For real?! Me too! GSP GSP GSP!!!!! ( Was a very good fight i may add. Lovely to see Hughes humiliated as always )
I loved Pride. The shows were awesome. Shame it died but they wasnt the first mma/pro-wrestling promotion to die in Japan and wont be the last. Difference this time was MMA has never recovered in Japan. Pride was a promotion they fans had an emotional attachment to and K-1 and Dream dont have that.
Because the Yakuza were the guys behind Pride. The Yakuza have always been involved in pro-wrestling/MMA in Japan and you have no choice but to deal with them when running certain buildings however before Pride the Yakuza never actually owned a promotion. The Yakuza being behind Pride wasnt an issue until it was leaked. The Shukan Gendai negative media campaign against PRIDE, linking them to organized crime, killed the company’s credibility in Japan and Fuji TV cancelled the tv deal as they couldnt be seen to be dealing with a Yakuza company. Fuji payed for all the production so that was a huge chunk of money gone. They couldnt get another tv deal as no tv company would touch them and the money that the company was generating was just being sent offshore to 'MR I' (the real owner of DSE) so the promotion after a few shows were basically bleeding too much money. DSE managed to convince Zuffa to buy a company that was on its knees and had no real value. They bought a tape library which wasnt even complete as Fuji TV owned the rights to much of the library and they bought fighter contracts again which were not water tight. Whoever did the due diligiance really fcuked up as Pride wasnt worth buying. Zuffa originally talked about keeping Pride as seperate company and running shows in Japan but I knew that was BS as the Japanese wouldnt accept there #1 fight promotion being taken over by some gajins. Not to mention Zuffa would of had to deal with the Yakuza to run shows in Japan. I think Zuffa soon realised that the amount of money you can lose in Japan running shows is huge and it wasnt feasible to keep Pride running as a seperate promotion. The articles linked below give you an understanding if what happened and why it went wrong. http://www.fightopinion.com/2006/04/17/summary-translation-of-417-gendai-article/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2006/04/05/kawamata-interviewed-in-shukan-gendai/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2006/05/08/gendai-company-supplied-pride-owner-with-mansion/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2006/04/26/summary-translation-of-new-gendai-article/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2007/04/02/monday-mayhem-thoughts-on-shukan-gendai-article/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2007/04/01/shukan-gendai-yakuza-owner-problematic-employee/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2008/02/08/a-question-about-the-pride-asset-sale-deal/ http://www.fightopinion.com/2006/06/05/fuji-tv-cancels-pride-for-good/
zuffa never really has been able to come close to was dse did, despite their unbelievable monetary successes. I guess that's what happens when an organization is made up of uncreative do-nothings.
The good thing about Pride is that they always had the best fighter in the world at one time or another. They had Rickson in the early days, Sakuraba tore thru everyone and then Fedor the best ever.