Someone mentioned in another thread that Pride was associate with organized crime is this true and if so what exactly did they do?
Partly true partly not. . I’ve done a lot of research on the Yakuza and they do have massive influence in Japan. As a criminal organisation, they are much larger and more powerful than the Mafia or any other gang in the world, with numerous different schemes. Antonio Inoki is very friendly with them. They have always had numerous ways of making money. In Japan they have a long history within the wrestling and mixed martial arts business. Prior to the whole drug trade they made money from gambling- they ran every pachinko parlor in Japan. They also ran events to an extent. For example, they would purchase a certain amount of tickets to a wrestling show almost "buying the show", in effect. Then they went to every business in town and sold tickets. Not buying tickets was not an option. They were very fair about it, though. They would go to a big business, making a lot of money, and smaller businesses only selling a handful. However obviously with shows at the Dome or other larger arenas it is pretty hard to do so. They attended all shows front row and would often take some of the wrestlers/fighters out into town afterwards. The PRIDE/Yakuza links hurt DSE hugely, which ended with them letting Hustle go and eventually the reason why they began listening to offers for PRIDE. The men who were the sugar daddies of DSE went to jail when the exposure of the Yakuza and DSE came out.
