« Quick hits for March 11th (grab bag) | Home | California State Athletic Commission suspends Ken Shamrock for failing steroids test »
One nightmarish TV rating for DREAM 7
By Zach Arnold | March 11, 2009
Update (3/11): DREAM defenders come out. If New Japan consistently drew a 2.5 for their 2 AM slot, they might not survive at this point in 2009. There was a reason they wanted Keiji Mutoh as their champion — because he brought their TV ratings back to pre-Japanese MMA boom levels (1997-1998ish numbers in the 4’s).
—
There was little or no PR buzz in Japan for DREAM 7, and rightly so. The reported attendance of over 19,000 is… interesting. At least K-1 will throw out a number, legitimate or not, whereas Sengoku never has ever mentioned an attendance figure for one of their Saitama Super Arena events.
Usually, when a fight promotion draws a low TV rating, the Japanese media ignores it and won’t report it. However, when it’s as low as this, even Sports Navigator (Yahoo Japan) can’t keep their eyes closed.
Network: TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System)
Rating: 2.4% overall average, 4.0% peak rating for Shin’ya Aoki vs. David Gardner
Air time: Tape-delayed (aired Midnight same night of show, on 3/8)
Who knew that when the MMA boom went kaput in Japan that MMA programming would draw lower ratings than New Japan on TV-Asahi? There’s a certain karmic justice in all of this if you know how the history of the Japanese fight scene has played out over the last 10-12 years, given that it was pro-wrestling’s star power that carried the major Japanese shows. Once the pro-wrestling star factory dried up and got damaged by MMA, it soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The mainstream fight scene is now down to one major operation in each sector – New Japan on TV-Asahi (pro-wrestling) and K-1 on TBS/Fuji TV (kickboxing). That’s it. NOAH’s done on Nippon TV.
Topics: DREAM, Japan, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 60 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“When the show is not exciting it doesn’t mean that the division is lacking depth.”
No kidding, Einstein. But I think the division is lacking depth, and Imanari and Maeda have never really impressed me.
Interesting comments here…kobashi had a very good point: the Japanese tend to see puroresu, DREAM and the other MMA sports largely as the same sport, with just different rules.
I think Zach may be right about New Japan bringing back Muto to hold the IWGP belt for the past year–he drew crowds and ratings, and it gave Tanahashi time to recover from injuries. He and Nakamura can now focus on a heated rivalry that will take the company into the future.
NOAH did the same with Kensuke Sasaki holding their belt for a time. NOAH’s problem as I see it is their roster–about half of it is old guys who can no longer go stiff, and so there’s too many “light hearted” comedy matches.
As for DREAM: I think they may be making a mistake in building around just one fighter. But the problem across the board is where I’m going–I think there’s too many different organizations, with some talent running thin. Some of these companies I think are gonna have to fold, or merge. That could be a business decision that some have to take, considering the economic situation worldwide.
Probably a real shame that Kenta & Nakajima aint HW’s. There last 2 matches have been unbelievable. The last one at the Budokan show would of been perfect for Nippon TV. It’s a shame that building a promotion around a Jnr isn’t an option in Japan as Kenta is star and its scary to think what Nakajima will be like if he stays injury free.
Surely people must accept that the fact the Dream show got a such bad tv slot is a sign that the interest in dream is low. MMA in Japan is no big thing anymore and its been that way for a while. Dream is just another long list of promotions in Japan all fighting to survive. As in the past promotions have come and gone. There has always been a cycle where different promotions at one time of another become ‘hot’ and then it moves to someone else. However at the moment it seems there is no promotion puro or mma) in the fight business over there that has real momentum. As a New Japan fan i’m real happy with how they are going as they were at rock bottom not so long ago and slowly but surely are going in the right direction. Noah will always have some real good matches but the booking for 2 years now has been a mess. I suppose the aim now is to slowly build Kobashi up again for another title run but thats months and months away.
I don’t know how come you are not impressed by Imanari wins over Brown, Gurgel, Jean Silva or Robbie Oliver, name me a better leglock specialist. As for Maeda you probably didn’t see his KOs in Deep, Pancrase or WEC.
This year we will have four FW tourneys (Dream, Sengoku, Bellator and British FC) with over 50 fighters involved and there is also stacked WEC division, Shooto with Inoue, Nakamura, Sato.
Compare it to HW or LHW, outside UFC and Affliction how many interesing fighter are there?
Even in WW Dream and Sengoku are doing only 8-man GPs, so saying that FW division is lacking depth sounds ridiculous to me.
Bellator’s Tournament has Wilson Reis. That’s about it.
DREAM’s Tournament is more like a Bantamweight Tournament.
British FC… Have yet to hear one thing about their tournament.
Brown was easily beating Imanari until he got caught in the submission. And since getting his leg wrecked in that fight, he has some back like a whole new fighter. I doubt Brown would lose a rematch.
In terms of depth of the Featherweight Division…. There is the WEC and Sengoku right now. That’s about it.
Imanari is great at leg locks….but he jumps in for the kneebar with his head down like an idiot…a la his KO at the hands of Hansen. Also, he beat Brown in 2005. No one, especially myself, considered Brown to be anything back then (and he wasnt). He got manhandled easily by Genki in UFC just prior. The only times Imanari stepped up to the big leagues (Pride), he lost.
As for this whole Dream ratings issue….while MMA’s popularity is certainly waning in Japan, using Dream7 as an example of that is like shooting fish in a barrel.
It was a FEATHERWEIGHT tournament that aired at 1AM on a sunday night. Featherweights? Most people have never even seen a featherweight MMA fight…even in Japan’s mainstream. I mean, come on. Its like kicking a dead dog.
Looks like Ken Shamrock’s attorney went to the Sean Sherk/Howard Jacobs school of steroid test defense:
He lost in Pride, but he was fighting LWs, when he is natural BW. This his style, he can submit almost every fighter in the world or lose a decision to stronger cautious wrestler. He is one of the best grapplers in MMA in the world, but still you are not impressed.
I guess HW division with Sylvias, Lesnars, Nelsons, Monsons, Rothwells, Werdums and Gonzagas in Top 20 has more depth in your mind.
IMO only LW division has more talented fighters than featherweight and it’s obvious cause most people in the world ,who are in shape, weight around 70-80 kg (with weight cutting it’s about 65-75)
@45
Yes, you’re right it was lucky sub, the same goes with Nog vs. CC, Nog vs. Sylvia, Nog vs. Sapp, I guess Mir vs. Lesnar and hundreads of fights 😀
I’m not getting this, Zach.
The event was on at freaking MIDNIGHT, and it got a 2.5% rating. Why is this so nightmarish? It was on, after all, at MIDNIGHT on a non-holiday weekend.
It seems like it really wouldn’t matter what the ratings were. They had almost zero PR for the event and it wasn’t headlined with fantastic fights at all. With that in account, I would have expected a 2.5 – 3.0%. Comparing these numbers with past shows is absurd considering some of the past shows have had better matchups and more drawing fighters.
This all seems like a huge stretch to me.
Ed. — In the 1980s, pro-wrestling aired in ‘golden time’ on TV-Asahi and All Japan had a good slot on Nippon TV. In the early 1990s, the shows were pushed into time slots on networks of anywhere from Midnight to 2 AM (late Sat. or late Sun., depending on the network). If the promotion weren’t drawing 4’s or 5’s or 6’s then they would have been axed. Programming in recent years got low in the high 2’s/low 3’s and that’s a danger zone, but recently New Japan — the only player left in wrestling on TV — got their show back up in the 4’s. DREAM being relegated to Midnight on TBS shows how little the network cares about the organization at this point and the low rating pretty much cements that point. The old chicken and the egg phrase comes to mind here.