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Gong Kakutougi status in question
By Zach Arnold | February 18, 2007
Before you start flooding this post with replies about other topics, let’s discuss the red-meat topic of the day that Gryphon has alluded to. Background about the situation can be read here (this is from October of 2006). Here’s the news update today (in Japanese).
Last year, we lost Weekly Fight. We could lose Gong Kakutougi this year, one of the major MMA magazines in Japan. The Japanese fight media that became so instutitionalized is falling apart at the seams.
In unrelated news, here’s a post about MMA activity in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Don’t forget Andy Wang’s BJJ facility.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 11 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Zach,
Regarding the collapse of the Japanese fight scene (per your op-ed piece), I think it has very similar trend to the fall from grace of the Boxing scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the 40s and 50s, the influence of the Mafia, under the control of Frankie Carbo and ‘Blinky’ Palermo, began to strangle the Boxing scene like promoter Mike Jacobs was able to do in the 30s and 40s by controlling 5 out 8 of the World Championships. Carbo and Palermo wanted pieces of all the champions and top contenders, and the way they really began to gain momentum was through the construction of an entity called the International Boxing Club which was fronted by James D. Norris and Arthur M. Wirtz, which essentially bought out Mike Jacobs’ control of Madison Square Garden and got Joe Louis to help them get the four top Heavyweight contenders signed under them as well as retire and vacate his Heavyweight crown in return for a fee (to help pay off his IRS debts).
Very quickly, with the formation of the Boxing managers guild, the choke on the sport was tightening as fighters were blackballed from getting a real fight of significance if they (i) didn’t show loyalty to the Mafia-run IBC and/or (ii) took up a Boxing managers guild manager. Those that didn’t stick with the IBC suffered, such as in the cases of Ike Williams and Jake La Motta. Williams had a managers guild manager in Connie McCarthy, who was a drunk and hurt Williams interests. As a result, Williams dropped McCarthy and was promptly blackballed from getting any valuable fights even though he was the World Lightweight Champion and was forced to sign a managerial contract with ‘Blinky’ Palermo to get any ‘real’ fights, which of course led to a nice amount of skimming. In addition, Williams claimed at the Kefauver Committee he was asked to take dives against opponents (including legendary Welterweight champion Kid Gavilan) so his handlers could make a nice profit.
In the case of Jake La Motta, he was, as of 1947, the uncrowned Middleweight champion, although Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano were the actual champions at the time, engaging in their legendary trilogy. La Motta had numerous offers to take a dive or to become contracted with the IBC, but he constantly shot them down, becoming a ‘policeman’ in his division and denied his chance at the title. Finally, La Motta broke down and advised Frankie Carbo that he would be willing to take a dive against Carbo’s pet project, Billy Fox, for a Middleweight title shot. In a bout that apparently smelled for miles, La Motta hurt Fox early on with a relatively weak shot, then refused to fire any shots until the referee stopped the atrocity in the fourth round. La Motta would get his title shot 2 years later against Marcel Cerdan and end up losing it to ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson in their sixth and last bout (the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre), before sputtering out into retirement. Although LaMotta lied to the state in claiming he fought with a bad spleen, he would admit at the Kefauver Committee that he did take a dive in order to advance his career.
In the end, the Kefauver Committee, which exposed the dives, fixes and generally octupus-like control that the Mafia had, ended Carbo & Palermo’s reign of terror. Carbo first went to jail for two years due to his illegal management of fighters, then Don Jordan was used as a witness to indict Carbo again for management under threat and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Palermo for 15 years while Truman Gibson, the lawyer who helped form the IBC by talking with Joe Louis, got a 5 year suspended sentence and was disbarred due to his previous good work as a lawyer. Meanwhile, the IBC itself was ruled a monopoly and Norris and Wirtz were eventually forced to sell off their shares and MSG was banned from holding more than a set number of title bouts in a year (2, I believe) for a long time. The aftermath of the IBC’s stranglehold was felt for years, as Boxing fell from grace, being #2 behind Baseball to a fringe sport in a matter of years.
I just hope that Japan’s Kefauver Committee (if it does happen), will not uncover similar atrocities as the Mafia-controlled Boxing scene had.
Great article.
I had always read you saying in your PRIDE stories about the mafia scandal etc. but it was really great to read an in-depth look at the workings of that scandal.
Tomer,
Also a really nice input there. In my undergrad studies I had the chance to hear Steven Brunt (he’s a big sportswriter and boxing historian in Canada) speak for one of my classes. He told us the same story and a bunch of others, pointing out the cyclical nature of boxing’s stature in American sports. Boxing definately has a coloured history and hopefully MMA can avoid going down the same path.
Blah, Blah, Blah. It should be obvious by now, both by your posts and your inane questions to Jordan (the MMA-Japan writer from Sherdog) on your last radio show, your ignorance of Japanese MMA.
Japan has one of the most exciting and successful “amateur” MMA scenes in the world. Almost all Deep, Pancrase, Shooto, Zst, etc shows sell out quickly and consistently. Can you name a organization in the US with similar success and longevity?
In the pro circuit, when is the last time UFC had TV numbers similar to K1? Never, and they never will. Pride lost their TV contract. . .big shit. They will get another one, and if they don’t they will scale down. It happens.
I find it funny the amount of space you devote to Yakuza rumors and this impending implosion of Japanese MMA that you pray for. How much effort do you spend on covering the Japanese MMA organizations? How often do you write about Japanese fighters that are non-Pride?
You’re part of the problem.
JT is kinda right, and Tomer seriously needs to learn how to edit what he writes.
JT – is that you, Sakakibara?
Tomer is doing fine, Allen seriously needs to stop telling people to dumb down their posts for the benefit his short attention span.
I am not qualified to comment on the intricacies of the Japanese amateur scene, but are you sure all the shows sell out? I seem to remember reading that both Shooto and Pancrase couldn’t sell out Korakuen Hall a short time back, which is not a big place.
And K1 is built on kickboxing, not MMA, so it isn’t fair to bring that into it.
We get it Zach, Japanese MMA is fucked, Pride is going to die and the Yakuza is responsible for it all.
I know the site is called fightopinion.com, but if you actually had more than one opinion to express, it’d make things far more interesting than reading through your endless diatribe of the Japanese fight scene.
I dont really see what the complaints are about. Zach’s viewpoint is pretty well known and since many times he would merely mention “yakuza scandals” and not much else when he dissed PRIDE – I’m glad he gave some interesting insight into exactly what was going on with the situation.
It gave me a chance to see that maybe just maybe he’s actually got some valid points and evidence to back up his stance.
[…] Keep your eyes open (if you read Japanese) on the latest situation with Gong magazine. It sadly looks like a death watch may be occuring. […]
[…] The hot story of the week in Japan continues to be the ongoing politics surrounding Gong Kakutougi magazine. A board of directors meeting was held and Daisaku Maeda, the man arrested by police (background information here), was kicked out of the publishing enterprise. The public stance of the BOD is “never give-up” and that they will cooperate fully with authorities in regards to a criminal investigation. The BOD asked readers and fans to continue to support the magazine. […]