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Weekly publications start talking – part two

By Zach Arnold | March 10, 2006

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By Zach Arnold

In part one of this two-part post series, I posted a summary of a Weekly Taishu publication article about the recent yakuza arrests in Japan and the history of the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2003 event. It’s an event that will become a historical show if the police can prove that certain people involved (in and around the event) were connected to organized crime.

In the second part of the summary, we take a look at the publication (Weekly Taishu) publicly mentioning Fuji TV & DSE/PRIDE and some more background notes on Seiya Kawamata.

According to an event promoter, “Kawamata was planning to create a fight organization which would be bigger and better than PRIDE or K-1. Kawamata made a contract with the Inoki Office and was able to get the rights to promote the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show. But if you look at his history, he has admitted himself that he has yakuza connections and background and we can see that he had a dark history.”

If this is the case, the whole question is how much did Nippon TV know about his history and also the involvement of the Yakuza in the dispute over Fedor.

The promotion that the article references to was going to be called “DNA.” There were various top names mentioned (including Mirko) that would have become big headliners.

It’s important to note that the Taishu article now puts the focus on the TV networks. It puts the pressure on them to respond to how much they knew ahead of time before going into business with Kawamata, and also how much of a financial stake was truly involved.

Interestingly enough, the article moves away from the current three yakuza members who were arrested for extortion (200 million yen from Kawamata), and now is shifting onto the bigger picture. One that could lead to a breakdown between the TV networks and the fight industry.

According to a fight industry person, “N-TV had fallen behind Fuji TV & TBS in the race for fight contents, so they aggressively wanted to get into the fight business through Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye. Nippon TV was fully aware of what sort of person Kawamata was and his background and connections. Maybe they also trusted him because of the connection to Antonio Inoki.”

It’s important to emphasize (as I have in past articles) that Inoki was paid an appearance fee (a large one at that) for the Bom-Ba-Ye show. However, Kawamata’s K-Confidence office was (on paper) supposed to be running the event. On a technical level, Inoki shared his name in exchange for money. However, he was not as involved as people continue to make him out to be.

According to a news journalist, “I will say something about the poor quality of N-TV’s production of the event. If Fedor didn’t fight at this event, we can easily assume that the ratings and event results would have been worse than they were. As a result, N-TV benefited from the actions of the yakuza and even if they were directly involved in engotiations, they have a deep moral responsibility for what happened. Especially in fight programming, the fight card plays a major role in obtaining ratings. We can easily see that the cause of the current criminal actions lies ultimately in the ratings war between the three networks.”

After the event, there were accusations and counter-accusations between N-TV and promoter Kawamata, resulting in it being difficult to see whose fault the poor results were from.

Factually, it can be argued that Fedor’s match with Nagata was not the match that drew the solid ratings on the show. Technically, the Josh Barnett vs. Semmy Schilt match (which nearly got a 10%) was the single highlight from the event. This event had boxer Imamu Mayfield vs. Kazuyuki Fujita as well, so Fedor’s impact on the show overall became very minimal in the end (in regards to business at that time). Of course, Fedor’s participation in the show now is the hot topic in 2006 because of the behind-the-scenes information.

According to a person related to a fight promoter, “According to the ratings, Inoki was a total failure. Some of the fighters were not even paid their fight money. Kawamata was attacked by the yakuza and also by people claiming non-payment of money, and Kawamata ran away from Japan in January of 2004. As a result, the three-year contract between N-TV and Kawamata was terminated and Kawamata was left with a claim of 200 million yen for unpaid amounts from N-TV. On the other hand, Kawamata has taken legal action against N-TV for the non-payment of 200 million yen which is currently before the courts.

According to Kawamata’s lawyer Wakuda, “The stronger party, N-TV, illegally abandoned the weaker party, K-Confidence. In any event, there was a three-year contract and there is no excuse for breaking this contract even though the event had poor TV ratings, so this is definitely N-TV’s responsibility.”

To simplify all of this talk about Kawamata’s civil court suit against N-TV, it’s best to look back at the previous reports I’ve written about the matter. This link and this link are good primary pieces to read to understand the legal aspect to the civil lawsuits currently taking place in Tokyo District Court.

It’s important to note that Kawamata, in sworn court testimony in his witness statements (both in his legal case against N-TV and the claim against him by power agent Miro Mijatovic), claimed he was subjected to yakuza pressure from PRIDE’s yakuza. The article notes that these matters were also contained in Kawamata’s criminal complaint with Kanagawa police.

When questioned about Fedor’s apperance at the event, the arrest of the yakuza, or matters which are currently in dispute in the legal action with K-Confidence, N-TV’s public relations department said, “We cannot make any comment in relation matters which are currently in dispute in the legal action with K-Confidence.”

According to Mr. Takasu, a publisher who knows the fight industry very well, “It’s underground information and I think that all TV networks are very hesitant to talk about these issues.” After saying this, he quickly cut the phone line.

However, based on the information and feelings of those people who were affected by these events, they are not only blaming N-TV but they are also assigning responsibility and blame to Fuji TV and also PRIDE who were the other parties involved in the dispute over Fedor’s appearance.

This right here is the important statement made in the article. A lot of people like to talk in hidden messages or code, but for a Japanese publication to name names – like Fuji TV & PRIDE – means that they are confident that they can do so. By doing this, now the spotlight shifts to the TV network and to PRIDE. The more Fuji TV or PRIDE’s name is aligned publicly with this issue, the worse it’s going to be business-wise.

According to a news reporter close to Kanagawa police, “As a matter of fact, Kawamata has said in his civil legal actions in official court testimony that in the middle of December of 2003, a separate yakuza group to those arrested had threatened him not to allow Fedor to appear at the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2003 event. Kawamata claimed this in his criminal complaint to Kanagawa police as well. The arrested yakuza who are part of another yakuza group were arrested in a separate criminal incident to this.”

This is an important detail in the article, because now it establishes a much larger yakuza presence in the fight business. Were these different groups part of the same crime family (Yamaguchi-gumi) or where they with different syndicates (such as Sumiyoshi-kai, inagawa-kai, kokuisai-kai, etc.)? That’s a big question. The more gangs that are linked to the fight industry, the worse it is going to be for those currently in the business.

According to the police, they are investigating which yakuza and other people were involved in these events.

According to a major daily newspaper reporter, “Of course, I don’t think that PRIDE people directly ordered these actions against Kawamata, but if they did know about these events it is very likely that we will see this incident spread further. At this moment, I believe that there are a lot of dry mouths in DSE and Fuji TV as there is a major risk that they will be heavily involved in these matters. At the time in question, Kawamata was a major rival to PRIDE and PRIDE did not consider him a friend, either, and so the focus will change to what PRIDE has to say about the events in question.”

This is the second step in this article to link PRIDE to the alleged threats against Kawamata. This is a public relations and legal nightmare. While it’s easy for anonymous sources and unsourced quotes to be published in Japanese publications, the fact that anyone would even attempt to print this shows how controversial of a story this is becoming.

Will the police question the top players in PRIDE? How deep do the insiders think the involvement in the scandal is? There have been no mainstream reports this week about any police investigations, but it’s safe to say that many people are being questioned. The question is whether people are defending themselves or trying to deflect blame onto others, in essence using a “scorched earth” policy to bring everyone down. No details have been mentioned publicly at all about any police questioning.

Fuji TV is saying that they don’t know anything about these events, but fight industry reporter Tadashi Tanaka concludes by saying, “For the TV networks, fight programming was great contents and even though the promoters were connected to the yakuza, the TV networks couldn’t resist.”

The TV networks who are addicted to TV ratings will have a major responsibility in this matter.

Overall, the basic theme is that this article tries to connect the dots in the case and they believe that facts are pointing towards DSE and the article hints (without saying directly) that DSE is under questioning at the moment about this situation. The article also raises the very important issue of TV broadcasters in regards to their moral responsibility (especially Fuji TV & N-TV) and asks about the role of the networks in the fight game.

To me, the most critical message that is being sent is the following… It’s one thing to be caught in a tax scandal (like Kazuyoshi Ishii and K-1 did in 2002-2003), but it’s another situation to be outright connected to the yakuza. If you collect a paycheck from the yakuza, chances are you are likely a target when a big scandal occurs. It doesn’t matter how big or how small you are, it’s not a good position to be in. It’s an even worse position when the company alleged to be connected to the yakuza is a multinational company, because that means you are dealing with multiple police authorities.

If there is proof that someone involved in this scandal has ties to the yakuza, you can expect foreign police to be very interested in the proceedings. No one is going to be getting a free pass in this scandal, no one.

Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |

One Response to “Weekly publications start talking – part two”

  1. […] « PRIDE’s worst nightmare Weekly publications start talking – part two » […]

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