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Media wars
By Zach Arnold | March 27, 2007
By Zach Arnold
Gryphon points out two excellent items in the Japanese media today. The first one involves Sakakibara on Elite XC and the second one involves Ed Fishman. On the first point, Sakakibara claims that Gary Shaw wanted to do a reverse stock merger with DSE/PRIDE but that he wouldn’t do it because essentially Elite XC is a nobody.
On the second point, Sakakibara claims that he fired Ed Fishman because he didn’t do his job and that Fishman never made a formal offer to buy PRIDE. Of course, that is wildly different than what Ed Fishman said on our interview with him last week. Ed claimed that he first offered to make a $10 million USD loan to help PRIDE out with financial troubles and that Sakakibara told him it wasn’t enough money. Ed said that if he needed more, he would rather just buy PRIDE and keep the operations going the way they were. He asked to perform 30 days of due diligence and Sakakibara rejected it. In regards to Sakakibara ‘firing’ Ed, Ed claimed in the interview that he was not paid at all for the two US shows he promoted. Furthermore, he stated that Sakakibara asked him in his hotel suite the day after the second US show that he should rip up his PRIDE USA contract in exchange for getting paid for the second show only.
How the Japanese media is covering UFC’s asset purchase of PRIDE
Nikkan Sports confirms that all DSE staffers except for Nobuyuki Sakakibara will work for the new PRIDE FC WORLDWIDE subsidiary of Zuffa. Sankei Sports, Sports Nippon, and Yomiuri Hochi all had short articles (no new information) about the story. Daily Sports had two articles (here and here) talking about the fantasy match-ups proposed in the “MMA World Series” idea (Couture vs. Fedor and Gomi vs. GSP). There were over 250 media reporters on hand to cover the Roppongi press conference. Nikkan Sports has an article claiming that the budget for the 2007 Man Festival (NYE show) could be up to 5 billion yen.
Nikkan Sports quotes Antonio Inoki as saying that he will go after some of the PRIDE fighters for his new IGF promotion.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, Media, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
So does this include Kei Grand? Lennie Hardt? PRIDE Girls? Referees? Anyone noticeable in terms of production staff, or have they all been independent?
There is a chance Brandon Vera is now staying with the UFC.
LOL at a budget of $50million for the NYE show – quality journalism again from Nikkan Sports
I have heard that Kato, who was in charge of all PRIDE production, is leaving. This will be a big blow to production for PRIDE events
LOL also at all the people hoping that PRIDE would be back on TV. There were NO TV cameras and NO TV coverage at all of the PRIDE PR event yesterday
the funniest thing of all is sakaki-yakuza”s “love calls” to fuji tv
now lets see how the fertittas try to solve the PRIDE yakuza problems without losing their US gaming licenses
I hope that we see some sort of semblance of the old Pride…
Long Live Pride
If they keep the Japanese show format and PRIDE rules I’ll be happy.
They’re not keeping the PRIDE rules.
http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/headlines/default.asp?aID=19057
ufc.com has videos of the conference up.
It looks great.
To be honest, I’ll be as happy as an incredibly happy thing if even half the things they talked about happening actually happen.
Gomi vs. GSP…
Silva or Shogun vs. Iceman…
Drool drool…
Gomi vs GSP is not appealing at all. Have you seen Gomi vs BJ?
PRIDE is DEAD. All you loved about PRIDE as a show, production, rules, fights is now DEAD.
UFC rules, weight classes, and now the elements that make the show all cut. Zuffa will butcher PRIDE to pieces. Now we get to see fights stopped on a cut from a sh1tty elbow.
No more openweight matches
No more soccer kicks and stomps
No more 10 minute round
No more PRIDE.
FD
not happy at all about the rule changes, and the ’super fights’ announced aren’t too exciting. i would rather we keep the four point attacks, the ten minute round, the gis, wrestling shoes, aoki tights, yellow cards, the elbow free gnp, the 20lbs rule, one night gp finals, the uncapped heavyweight division, and the longer breaks between rounds.