the ground. Quinton Jackson tries to get back on the winning track against Ikuhisa Minowa, a very exciting, but 20 pounds lighter fighter, who Jackson should overpower but will probably put up an exciting fight for Japanese fans. Ryan Gracie faces pro wrestler Wataru Sakata of Zero-One, who is the NWA International jr. heavyweight champion, as if that matters. Hayato Sakurai faces Daijyu Takase in a battle of 170-pounders who are both very good grapplers. Sakurai was formerly ranked No. 1 in the world at that weight before running into Matt Hughes, is making his Pride debut.

While not announced, it is expected that Murilo Ninja will face Akira Shoji, which should be a win for Ninja. Kazushi Sakuraba will also fight on the show. Pride is attempting, and thus far without any success, to put together what would be a huge marquee match against Kiyoshi Tamura, but Tamura hasn’t agreed to terms. On 12/23, Dream Stage president Nobuyuki Sakakibara told the press to write as much as they want about “the man in red” (Tamura) trying to pressure him into accepting what would really clinch the heated battle for No. 2 on the night. That would at least be an interesting match, because it would have super heat, and both are 34, both are really past their prime due to many injuries, and while Tamura is better standing, particularly with his vicious middle kicks, Sakuraba would be much better on the ground and should be good enough to get him there. It’s also the type of a match that unless it’s a blow-out, neither would have their drawing power hurt with a loss. If Tamura doesn’t come through, also under consideration for the Sakuraba match are Dos Caras Jr., who towers over Sakuraba at 6-5 ½ and 225 pounds, or Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, the twin brother of the legend. While Sakuraba’s myth would say otherwise, at this stage of his career, the 27-year-old Rogerio would like dominate Sakuraba, and won’t figure out a way to lose like Kevin Randleman did on 11/9.

INOKI BOM BA YE AT KOBE WINGS STADIUM

This show is in mass confusion. Despite the fact Mirko Cro Cop posted on his web site that he would not be fighting on the show due to a back injury, the promotion is still advertising him, and at a press conference, promoter Seiya Kawamata said he expected Cro Cop to be there. One would think they will keep upping the offer to Cro Cop, feeling eventually the money will be so much he’ll fight, particularly since Japanese pro wrestling MVP and NWF champ Yoshihiro Takayama is just there to be an entertaining victim. As noted last week, Takayama, for logical reasons, has said he would not be fighting on this show if Cro Cop pulled out. But this show would be a disaster without this main event, which is why Nogueira vs. Nagata is so important to the show.

Without that match, this show is weak for such a big show in a 50,000 seat stadium and looks to be a disaster. The only confirmed matches are Josh Barnett defending the King of Pancrase open weight championship against 6-11 ½ Schilt, New Japan’s Kazunari Murakami vs. K-1 star Stefan Leko, UFC’s Rich Franklin against Inoki’s protege Lyoto (Ryoto Machida), New Japan’s Tadao Yasuda vs. kickboxer Rene Rooze (Rooze knocked out Yasuda, who is now 40 and a big unskilled guy, in their previous meeting in August of 2001), and Alexander Emelianenko vs. Angelo Araujo, none of which are ticket sellers.

Another match they are working on is Kazuyuki Fujita against a world heavyweight boxing champion. Since a major boxing star is out of the question, they are apparently talking with very minor champions Richel Herisia (WBF champion) and past-his-prime K-1 star Mike Bernardo (the latter match would have genuine interest and may be possible since the K-1 show is using New Japan wrestlers), but time is clearly running out on this show. There was also an attempt to put together a women’s match on this show. Sanae Kikuta of Pancrase, who recently dropped the light heavyweight title, was offered a match with Frank Shamrock, but that isn’t going to happen since Shamrock didn’t accept the match since he has targeted the spring for his possible comeback.

It’s important to put on a good show, because NTV, which is backing the show, is looking at having this as the debut of the network’s MMA promotion which would run three or four major events every year. But with a humiliating show, like the one Inoki put together in August of 2002 on NTV, which also came together at the last second with the horrible Naoya Ogawa vs. Matt Ghaffari main event, it killed that promotion on NTV dead."

Dave gets previous tape! Relative to our viewing order!

"I caught the U.S. broadcast on 12/21 of the Pride show on 10/5. Show did 52 thumbs up (88.1%)_ and 7 down (11.9%), with 0 in the middle in our poll. Mauricio Shogun vs. Akira Shoji got 20 votes for best match, Carlos Newton vs. Renzo Gracie with 16, Dokonjonosuke Mishima vs. Ralph Gracie with 14 and Mirko Cro Cop vs. Dos Caras Jr. with 7. Worst had Challid Arab vs. Rodney Faverus with 15. I thought it was good, with some excellent groundwork in the Gracies matches, although Rodrigo Gracie vs. Daijyu Takase wasn’t much. It was nothing close to the level of the recent Pride shows, so if you were expecting that, you’d be disappointed. I was also very surprised at the number of responses we got for a sure that was on an 11-week tape delay. Dos Caras Jr. should have worn a football helmet instead of a mask for his fight with Mirko Cro Cop. It was the debut of Canadian pro wrestling announcer Mauro Ranallo, who worked with Bas Rutten. Ranallo was a big improvement over Damon Perry. He announces more like a wrestling announcer, which is either good or bad depending on what you think Pride should be, with all the over hyping. He clearly did his homework and knew enough about everyone and their style. He also didn’t try to be funny, which was refreshing after Damon Perry tried so hard to be funny and wasn’t."

He sure wasn't, Dave, that's true! 

Well that really was a lot of Observer bits, wasn't it? But so it goes in advance of PRIDE SPECIAL 男祭り 2003 / プライド スペシャル おとこまつり にせんさん (puraido supesharu otokomatsuri ni sen-san) / PRIDE SPECIAL OTOKO MATSURI 2003 / PRIDE SPECIAL MEN'S FESTIVAL 2003 (tragically and artlessly renamed Shockwave 2003 for the English-language broadcast), and indeed New Year's Eve broadly across three Japanese television networks, replete with intrigues which will in time prove the undoing of this entire edifice when its darkest aspects are brought to light in the fullness of time in an article penned by our poet-king Tadashi Tanaka. It will all, eventually, be quite a thing. Let us explore it further together! And soon! Thank you for reading, my friends, and please take care.