The blueprint for how to beat Shinya Aoki had been codified. Thanks to Gilbert Melendez, anyone with any semblance of takedown defense now knew how to beat “The Baka Survivor.” However, almost as soon as the fight started, Tatsuya Kawajiri found himself caught in a leg lock.
After several minutes of struggling Aoki had added another top-ten opponent to his defeated column, yet the win was not the top media story. Somehow after Dream 15, the leading storyline was that Japanese MMA is no longer relevant. Luke Thomas from BloodyElbow referred to it as a “ratings cancer,” and said that he could talk about “anything Brock Lesnar and do far better numbers.”
Sherdog‘s Lofti Sariahmed suggest that “you look at top ten lists, you go across the divisions, there are not a whole lot of fighters on those lists that are coming out of Japan.”
While both of these points are true, these MMA-media superstars do not get at the heart of the problem with Japanese MMA. A large amount of fan attention will bring in money, which will in turn bring in top fighters. International appeal will certainly follow. Therefore, the directive of Dream or Sengoku should not be to appeal to Western pundits. No, they need to find a way to captivate audiences on their home soil.
As somewhat of an oddity, I have always struggled to understand what appeals to the masses. I despise the Harry Potter novels, and I might do something I seriously regret if I see one more commercial for The Bounty Hunter on demand. This is in the country I have lived all my life. How am I supposed to discover what piques the interest of mainstream fighting fans in Japan?
My inquisitive mindset led me to my Ikea-DVD cabinet. I proceeded to watch the first Pride FC event instead of putting together the rest of the furniture in my new apartment. Here is a list of things I jotted down on some scrap paper.
1. MMA was really boring in 1997
2. Oleg Taktarov has no chin. How did Dolph Lundgren not knock him out?
3. Is Nathan Jones the same guy who got beat up by Jet Li in Fealess? Didn’t Tony Jaa sever every one of his tendons with an elephant bone in The Protector?
4. The crowd really pops Nobuhiko Takada.
Takada was already an established star in Japan. Some of his professional wrestling matches attracted 67,000 fans. That is more fans than each K-1 Dynamite!! show with the exception of 2002 Pride/K-1 combination card.
The concept of someone with that much star power taking on a legitimate fighter, Rickson Gracie, intrigued the fans. 47,000 showed up for the event at the Tokyo Dome. Excluding the 2009 New Year’s Eve card, Dream has failed to even break the 30,000 mark.
Also on the card, Koji Kitao easily submitted the aforementioned Jones. Kitao holds two very interesting distinctions. He is the only wrestler in sumo history to reach the rank of Yokozuna without winning a top-level tournament, and he is the first wrestled to be expelled from the sport by the association.
According to a Sports Illustrated article by Mike D’Orso, “It was a temper tantrum that did him in. In the tradition-bound world of sumo, where the virtues of honor and harmony are law, there is no room for a man who, in a pique, sidekicks his 88-year-old stable master and shoves the master’s wife into a sliding door.” Let’s just say that if an equivalent happened now in the U.S., TMZ and Steve Cofield would be jumping around.
In February, current Sumo bad boy Asashoryu retired from competition after reports surfaced he drunkenly slugged a waiter and broke his nose. The Mongolia native also raised the ire of sumo fans for excessive celebration, pulling on an opponent’s topknot, engaging in a bathroom brawl, breaking the mirror off an opponent’s car, being drunk in public and faking injuries to get out of competing.
NFL fans despise Terrell Owens for doing sit-ups in his front yard.
On top of all this, he was good. In the inherently Japanese sport the Mongolian shined. After reaching the rank of Yokozuna he won an astounding 23 of 39 tournaments that he participated in.
According to NightmareOfBattle, Asashoryu and his brothers have started and MMA camp and will work with Sengoku.
Now, doesn’t a match up between Asashoryu and 2008 Olympic judo gold medalist Satoshi Ishii sound like something casual fans could get behind? A disgraced sumo wrestler/tabloid starlet taking on an Olympic medalist seems like a fairytale written during the kakutogi boom.
The match up brings together two accomplished combat sport athletes. It also builds on their own personal Q rating and sets up other villain/hero scenarios. If Ishii wins, he will have represented Japan against the Mongolian-bad-boy Yokozuna. If Asashoryu wins, fans will be curious to see who can actually stop him.
Detractors may say that “freak show” matches are not what the sport needs, but high profile fights like this one attracted fans and were an integral part of the early and continuing success of Pride FC and K-1. It is impossible to remember the exploits of Wanderlei Silva and Fedor Emelianenko without also remembering the likes of Bobby Ologun and Bob Sapp.
Don’t forget that Akebono fought 12 times for K-1.
A fat dude and a short dude are not going to be able to compete with the UFC.
Lesnar would own both of these fools anyway
@USA: Go and fuck your dumb blonde slut in Texas. You have any idea about sports? Show some respect for traditional sports with some discipline.