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By Zach Arnold February 23, 2012

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Is There A Mma Fight On Tonight

The show is hosted by Mike Straka (@mikestraka). Reportedly, a big topic on the debut show will be the implosion of PRIDE, given that it’s been almost five years since UFC did the asset sale agreement with Sakakibara.

I’m told that the show will cover the scandal in-depth on a heavy level, which would mean the first time a major US media outlet is discussing the ultimate taboo of the Japanese fight industry (the yakuza).

I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t comment on how the story is portrayed until I watch the show. However, if you’re a new visitor and want some reading material to review the background on the implosion of PRIDE, here are some key words to search:

• The yakuza: Organized crime syndicates in Japan. Recently, politicians & police have ramped up the war against the black suits and the suits in turn are threatening to turn Japan “into Mexico.” Major players: Yamaguchi-gumi (largest umbrella group w/ heavy roots in Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, moving towards Kanto area), kudo-kai (sub-group known to have relations with fight industry in the past), kokusui-kai (smaller Kanto-based group), Inagawa-kai (Kanto-based top rival to Yamaguchi, they’ve been dealing with a turf war with Yamaguchi). Rikidozan, the Godfather of Japanese pro-wrestling after the Reconstruction period post-World War II in Japan, was heavily involved in the Underworld.
• Shukan Gendai: This is the weekly magazine that published a series of negative articles about PRIDE in 2006 that caused the public firestorm in regards to creating the yakuza scandal.
• Tadashi Tanaka: Scandal writer who took a lot of heat for his articles but ultimately won the battle.
• Seiya Kawamata: Kawamata was the major focus of the Gendai articles. He’s an admitted yakuza fixer on behalf of K-1 boss Kazuyoshi Ishii. K-1 & PRIDE initially worked together with Antonio Inoki but ended up being blood rivals. Kawamata is a big talker and still is around, but under the radar. Kawamata was the man who managed Inoki’s 2003 New Year’s Eve MMA show at Kobe Wing Stadium. It flopped horribly on Nippon TV.
• Kunio Kiyohara: Kiyohara was the producer at Fuji TV who was heavily involved in the matchmaking & production of PRIDE. PRIDE was his baby. Kiyohara’s father had pull with Sankei Shimbun. When the police started investigating & interrogating Fuji TV employees, Kiyohara was a focus during the PRIDE scandal.
• Miro Mijatovic: Was one of the big three agents during the PRIDE days. He managed Fedor & Mirko Cro Cop in Japan. He managed Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe’s deals. A heavy hitter in the hotel business & investing world. He would soon get sabotaged after Fedor worked Inoki’s 2003 NYE event instead of the PRIDE show on Fuji TV. It was Mijatovic who went after troublemakers when violence allegedly started breaking out. After Kawamata filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Nippon TV over the NYE deal, Miro successfully got a court lien on any winnings Kawamata got in court against NTV. Miro was deemed to be of good character by Tokyo District Court. It’s rare enough to see any court battles in the fight industry rampant with corruption & yakuza… and even rarer that a foreigner took the fight to big players. After the Inoki NYE show, he would end up losing both Fedor & Mirko due to various power plays.
• Toshiro Igari: Famous anti-yakuza lawyer who worked with Miro to go after the bad guys. In fact, Miro’s case was featured in one of Igari’s publications. Igari took on many big fish but may have taken on too big of a one when Sumo was imploding due to various scandals. Igari was a TV personality and vocally stood up against corruption. Before his last book would be published by Kodansha (the same publishing house that produces Shukan Gendai), he was found dead in the Philippines. Few people believe it was suicide, as the yakuza has a way of blurring the lines in regards to making murders look like suicides. Igari got the last laugh from the grave when his biggest book to date was published after his death. This article at The Economist succinctly characterizes Mr. Igari’s end.
• Ken Imai: Ken Imai was Kazuyoshi Ishii’s former right-hand man who left K-1 when all hell broke loose due to a corporate tax evasion scandal. Imai ended up being Nobuyuki Sakakibara’s point man. He pulled Mirko Cro Cop away from Miro and got him into PRIDE. Mirko was supposed to fight on the Inoki NYE show but ended up pulling out due to what he claimed was a back injury. Mirko left Miro and went with Imai just days after the Inoki NYE event. Imai was heavily involved in the business side of K-1 & foreign shows.
• Nobuyuki Sakakibara: The front man for PRIDE. Huge ego. Big talker. Plenty to say. Background was from the Nagoya Fuji TV affiliate, Tokai TV.
• Sotaro Shinoda: Sakakibara’s right-hand man. He, along with Kato (the boss of DREAM) worked with Sakakibara & Kiyohara to put together the PRIDE coalition.
• Mr. Ishizaka aka Kim Dok Soo: He was referred to in Shukan Gendai as the infamous “Mr. I,” the alleged shadow owner of PRIDE who is zainichi (of Korean blood). Kanagawa police put out an arrest warrant and he supposedly fled to South Korea but doesn’t know much Korean language. Think of him as a Godfather type.
• Naoto Morishita: The original front man for PRIDE. He was found dead, hanging by shower curtain in a hotel room. Sakakibara took over after his death.
• Hiromichi Momose: The original Godfather of PRIDE, the man in the ball cap & dark glasses w/ body guards. He was Nobuhiko Takada’s backer when UWF-International collapsed due to money troubles & image damage after an interpromotional series in 1995-1996 with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Momose, though an entity called KRS, backed the first PRIDE events with Takada vs. Rickson Gracie. Eventually, the company backing PRIDE would be Dream Stage Entertainment. Momose was a classmate in his younger days with Tatsuo Kawamura, the veteran entertainment power broker who has been the power source for Antonio Inoki for many years. Momose is now dead.
• Ed Fishman: Friend of Dick Clark, the man from Malibu who made a name for himself in Las Vegas & Atlantic City through gaming. He was supposedly approached by Sakakibara, after PRIDE lost its Fuji TV deal, for a loan. Ed wanted to buy PRIDE. He promoted two PRIDE events at the Thomas & Mack Center in Vegas. During this time frame, UFC was negotiating with Sakakibara and got the PRIDE assets despite the two PRIDE Vegas events doing decent business.
• Jamie Pollack: UFC point man who moved to Japan after the PRIDE asset sale deal to try to run PRIDE under Zuffa leadership. He encountered nothing but hostility and found himself back in the States in short order. His name is historically important because Zuffa eventually closed down the PRIDE offices with signs telling employees to clean out their desks immediately. This unfairly/fairly played right into the Japanese media stereotype that UFC was never serious about running PRIDE and that the evil gaijin had killed the home promotion.

Topics:Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold 27 Comments » Permalink Trackback

Spike Mma Fight Tonight

Spike Mma Fight Tonight Ufc

1. Should be interesting to see what they come up with, I really liked Straka’s work on Fighting Words and I think he adds a lot of credibility to this Spike show.

2. Inside MMA, MMA Live, UFC Tonight, UFC Ultimate Insider, MMA Uncensored Live, and a bunch of UFC post fight shows.

   First we had the fight promotion bubble, where it seemed like everybody wanted to be a promoter. Now everybody wants to do a news show on MMA.

   Not sure if there is enough of a fanbase to this niche sport to warrant so many programs.

   I will give this one a shot, but I don’t have high hopes for it. So far my score card on these programs are:

   Inside MMA – Horrible Show. Rice is beyond bad. Rutten is out of touch with the sport. A lot of the fighters make for awkward segments.

   MMA Live – Horrible Show. ESPN doesn’t care about MMA.

   UFC Tonight – Helwani & White segments are only good parts. And they make up less then 5 minutes of telecast. Rest is useless.

   UFC Ultimate Insider – Refreshingly fun to watch. Good fighter segments, behind the scenes content, and other interesting MMA stories. Easily the best of the bunch.

   UFC Pre-Show – Only had one for FUEL TV so far. The hour format was too long. Should be 30 minutes and then might be okay.

   UFC Post-Show – Second best of the bunch. However, it is a lot of filler. It feels like watching Ariel Helwani’s MMA Fighting interviews, only on TV. Plus having the fighters come out talking afterwards is actually interesting.

   Like I said, I will give this one a shot or two…. But I don’t expect much. And I highly doubt they will even be 1/10th as informative as Mr. Arnold is on this topic.

   I don’t expect them to blame the UFC for the fall of Pride…. But if they do…. I will have to laugh really hard at SpikeTV being the hurt ex girlfriend again….

   • That there sir i must say sums it up for me…

     As for MMA Uncensored…Terrible people and production can be canned. I think MMA Junkie could have did a better job. And no i’m not a fan of Straka.

   • Pretty much all of these MMA ‘news’ shows are useless for fans who follow the sport on the internet. We aren’t their target audience.

3. Did they talk to you Zach? It’s your damned story.

4. pride scandal, wow thats what 5 years old and has no real effect on peoples lives?
   talk about boring and worthless…
   what about the 911 scandal where a bunch of rich bastards blew up the wtc’s and claimed that it was a man in a cave in order to justify deaths of millions?

   • No one is stopping you from talking about 9/11 conspiracies on some place that isn’t an MMA website. If you care one fuck about the history of MMA, the death of Pride is absolutely enormous. Beyond the enormous repercussions it had on MMA globally, in Japan it went beyond the sport. Furthermore the details still are hardly common knowledge even among most hardcore fans, and the English-speaking fans who do know some of the more fucked up details owe a debt to Zach Arnold.

     So in short, fuck off. You’re on the wrong website.

     • Yeah, seriously.

       It was kind of obnoxious as they took all of the credit for that interview on this show, as the whole thing was years of work on Dan Herbertson’s part. The reason why this is just coming out now is because Miro just all of a sudden told Dan he’d go on record with him, so Dan went out to find a buyer, basically.

       The hilarity of the whole thing being that Dan was fired from MMAFighting for being ‘non-essential’ when he clearly does uber-quality work.

     • 1000% AGREE

5. Hey, a man can get a lot done from a cave in the Hindu Kush mountains if he’s really determined.

6. Wonder why MMA Junkie was left out in the cold on this one….

   • I’d imagine that they decided press credentials were more important than having their name attached to a shitty show on UFC’s rival network.

7. Zach Arnold getting mentioned on SpikeTV!! Way to go.

   Too bad the show itself absolutely sucked. They lost me when the host said Shields/Akiyama didn’t belong on the card.

   • Agreed. Guess we’ll have to wait for the much longer web version when Herbertson or whoever puts it out.

     • Dan was saying there’d be a print version going up somewhere that would be much deeper than what was presented on the show.

8. Well, that was certainly… an interesting show.

   Glad to know the one time I’ll be mentioned on national TV is in association with Cage Potato. Didn’t know they were my bosses. 🙂

   • I also enjoyed Straka’s claim that you have have only reported on the Shukan Gendai crusade and not the Mijatovic Bom-Ba-Ye incident. If he really does read your stuff, his reading comprehension is awful.

     I also like how they alluded to the Igari ‘suicide’ without mentioning how he ties into all this or even using his name. There was potential for a really cool expose built around the Mijatovic interview, but they essentially just showed the interview and stopped there.

     Lastly, did anyone catch Jerry Millen claiming that he never saw anyone or anything Yakuza related at Pride? Hilarious. Did he think those duffle bags full of cash that they handed out were part of a legitimate business?

     • I don’t see what the big deal is. This stuff was all here and in Total MMA. This doesn’t seem like new information, although it’s cool to hear an on the record interview about some of it.

       • I think it is somewhat of a big deal that the story is finally being covered by a non-internet based English language outlet. This is the first time the casual fans who don’t follow the sport on the internet are hearing this stuff. As Dana says, those of us who live ‘in the bubble’ take a lot of this information for granted. While it may not be new information to us, it is absolutely new information to the vast majority of fans who get their MMA news from the broadcast media.

       • I don’t think the “vast majority” of fans get their MMA news from the broadcast media. Mostly because MMA has never been covered in any significant way in that medium. More people will read Bleacher Report MMA or Bloody Elbow this week than will watch that show on Spike. It probably won’t be close.

       • I don’t think the vast majority of fans get any MMA news at all. Almost none of my ‘casual fan’ friends follow the sport all. They just tune in for the fights and will occasionally stop on SpikeTV while channel surfing.

         I take that back. Some of them do get MMA ‘news’ from following Dana on Twitter.

       • I agree with Steve4192 there – same thing with my ‘casual fan’ friends. Other than me emailing them specific links/stories and the occasional mention/show on Sportnset they don’t follow the sport at all and tune in just for the ‘major’ fights.

9. […] was amazing. PRIDE was also infected with the Japanese mafia which ultimately led to its downfall. With the exception of Zach Arnold’s extensive coverage over at Fight Opinion, this story has largely been untouched, so it was quite the surprise to see Spike TV’s new […]

10. […] was amazing. PRIDE was also infected with the Japanese mafia which ultimately led to its downfall. With the exception of Zach Arnold’s extensive coverage over at Fight Opinion, this story has largely been untouched, so it was quite the surprise to see Spike TV’s new […]

11. […] Beginner’s searchable guide on cast of characters involved in PRIDE scandal […]

12. The lost episode of Spike TV’s MMA Uncensored Program – Miro Mijatovic vs PRIDE and the Yakuza

Spike Mma Fight Tonight Boxing