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Sengoku: We won’t run Ariake Colosseum because of a ’scheduling conflict’
By Zach Arnold | November 19, 2009
When we last spoke on this topic, we addressed the Playboy report that Don Quijote balked at the idea of how much the price tag was going to be for the Sengoku NYE event at Ariake Colosseum in Tokyo. For a mid-sized arena, it’s not that outrageously expensive to run.
Nevertheless, the public face today from Sengoku management is that they are trying to find a new building for a NYE show (so much for the K-1 working relationship) at a different arena. The stated reason? A ’scheduling conflict’ due to what they claim is an amateur wrestling event booked for the same day at the building. Yeah.
The company maintains publicly that there is ‘great interest’ for the Hidehiko Yoshida/Satoshi Ishii match-up and that the cancelation of the Ariake Colosseum booking was a good thing because the fight will be popular enough to draw more than what they initially planned for. Management claims they will announce a new venue for the show.
Keep in mind this is a company that never gives out attendance figures for any of their shows, whether it’s Saitama Super Arena or Ryogoku Kokugikan. Kokugikan is about the same size as Ariake Colosseum.
Topics: Japan, MMA, Media, Sengoku, Zach Arnold | | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
I’m guessing part of the deal with K-1 was they had to run Ishii-Yoshida on their show and they decided against it since they’d rather run it on one of their events. I guess you can’t blame them for that, but it’s still a mistake to run against the K-1/DREAM show. Fans have expected loaded MMA cards on NYE for nearly the whole decade, and Sengoku probably doesn’t even have a good semi-main much less 3 more good fights. This is going to be an epic failure if they don’t back out of it in the next month. Like only slightly better than if YAMMA ran against UFC 100.
If there was great interest for that fight, they wouldn’t have to be payhg for a TV slot….
Actually it’s now 99,9% sure that it will be a co-promotion on NYE.
Sengoku should pull a GWF and talk about Olu Oliami funding them
This should be pretty easy to figure out. Sengoku is “moving” their show to Saitama to be part of K-1 Dynamite this year.
This is what I presumed Sengoku was doing ever since the merger buzz started. In effect, they are giving in to DREAM’s overtures to do brand vs. brand fights, and trading their Ishii vs. Yoshida main event in exchange for coverage.
Some new Tanigawa quotes from Kamipro (via Nightmare of Battle):
“He says that they can do various things, but he himself wants a DREAM vs. SRC showdown, somewhere from 5 vs. 5 to 7 vs. 7. Besides Masato/Souwer, Ishii/Yoshida, K-1 Koshien, and superfights he wants all fights to be DREAM vs. SRC.
When asked if SENGOKU will continue on after NYE, Tanigawa said “of course it will”. They’ll probably discuss it after NYE, but he wants to hold showdown cards between the two organizations at fixed intervals from now on.
Tanigawa said that there won’t be a DREAM+SRC merger organization after this. He rather want both of them to grow more powerful and at times join to hold events as stated above.”