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Eddie Goldman sounds off on UFC’s lawsuit against DSE
By Zach Arnold | February 12, 2008
Start at the 16 minute, 30 second mark (audio here) and listen.
Cross-reference: Two-part interview with Tadashi Tanaka (part one and part two)
In our earlier news post today, we linked to an article that Charles Jay wrote about regarding UFC’s lawsuit against Dream Stage Entertainment over the PRIDE asset sale deal.
MMA Memories, the site that CJ wrote his article at, contacted a source in the MMA industry with cursory knowledge about the 29-page lawsuit filing and the source raised three questions about the situation.
- PRIDE FC Worldwide Holdings, in the lawsuit, claims that they had three separatement agreements with Nobuyuki Sakakibara & Ubon Inc. (asset sale agreement, consulting agreement, and non-compete agreement). Why did UFC hire Sakakibara to a consulting agreement? What was the need to make such a consulting deal, given that an asset sale agreement is different than hiring people?
- Did the backers in PRIDE/Dream Stage Entertainment know about Sakakibara’s $1.5 million USD consulting agreement with PRIDE FC WW Holdings?
- PRIDE FC WW Holdings hired (through a consulting agreement) the main guy in DSE who Shukan Gendai publicly and persistently accused of being a front man for the yakuza. Why wasn’t his salary from PRIDE FC WW Holdings put into a special bank account to make sure that certain performance benchmarks were met by Sakakibara before money was transferred?
Topics: Japan, MMA, Media, PRIDE, UFC, Yakuza, Zach Arnold | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
None of this makes sense to me.
No offense to Zach (or anybody else on here, including me), but its just so hard to imagine that we are all smarter, or more well informed, than Zuffa’s team of lawyers.
I say Zuffa gets its money back and DSE/Sakakibara gets Pride back. Seems fair to me.
Is isn’t it possible that Zuffa was “to smart for their own good” or in this case to “arrogant”
Isn’t it also possible that the Japaneese proved to be smarter then the Americans and scared them into over paying.
I think it’s more about arrogance then smarts. In Zuffa’s mind they can do no wrong, and this Pride fiasco was there wake up call.
The mess that was Pride is great example of “buyer beware”. I say there is no way Zuffa gets anything out of their lawsuit.
Samscaff its really not that hard to believe once you know the UFC’s legal history.
They were practically laughed out of court during the IFL suit and lost easily in the BJ Penn lawsuit. (they have also fared poorly when they are the defendent, like in the Fishman lawsuit which they were smart enough to just settle)
My guess is that they have high price lawyers who just try to brazen it out no matter what the facts are.
PS UFC 4 life, I would change the word “Americans” to the word Zuffa. Ed Fishman is an American and he was smart enough to know what DSE was up to.
Can someone please post the complaint?
FF