Well, I have to compare to now as Johnny and jimmy and ma and pa watch nowadays......no one wants to acknowledge “hardcore” peopleThe superior product was bought in 2007.
Well, I have to compare to now as Johnny and jimmy and ma and pa watch nowadays......no one wants to acknowledge “hardcore” peopleThe superior product was bought in 2007.
I prefer the tournaments and heavyweight fights, which are both rare now. I appreciate looking at a few of the hot wmma fighters but have no interest in watching lesbians fight. Add in the constant cancelled fights, ped bullshit, and weight cutting and it is hard to justify rushing home from work and ignore the my kids for that weak product.Cheers captain vague
Did you follow the Pride / Yakuza scandal unfolding on FightOpibnion through 2006? It was kind of surreal reading Zach Arnold report on this huge scandal for a solid year that was going to spell the end of Pride on his little blog while literally every other mma website was acting like Pride was expanding in North America and taking over the world.. People would get mad when you told them what was going on in Japan; they had no idea and didn't want to know. And then, sure enough, mma was taken off Japanese tv and Pride was purchased by Zuffa and folded.The superior product was bought in 2007.
Alright mate don't need your life storyI prefer the tournaments and heavyweight fights, which are both rare now. I appreciate looking at a few of the hot wmma fighters but have no interest in watching lesbians fight. Add in the constant cancelled fights, ped bullshit, and weight cutting and it is hard to justify rushing home from work and ignore the my kids for that weak product.
No I didnt, I knew it was happening but hoped that it could be fixed. Yoshida of K1 can eat a dick for his actions, it killed MMA in Japan.Did you follow the Pride / Yakuza scandal unfolding on FightOpibnion through 2006? It was kind of surreal reading Zach Arnold report on this huge scandal for a solid year that was going to spell the end of Pride on his little blog while literally every other mma website was acting like Pride was expanding in North America and taking over the world.. People would get mad when you told them what was going on in Japan; they had no idea and didn't want to know. And then, sure enough, mma was taken off Japanese tv and Pride was purchased by Zuffa and folded.
I don't remember Yoshida being a central figure in the scandal. It started with the Yokohama Yakuza hostile takeover of Pride from Mt I's crew and reached it's boiling point with the New Years Eve three way battle between Pride K1 and Inoki Bom Ba Ye and Inkoki signing Fedor to fight on his show. The magazine that covered the Yakuza involvement in JMMA was the Shukan Gendai weekly and Zach Arnold and Dan Herbertson were the only gaijin to report on the story in the west.No I didnt, I knew it was happening but hoped that it could be fixed. Yoshida of K1 can eat a dick for his actions, it killed MMA in Japan.
I don't remember Yoshida being a central figure in the scandal. It started with the Yokohama Yakuza hostile takeover of Pride from Mt I's crew and reached it's boiling point with the New Years Eve three way battle between Pride K1 and Inoki Bom Ba Ye and Inkoki signing Fedor to fight on his show. The magazine that covered the Yakuza involvement in JMMA was the Shukan Gendai weekly and Zach Arnold and Dan Herbertson were the only gaijin to report on the story in the west.
I posted a fascinating three part interview with Fedor and Cro Cop's former manager Miro Mijatovic where he spilled the beans on the yakuza and the end of Pride and JMMA from his very inside perspective on Evil Yoshida's and Masato's websites. The interview ran over three weeks on Spike TV's short lived half hour mma journal but unfortunately has recently been scrubbed from the internet. Miro gets into all the gory details including the Yokohama crew's hit on Mr Moroshita and lots of other good stuff.
Who or what powers prompted Shukan Gendai to unmask the Yakuza and forever bury JMMA is the question that will always puzzle me. It a simple reality the JMMA can never return to Japanese network television that prevents a rebirth of the sport in Japan.
Sure, but it was Yakuza fight industry know how combined with the unequaled Yakuza-connected Sony TV production crews that really made the JMMA product what it was. So yes, no Yakuza, no problem. But also; no Yskuza no good product. Those guys were real fight fans above all else - kinda like the Fertitta's but 1000 times better. What is really required is for whatever outside power that was brought to bear on Shukan Gendai to expose the Yakuza to back off and green light big time mma in Japan again. This transfer of the sport to a Las Vegas based monopoly was orchestrated from somewhere high above imvho.had there been no Yakuza ties, we'd still have a strong Japanese MMA scene.
I remember it.. made the rounds in 2008/09 a few times as well.Sure, but it was Yakuza fight industry know how combined with the unequaled Yakuza-connected Sony TV production crews that really made the JMMA product what it was. So yes, no Yakuza, no problem. But also; no Yskuza no good product. Those guys were real fight fans above all else - kinda like the Fertitta's but 1000 times better. What is really required is for whatever outside power that was brought to bear on Shukan Gendai to expose the Yakuza to back off and green light big time mma in Japan again. This transfer of the sport to a Las Vegas based monopoly was orchestrated from somewhere high above imvho.
I really wish I could dig up the Mijatovic interview for you guys but most of the information can still be found by searching Zach's FightOpinion blog's back pages from '06. I was active there myself at the time watching events unfold.
Nice catch. Still it's just some highlights. There's much much more if anyone really wants to browse FightOpinion archives from '06. Zach was on this story like a dog on a bone.
I don't remember Yoshida being a central figure in the scandal. It started with the Yokohama Yakuza hostile takeover of Pride from Mt I's crew and reached it's boiling point with the New Years Eve three way battle between Pride K1 and Inoki Bom Ba Ye and Inkoki signing Fedor to fight on his show. The magazine that covered the Yakuza involvement in JMMA was the Shukan Gendai weekly and Zach Arnold and Dan Herbertson were the only gaijin to report on the story in the west.
I posted a fascinating three part interview with Fedor and Cro Cop's former manager Miro Mijatovic where he spilled the beans on the yakuza and the end of Pride and JMMA from his very inside perspective on Evil Yoshida's and Masato's websites. The interview ran over three weeks on Spike TV's short lived half hour mma journal but unfortunately has recently been scrubbed from the internet. Miro gets into all the gory details including the Yokohama crew's hit on Mr Moroshita and lots of other good stuff.
Who or what powers prompted Shukan Gendai to unmask the Yakuza and forever bury JMMA is the question that will always puzzle me. It a simple reality the JMMA can never return to Japanese network television that prevents a rebirth of the sport in Japan.
I appreciate your posting on this issue, but honestly, why wouldn't they report on it? They're journalists. It's on the yakuza that Pride is dead. They should have stuck to using it to launder money and not tried fixing fights by putting a gun to someone's head. If they wanted more Japanese fighters winning fights, there's plenty of other ways they could have stacked the deck in their favor that aren't first degree felonies. They should have stuck to not telling gaijins their opponents until two weeks out, or maybe they could have funded domestic gyms so that Japanese fighters wouldn't have to go abroad for world class training. Either way the yakuza fucked up, not the journalists.Who or what powers prompted Shukan Gendai to unmask the Yakuza and forever bury JMMA is the question that will always puzzle me. It a simple reality the JMMA can never return to Japanese network television that prevents a rebirth of the sport in Japan.
Well, they did create Pride in the first place. At least, Mr I's yakuza did. Then the control changed hands backstage.I appreciate your posting on this issue, but honestly, why wouldn't they report on it? They're journalists. It's on the yakuza that Pride is dead. T
I didn't enjoy the Daijiro Matsui type squash matches either. Gruesome stuff. The Japanese seem to have a peculiar desire to watch their own get beat up. i don't get it.If they wanted more Japanese fighters winning fights, there's plenty of other ways they could have stacked the deck in their favor that aren't first degree felonies.
No idea, but they didn't. They carried on throughout 2006 pretending all was well and Pride was taking over the world.I appreciate your posting on this issue, but honestly, why wouldn't they report on it?