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Josh Stein’s PRIDE history series: Free Agents & Mercenaries (Part 2)

By Zach Arnold | April 6, 2009

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A note from the author: On the second anniversary of the PRIDE buyout by Zuffa (UFC’s parent company), I decided to post a series I’d been working on for a while in order to talk about some of the fallout from what was the most important piece of the history of the sport so far.

By Josh Stein

Before the fall of PRIDE, a fighter who was ranked in the top ten was a fighter who had a contract, simply by virtue of his position. Fighters were built into their organizations, branded like ten thousand cattle. If a fighter was any good, organizations would bite the head off of anyone trying to change that athlete’s allegiance.

Rival promoters left athletes in their respective markets, and while, from time to time, organizations would make arrangements to have the elite warriors meet, it was rare. Organizations realized that they were putting a great deal on the line, as the UFC realized when they sent Chuck Liddell to PRIDE, only to have him sent back, starched stiff, by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, before Liddell accomplished what was almost certainly his assignment: assassinate Wanderlei Silva with his counter punching ability. Mirko CroCop would learn something similar at the hands of Gabriel Gonzaga shortly before the buyout.

There was a reason why no other top UFC fighters appeared in Japan while still more or less under contract with Dana White and the boys. The reality was not one of fear, but just of the understanding that sending a fighter to compete in an organization where the rules are different, and the physical environment is unfamiliar is not a good idea, and leaves everyone vulnerable to embarrassment.

Fighters became contained in vacuum sealed containers, fighting up-and-comers in their respective hemispheres, leaving the message boards populated with speculative debates about who the real elite title holders were, and which environment offered more exciting matchups. The UFC vs. PRIDE debate could only exist as long as fighters avoided each other, and the debate was good for both organizations, as it gave them a chance to argue their cases and get plenty of attention doing it.

The buyout didn’t end the debate as much as it opened that container of fighters in the Japanese market. The warriors from K-1 who had been looking to expand their resume with MMA fights in PRIDE moved, for the most part, back to K-1, but some of the PRIDE veterans were left stranded, and most went a long period without fighting (Josh Barnett, among others).

The free agency in MMA had been seen primarily as limbo for aging fighters moving from the big shows to smaller venues, but even those seemed relatively brief periods compared to the twelve-month period where contracts flooded out onto the streets. All of a sudden, three of the top five heavyweights were just sitting in the open, unsigned, and the rankings came under dispute, because no one knew how to treat a fighter who was, in point of fact, one of the best, but couldn’t prove it by fighting.

Some groups of fans are more patient than others, some groups let top fighters drop off of the rankings altogether due to inactivity, and rightfully so. Most of them, like Barnett, might as well have been retired, as it seemed to the masses that they weren’t even pursuing a fight (whether that was the case or not isn’t really relevant, as the actual scenario doesn’t have any impact on the rankings, only the perceived scenario).

There is a time lapse, a complete freeze, in the Japanese MMA world, and some fighters moved out west to fight in the UFC, but most simply waited, sitting in the vacuum, twiddling their thumbs and, perhaps, training.

Still, this concept of simply waiting, of fighters remaining unsigned for extended periods of time, was almost unheard of. There used more fighters than there were roster spots, and no one had really expected the fall of a single organization to change that. All of a sudden, the supply and demand shifted, and fighters unwilling to drop down to the smaller shows (or simply too proud to fight as the only top ten fighter on a card) were unlisted, unsigned.

The rise of other shows would solve that problem, for the most part, but it definitely changed the way that many fighters and managers think about a buyout, and it’s impact on their lives. It shook the rankings down to their foundations, and tested the notion that an absent fighter could not continue to be granted the respect of his rank number if he wasn’t fighting. Whether it is for better or worse, giving us a grasp on the painful reality of the power vacuum by forcing us to suffer through it, it changed a perception that fighters had, at the upper level, about how easy it was to get signed if you had name value.

Topics: All Topics, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | No Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

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