Friend of our site


MMA Headlines


UFC HP


Bleacher Report


MMA Fighting


MMA Torch


MMA Weekly


Sherdog (News)


Sherdog (Articles)


Liver Kick


MMA Junkie


MMA Mania


MMA Ratings


Rating Fights


Yahoo MMA Blog


MMA Betting


Search this site



Latest Articles


News Corner


MMA Rising


Audio Corner


Oddscast


Sherdog Radio


Video Corner


Fight Hub


Special thanks to...

Link Rolodex

Site Index


To access our list of posting topics and archives, click here.

Friend of our site


Buy and sell MMA photos at MMA Prints

Site feedback


Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Open discussion: MMA Uncensored Live (Spike) on PRIDE scandal

By Zach Arnold | February 23, 2012

Print Friendly and PDF

TV: Spike (11 PM EST/PST), MMA Uncensored Live web site

The show is hosted by Mike Straka (@mikestraka). Reportedly, a big topic on the debut show will be the implosion of PRIDE, given that it’s been almost five years since UFC did the asset sale agreement with Sakakibara.

I’m told that the show will cover the scandal in-depth on a heavy level, which would mean the first time a major US media outlet is discussing the ultimate taboo of the Japanese fight industry (the yakuza).

I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t comment on how the story is portrayed until I watch the show. However, if you’re a new visitor and want some reading material to review the background on the implosion of PRIDE, here are some key words to search:

Topics: Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 27 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

27 Responses to “Open discussion: MMA Uncensored Live (Spike) on PRIDE scandal”

  1. Jason Harris says:

    Should be interesting to see what they come up with, I really liked Straka’s work on Fighting Words and I think he adds a lot of credibility to this Spike show.

  2. 45 Huddle says:

    Inside MMA, MMA Live, UFC Tonight, UFC Ultimate Insider, MMA Uncensored Live, and a bunch of UFC post fight shows.

    First we had the fight promotion bubble, where it seemed like everybody wanted to be a promoter. Now everybody wants to do a news show on MMA.

    Not sure if there is enough of a fanbase to this niche sport to warrant so many programs.

    I will give this one a shot, but I don’t have high hopes for it. So far my score card on these programs are:

    Inside MMA – Horrible Show. Rice is beyond bad. Rutten is out of touch with the sport. A lot of the fighters make for awkward segments.

    MMA Live – Horrible Show. ESPN doesn’t care about MMA.

    UFC Tonight – Helwani & White segments are only good parts. And they make up less then 5 minutes of telecast. Rest is useless.

    UFC Ultimate Insider – Refreshingly fun to watch. Good fighter segments, behind the scenes content, and other interesting MMA stories. Easily the best of the bunch.

    UFC Pre-Show – Only had one for FUEL TV so far. The hour format was too long. Should be 30 minutes and then might be okay.

    UFC Post-Show – Second best of the bunch. However, it is a lot of filler. It feels like watching Ariel Helwani’s MMA Fighting interviews, only on TV. Plus having the fighters come out talking afterwards is actually interesting.

    Like I said, I will give this one a shot or two…. But I don’t expect much. And I highly doubt they will even be 1/10th as informative as Mr. Arnold is on this topic.

    I don’t expect them to blame the UFC for the fall of Pride…. But if they do…. I will have to laugh really hard at SpikeTV being the hurt ex girlfriend again….

    • AfroSamurai says:

      That there sir i must say sums it up for me…

      As for MMA Uncensored…Terrible people and production can be canned. I think MMA Junkie could have did a better job. And no i’m not a fan of Straka.

    • Steve4192 says:

      Pretty much all of these MMA ‘news’ shows are useless for fans who follow the sport on the internet. We aren’t their target audience.

  3. Megatherium says:

    Did they talk to you Zach? It’s your damned story.

  4. Stel says:

    pride scandal, wow thats what 5 years old and has no real effect on peoples lives?
    talk about boring and worthless…
    what about the 911 scandal where a bunch of rich bastards blew up the wtc’s and claimed that it was a man in a cave in order to justify deaths of millions?

    • Chromium says:

      No one is stopping you from talking about 9/11 conspiracies on some place that isn’t an MMA website. If you care one fuck about the history of MMA, the death of Pride is absolutely enormous. Beyond the enormous repercussions it had on MMA globally, in Japan it went beyond the sport. Furthermore the details still are hardly common knowledge even among most hardcore fans, and the English-speaking fans who do know some of the more fucked up details owe a debt to Zach Arnold.

      So in short, fuck off. You’re on the wrong website.

      • Dave says:

        Yeah, seriously.

        It was kind of obnoxious as they took all of the credit for that interview on this show, as the whole thing was years of work on Dan Herbertson’s part. The reason why this is just coming out now is because Miro just all of a sudden told Dan he’d go on record with him, so Dan went out to find a buyer, basically.

        The hilarity of the whole thing being that Dan was fired from MMAFighting for being ‘non-essential’ when he clearly does uber-quality work.

      • ME says:

        1000% AGREE

  5. Megatherium says:

    Hey, a man can get a lot done from a cave in the Hindu Kush mountains if he’s really determined.

    • Zack says:

      I’d imagine that they decided press credentials were more important than having their name attached to a shitty show on UFC’s rival network.

  6. 45 Huddle says:

    Zach Arnold getting mentioned on SpikeTV!! Way to go.

    Too bad the show itself absolutely sucked. They lost me when the host said Shields/Akiyama didn’t belong on the card.

    • Chromium says:

      Agreed. Guess we’ll have to wait for the much longer web version when Herbertson or whoever puts it out.

      • Mike Fagan says:

        Dan was saying there’d be a print version going up somewhere that would be much deeper than what was presented on the show.

  7. Zach Arnold says:

    Well, that was certainly… an interesting show.

    Glad to know the one time I’ll be mentioned on national TV is in association with Cage Potato. Didn’t know they were my bosses. 🙂

    • Steve4192 says:

      I also enjoyed Straka’s claim that you have have only reported on the Shukan Gendai crusade and not the Mijatovic Bom-Ba-Ye incident. If he really does read your stuff, his reading comprehension is awful.

      I also like how they alluded to the Igari ‘suicide’ without mentioning how he ties into all this or even using his name. There was potential for a really cool expose built around the Mijatovic interview, but they essentially just showed the interview and stopped there.

      Lastly, did anyone catch Jerry Millen claiming that he never saw anyone or anything Yakuza related at Pride? Hilarious. Did he think those duffle bags full of cash that they handed out were part of a legitimate business?

      • Zach Arnold says:

        He said I’m from Cage Potato. What else do I need to say?

        After the show, I got needled by a lot of people but I think most of them were in shock about the way it played out.

        The reason I did the search primer here about the PRIDE scandal is because there’s so many moving components. Really, there were two parallel things going on:

        a) Kawamata filed a complaint with Kanagawa police, he was the point man for Gendai’s negative campaign w/ Tadashi Tanaka. So, K-1 was attacking PRIDE through this channel.

        b) Miro was the real victim here after Kawamata left him hanging at the Inoki show. Remember Golden Glory claiming they got stiffed on money? Miro paid them out of pocket. Kawamata fled after his two yakuza henchmen turned on him and went to Sakakibara allegedly. This is what Miro was talking about in regards to the guns in the hotel room.

        So, Igari, one of if not the most famous anti-yakuza lawyers around, took Miro’s case and went to action. You had Gendai with the public pressure which led to turmoil at the Fuji stockholders meeting and you had the police basically interrogating Kiyohara (daddy’s boy) and Fuji staff.

        More people were laughing and cracking on Twitter about Millen’s comments than anything else. I wasn’t surprised by what he said but that he managed to keep a straight face.

        I heard the interview with Miro was 90 minutes long, so we barely saw the surface scratched.

      • Jonathan Snowden says:

        I don’t see what the big deal is. This stuff was all here and in Total MMA. This doesn’t seem like new information, although it’s cool to hear an on the record interview about some of it.

        • Steve4192 says:

          I think it is somewhat of a big deal that the story is finally being covered by a non-internet based English language outlet. This is the first time the casual fans who don’t follow the sport on the internet are hearing this stuff. As Dana says, those of us who live ‘in the bubble’ take a lot of this information for granted. While it may not be new information to us, it is absolutely new information to the vast majority of fans who get their MMA news from the broadcast media.

        • Jonathan Snowden says:

          I don’t think the “vast majority” of fans get their MMA news from the broadcast media. Mostly because MMA has never been covered in any significant way in that medium. More people will read Bleacher Report MMA or Bloody Elbow this week than will watch that show on Spike. It probably won’t be close.

        • Steve4192 says:

          I don’t think the vast majority of fans get any MMA news at all. Almost none of my ‘casual fan’ friends follow the sport all. They just tune in for the fights and will occasionally stop on SpikeTV while channel surfing.

          I take that back. Some of them do get MMA ‘news’ from following Dana on Twitter.

        • rbk says:

          I agree with Steve4192 there – same thing with my ‘casual fan’ friends. Other than me emailing them specific links/stories and the occasional mention/show on Sportnset they don’t follow the sport at all and tune in just for the ‘major’ fights.

  8. […] was amazing. PRIDE was also infected with the Japanese mafia which ultimately led to its downfall. With the exception of Zach Arnold’s extensive coverage over at Fight Opinion, this story has largely been untouched, so it was quite the surprise to see Spike TV’s new […]

  9. […] was amazing. PRIDE was also infected with the Japanese mafia which ultimately led to its downfall. With the exception of Zach Arnold’s extensive coverage over at Fight Opinion, this story has largely been untouched, so it was quite the surprise to see Spike TV’s new […]

  10. SpikeyRizin says:

    The lost episode of Spike TV’s MMA Uncensored Program – Miro Mijatovic vs PRIDE and the Yakuza

    http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTM0NjYyMDM5Ng==.html?tpa=dW5pb25faWQ9MTAyMjEzXzEwMDAwMl8w

Comments to Chromium

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-spam image