History of MMA in Japan part III: Pride early days & decline of Pancrase

For a decade, Japan became the business center of mixed martial arts; this all began in 1997 with the inception of Pride Fighting Championships — Pride was the brain-child of Xavier Cullars who proposed to arrange a shoot-fight between Rickson Gracie and the leader of the UWF-International (UWF-i) boom Nobuhiko Takada.

Takada was a sixteen-year veteran of the professional wrestling industry and co-founder of UWF-i which presented a more realistic style of wrestling and Rickson was two years removed from his back-to-back Vale Tudo Japan victories.

12 months before he locked horns with Rickson Takadas long-running feud with New Japan Pro Wrestling had culminated with two blockbuster matches selling out the Tokyo Dome twice against Keiji Mutoh and Shinya Hashimoto that both eclipsed 60,000 paid attendance for gates in excess of $5 million making it one of the biggest money-making feuds in NJPW history.

The first-ever Pride event took place in front of 47,000 fans in the Tokyo Dome that got a whole new look on what this sport could be – pyrotechnics, drum orchestras and over-the-top personalities became the norm for Pride events and made their competition look second-class.

Looking back at the first Pride event it wasn’t the smash-mouth product that hardcore enthusiasts remember but it wasn’t for a lack of trying – Pride had a main-event that was going to pack the Tokyo Dome and have the Japanese mainstream media at their fingertips but they needed a compelling undercard to put it over the top.

The co-main event was first slated to be a hard-nosed back-and-forth slugfest between Tank Abbott and Kimo Leopoldo who were both well-known entities from their performances in the UFC but Abbott was unable to make it into Japan so Dan Severn stepped in his place giving a slow-paced fight controlled by Severn that went 30 minutes to a draw.

The remainder of the card was supposed to have a theme of professional wrestlers vs. the Gracie family using several members of the UWF-i roster; interestingly enough a fight between an unknown Kazushi Sakuraba and Renzo Gracie was in the works years before their unforgettable battle which we will touch on down the line but these plans didn’t make it past the drawing board.

When Pride was on a fast-track to the top of the industry, the UFC was on a steady decline – In February of 1997 Senator John McCain’s rally against “no-holds barred” fighting had the sport banned in thirty-six states which in return had them dropped from most of their pay-per-view carriers.

Although MMA purists would hunt down McCain with torches and pitch-forks to this day for his words dubbing the sport “human cock-fighting” it was his efforts to finish the sports cult-following that forced the UFC to implements rules and weight-classes, without that the sport would not be seen by 8.8million people on FOX today.

With the recent success of Pride and a growing list of concerns promoting events in North America the UFC tried their luck in Japan with a huge fight card featuring two title-fights and a heavyweight tournament – But the real story of UFC Japan was the rise of Sakuraba.

Every die-hard fan from the nineties that grew up on Pride has a soft spot in their heart for Sakuraba, his combination of personality, charisma, supreme grappling ability and unorthodox striking made him a superstar but when he entered the UFC octagon for the first-time he was a semi-known professional wrestler.

The submission magician wasn’t even meant to be a part of the UFC Japan tournament to begin with, his fellow members of the upstart organization Kingdom Pro Wrestling Hiromitsu Kanehara and Yoji Anjo joined the heavyweight tournament brackets to garner attention to their company but a last minute injury to Kanehara gave Sakuraba the chance to step in.

In the first tournament bout Tank Abbott defeated Anjo but sustained an injury and was unable to continue in the competition and the second bout Marcus Silveira was thought to have won over Sakuraba due to an error on part of senior referee “Big” John McCarthy.

McCarthy speaks about this situation in his book openly admitting that this was one of his biggest mistakes as a referee going out of his way to protect Sakuraba without giving him a chance to fight back.

In a desperate attempt to not have this heavyweight tournament crumble before their eyes they set up a rematch between Silveria and Sakuraba to be the finals of the brackets – This time around there was no controversy with Sakuraba forcing the Brazilian to submit with an armbar.

UFC intended to make UFC Japan a separate entity under the SEG umbrella and have it ran by local promoters in Japan with the most successful on these shows joining their roster in North America but with no co-operation from Pride or K-1 and growing financial problems this plan was dropped after Ultimate Japan 3 in April of 2000.

The first Pride event was an overwhelming success, at first it was believe to be a one-off showcase but there was clearly an untapped market there with Japanese pop culture right behind it in support so Pride 2 went forward in 1998 with a fight between Branko Cikatić and Mark Kerr billed as a “K-1 Champion vs. UFC Champion” fight as the feature.

Interestingly enough, this fight was originally slated to have Royce Gracie making his Pride debut against Kerr who was lured to fight in Pride with boat loads of money out-bidding both UFC and Shooto.

Major changes came in the organization when Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE) took over Pride following Pride 4 – With the DSE agreement came a television deal with Fuji TV as well as partnerships with New Japan Pro Wrestling and K-1.

The formative years of Pride were ground-breaking for their time, while there was a strong reliance of promoting wrestler vs. fighter matches because that’s what the public in Japan wanted at the time some of their biggest stars were growing on the under-cards.

In the first three-years of the organization talents like Igor Vovchanchyn, Frank Trigg, Fabiano Iha, Wanderlei Silva and the aforementioned Sakuraba all came through the Pride doors and became the stars of the future.

Pancrase struggled with the success of Pride, although they were still afloat and a profitable organization they were not packing Tokyo Dome to the rafters – In 1996 Bas Rutten was one of Pancrases most marketable stars having worked hard to fill the gaps in his submission defense that cost him early in his career.

“I was just a kickboxer from Holland, at that time not a people knew me, I wasn’t Peter Earts or Ernesto Hoost or anything but after a while I think people realized that I was serious,” Bas said “It was strange, when I got known I had people bowing to me on the streets, it was the weirdest thing ever”

Rutten became synonymous with the “Rutten Jump” that to this day remains a hit on youtube to this day as well as his deadly liver kicks.

“I used to do the jump when I was a kid just for fun and do the splits because I thought it was cool and when I knocked out my first opponent the adrenaline or whatever it was made me decide to jump up and do it,” he continued “I just did it, I didn’t think about it before, I was just happy so I went wooo and jumped [laughs]”

In 1998 at the Pancrase Anniversary show he fought for the last time in the land of the rising sun defeating an out-matched Kengo Watanabe – He would compete three more times in his career, twice in the UFC winning their heavyweight title and years later in 2006 he would beat up Ruben Villareal.

“I was having problems with my wife, she was pregnant and she got really sick and there was a chance I was going to lose her and the baby so it was a lot of stress so I called them and I said ‘Listen, I cannot defend my title’ and they said ‘Well we have to take the title from you’,”

“So I let them take the title and I decided I would do what I could to get into the UFC because I was planning on moving to America anyway” he said.

The loss of Rutten as well as Ken Shamrock who left to pursue a career in the WWE where he would become one of the focal points in several big-time angles but in many ways moving over to wrestling took years off the body of Shamrock who never returned to his glory after that three-year stint in the WWE.

The man to fill the void of those two iconic figures was Masakatsu Funaki who brought great notoriety to Pancrase as their champion because of his years in New Japan Pro Wrestling as well as Akira Maeda’s UWF organizations.

“I always had a really good connection with Funaki, when I fought him, the second time especially I got a lot of respect for him and I think a lot of people around him did too because I hit him so hard,” Bas said “My palms were bruised and my knees were bruised from hitting him and kneeing him in the head and every single time he got up so I grabbed him by the hair and kneed him in the face as hard as I could”

“I just wanted him to stay down but the audience started cheering for him and it got him to get back up and it drove me nuts y’know [laughs] and I was getting real tired at this point now but thankfully he dropped the last time”

Funaki held the title on two separate occasions, the second time dropping it to Guy Mezger who was well on the way to becoming the next big star in Pancrase after fighting the best of the best in the organization – Mezger would defend the title on two separate occasions before vacating the title to return to North America to rematch arch nemesis Tito Ortiz.

“He was so disrespectful to me and my friends, I just wanted to fight him” Mezger said.

Ortiz is one of the most charismatic performers to fight in the sport, during the nineties he became one of the UFC’s only reliable drawing cards with his bad-boy persona and a mouth that everyone in attendance wanted to shut.

Mezger defeated Ortiz in his second professional fight to win the UFC 13 tournament and Ortiz made it clear that he wanted that rematch claiming the former kickboxer was “ducking” him by competing in Japan so Mezger vacated his title to get his hands on “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy”.

Interestingly enough the Mezger-Ortiz fight sparked the flame for an eventual fight between Ortiz and Shamrock that would be the first step in UFC turning the ship around.

Ortiz defeated Mezger just seconds shy of the 10 minute mark of their bout, but the real story began post-fight when Ortiz put on a T-Shirt which read “Gay Mezger is my Bitch” while flipping the bird to the Lion’s Den corner.

This enraged the former UFC Superfight Champion who has never been known for keeping his cool. Shamrock leaped over the cage fence and got in the face of the rebellious rookie demanding he cease his disrespectful actions but due to Shamrocks WWE contract these two would not touch until UFC 40.

In the second installment of the series which can be found here I introduced Shooto and the steps one must take to become an elite-level “Shooter” learning your craft, winning tournaments and exhibition fights in small gyms across Japan for little compensation just to be a part of the Shooto roster.

Shooto in many ways was ahead of the competition, when the big promotions were gobbling up all the talented big men in the sport they applied their focus elsewhere grooming the lighter weight-classes.

Although with the loss of Pride and UFC implementing more and more weight-classes this format has dissolved there was a time when Shooto was the place to be if you didn’t weight in excess of 200-pounds.

Towards the end of the nineties the middleweight division in Shooto (156-168lbs) was delivering the goods with an overflowing talent pool – Jutaro Nakao, Tetsuji Kato, Hayato “Mach” Sakurai and Anderson Silva are just some of the players at middleweight.

If you have only seen Sakurai in the twilight of his career having his arm removed by Nick Diaz or having his face smashed in by Marius Zaromskis then you need to do a lot of research into this Japanese sensation.

When he wrestled away the Shooto title from Nakao in his seventh professional outing it forced people to take notice of this 23-year-old who would take the Japanese world by storm over the next few years with his slick grappling skills, knockout power and natural charisma people couldn’t stay away.

While Sakurai was ruling the roost at middleweight the next batch of talent being groomed to take over the welterweight class (143-154lbs) in Caol Uno, Rumina Sato and Takanori Gomi but we will get to them down the line when they were more prominent in the early shades of the new millennium.

Fighting Network RINGS are an organization that got lost in the shuffle for most of their existence. In 1998 their founder & CEO Akira Maeda retired from active competition leaving the organization with one marketable star in Kiyoshi Tamura.

They had a clear focus on running tournament based fighting beginning with their Mega Battle series that eventually morphed into the King of Kings 32-man, single elimination tourney that was the launching pad for future champions.

To become the King of Kings you must battle it out with some of the toughest opponents in the game beating four separate opponents over two events.

Dan Henderson, “Babalu” Sobral, Alistair Overeem, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Jeremy Horn, Gilbert Yvel, Renzo Gracie, Kiyoshi Tamura – These are just some of the elite talent that battled to win that crown in 1999.

Yvel was eliminated from the tournament by Henderson but felt he got the better of the future two-divisional champ.

“I beat Dan Henderson up, even after the fight he didn’t want to continue anymore and told the doctor, I love that fight because I got a yellow card because I gave him an elbow,” he said “There were plenty of good fighters but I was 100% sure I could win the tournament but I was young”

Henderson and Sobral both had hard fought battles in the opening round of the finals edging Nogueira and Tamura to fight for the tournament championship; eventually it was Henderson as he was known by at the time getting past the game Brazilian with a majority decision win.

It was his win in this tournament that got him the call up to Pride where he would become a two-divisional champion and do the body of work for his Hall of Fame quality career.

Again, I thank you for sticking with me through this journey, next time I take a look at the event that began Pride’s rise to the top the 2000 open-weight grand prix.