Has Anyone Else Here Quit Watching MMA?

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RaginCajun

The Reigning Undisputed Monsters Tournament Champ
Oct 25, 2015
36,970
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Cheers captain vague
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.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
8,798
11,164
I must admit they finally have figured out how to televise fights in a cage though. Remember all those bad angles and views through the fence in the old days?
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
8,798
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The superior product was bought in 2007.
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.
 

SongExotic2

ATM 3 CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. #FREECAIN
First 100
Jan 16, 2015
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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.
Alright mate don't need your life story
 

Ryann Von Doom

The Man
Jan 28, 2015
5,896
6,676
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.
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.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
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Jan 15, 2015
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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.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
8,798
11,164
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.
 

Ryann Von Doom

The Man
Jan 28, 2015
5,896
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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.

That was from people in the know that he was the one who tipped them off. It really started with Heath, mirko and fedor showing up at K1 events.. bad times. Started in like 04/05 area and bad times ensued.. had there been no Yakuza ties, we'd still have a strong Japanese MMA scene.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
8,798
11,164
had there been no Yakuza ties, we'd still have a strong Japanese MMA scene.
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.
 

Ryann Von Doom

The Man
Jan 28, 2015
5,896
6,676
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.
I remember it.. made the rounds in 2008/09 a few times as well.
 

Tiiimmmaaayyy

First 100 ish
Jan 19, 2015
7,990
9,940
I will always be a fan of the sport, but miss "The good old days". I watch all the free fights, but haven't paid for a PPV in a long time. I even gave up my FightPass a few months ago.
 

Rambo John J

Eats things that would make a Billy Goat Puke
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Jan 17, 2015
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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.
 

Chromium

Posting Machine
Oct 10, 2016
825
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I slowly stopped watching for a number of reasons, to the point where I only catch a few shows a year now. I finally gave up FightPass last year, and to my own surprise haven't gotten ESPN+.

Part of it was cards being 6-7 fucking hours and on a bunch of different platforms I have to jump between (and as a cord cutter I don't have FS1 or ESPN).

Part of it was 600 people on the roster and the bottom half of those fight less than twice a year, because there's not enough card spots. The divisions with like 80-90 people are especially egregious to try and follow, even if men's BW-through-HW roughly reflected the global fighter population. Part of it was plain too many cards, but I could deal with that if they had more familiar faces and were maybe a hair shorter.

Part of it was the Reebok deal and Zuffa/WME's continually fucking over the fighters financially has just been depressing and just sort of killed my early fandom enthusiasm where I was like "this sport's gonna take over the world!!" Running TUF into the ground didn't help either but that's like 1% of it. USADA initially seemed like a good idea, and I get it if some of the bigger stars might get a bit of leniency, but straight up protecting someone like Jon Jones with a free turinabol pass just makes me feel fucking gross.

Anyway I liked Ronda Rousey. A shame she got so arrogant and then had a mental breakdown when she lost, I genuinely pity her.

I've followed MMA since 2005, and I don't remember when the UFC plateaued, but I feel like they've just kept going more and more downhill since early-mid 2015 or so. Maybe they can turn things around but I'm not holding my breath.
 

Chromium

Posting Machine
Oct 10, 2016
825
1,326
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.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
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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
Well, they did create Pride in the first place. At least, Mr I's yakuza did. Then the control changed hands backstage.

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.
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.

I appreciate your posting on this issue, but honestly, why wouldn't they report on it?
No idea, but they didn't. They carried on throughout 2006 pretending all was well and Pride was taking over the world.

Except for Zach Arnold at FightOpinion. He covered it all throughout that calendar year. I know, I was posting there then. As I said earlier, it was surreal talking to friends and local fighters about it - they looked at me like I was crazy whenever I brought it up. Same story on websites like mma.tv.


.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
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In fact if memory serves Zach actually created the FightOpinion blog at the end of '05 expressly for the purpose of breaking the Pride / Yakuza story. Prior to that he had done all of his mma reporting on his old Puroresu Power Japanese pro wrestling site.
 

megatherium

el rey del mambo
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
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The mainstream mma media from the big sites either remained silent until the Zuffa purchase or riduled Zach for his 'conspiracy theory'.