DREAM is still a spectacle. All the pyro, video packages, 22 fighters needing to get paid…it’s clear that DREAM is being propped up financially by people who have money to burn…or are able to get their money back thru sketchy reasons. There is no way their model is financially viable unless there have a great TV deal and are selling 20-30K seats.

The whole operation is very disconcerting. It seems clear to me that the Yaks are still heavily involved, that they are blowing a ton of money on these shows, but since they have no interest in losing millions on each show, they are probably recouping it thru fixed fights and complicated gambling arrangements. You watch.

By the way Zach I think you have something against Japanese MMA. Every article is negative.

Shootstyle wrestling was alive and well in Japan prior to vale tudo style rules becoming the norm, and that was the basis of many of the early fighter’s skills. The key difference is that as MMA became bigger, it totally annhilated the market for shootstyle wresting and basically forced pro wrestling to move to a more “sports entertainment” style product to survive. Since then, guys who’ve wanted to train in shoot wrestling went straight to MMA rather than making the stop in pro wrestling, as it was no longer necessary.

With MMA fighters being much more well rounded and skilled, it is much harder to just place one of the Wrestling stars into the sport and expect any sort of success.

I just want to be clear on this. If DREAM is dead, and likely WVR will be to, given this scenario, you’re basically giving Fedor a 80% chance of fighting for K-1 on New Year’s, correct?

In this decade, Dynamite has always been a mixed MMA & kickboxing product. Therefore, the chances of K-1 going after Fedor are pretty high. Doesn’t mean he can be their ‘ace’ on the show, but he never lost the PRIDE title.

Zach, what do you think Ishii’s plan would be? Since MMA is on such a downswing now in Japan, how would he go about getting those fans back? Huge match-ups, freak fights, and bigger promotion?

I would not be surprised to see Ishii consider dabbling a little bit into pro-wrestling, but through middlemen. The key to the Japanese scene is that the star-power for PRIDE came from pro-wrestling. Without pro-wrestling churning out stars now, the Japanese MMA groups have a lack of star-power. Ishii has to basically rebuild an entire industry from scratch. It will be fascinating to see how he does this — think of it like you would rebuilding an entire baseball organization from scratch (from the minors to the major league club).

I read on Bloody Elbow that DREAM was trying to run a show in Korea before NYE. Would this even be economically feesable?

Perhaps it is if the boys don’t get paid on time or paid at all…