The MMA landscape in Japan continues to contract and shift after the demise of PRIDE, arguably the most high-profile Japanese promotion to date. The confusion leading up to PRIDE’s implosion was a mish-mash of innuendos of gang-ties, improvised legalese, finger-pointing and hare-brained backroom wrangling that left the peanut gallery amazed at how business is done in the Far East. The whole mess was damn near unintelligible without a crash course in International Business: 101 and a couple of continuing-ed classes in “Yakuza: Really, We Had Nothing To Do With It” and “Dana White’s Guide To Crazy Foreigners” to round out the courseload.
The UFC/PRIDE shotgun wedding has been brought up to the surface again recently with one of Zuffa’s many tin-man companies filing suit against DSE, the former owners of the PRIDE brand. Rehashing the whole thing is an exercise in futility, especially considering the detailed rundown provided in the links above by that most beautiful of MMA bloggers, Zach Arnold. In a nutshell, the relationship began and ended like most marriages: promises were made, compromises were agreed upon, faces shining and happy. Time passes, grudges come to bear and before you know it one of them’s moved back in with their mother. One party is left with trinkets and an empty checkbook; the other moves in with a new suitor and goes on with business as usual.
It’s that last part that holds interest. With PRIDE dissolved, the fighters and production companies dispersed into the wilds of Japan’s entertainment machine. With UFC’s absorption of all or most of PRIDE’s fight roster never coming to fruition, who signs where became an interesting game on its own. Companies came out of the woodwork, most notably DSE’s return from the dead to tag-team with Fight Entertainment Group for Yarrenoka!, the big NYE ‘07 bash marking the return of Fedor Emelianenko. Now the word on the street is that DSE’s discarded employees and FEG, parents of K-1, may be entering a longer-term relationship and will be co-promoting more events in the future. One date and they’re moving in together. How sweet.
To muddy the waters even further, here comes another promotion signing big name fighters. World Victory Road came out of nowhere and picked up two ex-PRIDE superstars, Takanori Gomi and Josh Barnett. Who knows who’s running WVR (besides Zach) but I stopped caring about three paragraphs back. MMA is fun because of the fights, not the boardroom jousting. Gomi, Barnett, Kazuo Misaki, Jeff Monson, Kazuyuki Fujita, Hidehiko Yoshida and Kevin Randleman round out a decently-talented PRIDE facsimile and who knows who else they’re on the verge of signing. Nice! The premiere WVR event titled Sengoku is slated to take place on March 5. Awesome! Who are these guys? What’s their official site? Off to the Internets!
Can’t find it. Granted, it was a cursory search in between bites of my sandwich, but the Sengoku site was the closest one I could find. Screw it. I’m getting desperate, time to start improvising. What could WVR’s website be?
Wait. Oh. Huh? Hahahahahahaha!
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