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DSE plays the “media ban” card?
By Zach Arnold | January 21, 2006
By Zach Arnold
Do you remember the situation from December of 2005 in regards to the negotiations for the Naoya Ogawa vs. Hidehiko Yoshida match? If you don’t remember, use this link to refresh your memory – simple for the purpose of a timeline.
Here was the situation – some of the newspapers reported that DSE was booking Ogawa vs. Yoshida. This was essentially a leak by someone in the media. DSE boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara came out the next day in public and was furious with the press. The fight hadn’t been officially signed yet. There was concern that the early announcement could cause political problems. Eventually, the fight was signed.
Here are the two news items from Puroresu Power on 11/11/2005. First item:
Yomiuri Sports is reporting that negotiations are being finalized (or attempted to) for booking a match between Hidehiko Yoshida & Naoya Ogawa for the 12/31 Saitama Super Arena show.
And the second item:
DSE big boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara clarified information and commented on two reports (Yomiuri & Nikkan Sports) that Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Naoya Ogawa was being signed for the 12/31 Saitama Super Arena show. Sakakibara stated that contracts were not completed and that negotiations are advancing. Sakakibara apologized to both Ogawa & Yoshida for any issues that were created by the press leaks/reports.
Sakakibara held a press conference with both Ogawa & Yoshida on 11/14, a few days after the newspaper leak. The fight was officially announced.
Today comes word (via a report on NHB News from Gryphon) that DSE is not going to tolerate the newspapers that leaked the information about Ogawa vs. Yoshida being booked. The report (in Japanese) comes from a new book being released called the “secret file of puroresu (pro-wrestling), K-1, and PRIDE.” In short, the book claims that DSE has banned the outlet(s) forever from press conferences because of the leak.
Important reference links:
- Amazon Japan – Puroresu, K-1, and PRIDE event list mook (out of stock)
- NHB News – Gryphon’s quick notes about the book (in Japanese)
Use Yahoo Japan or Excite Japan to translate the links. It is well worth the trouble. The book also goes into detail about the activity of the main power broker agents (such as Ken Imai, who represents Mirko Cro Cop, and Motoko Uchida, who represents BTT).
Now compare this reported story of a “media ban” by DSE versus what was called the “media ban” by UFC towards the English-writing web sites (MMA Weekly, Sherdog, etc.) I want to hear your thoughts on how you would compare the two and what you think this move means in the grand scheme of things.
Update: A link to this article just appeared on the Nippon/Japan News site. Must be from the RSS feed (it is). Here’s a snapshot capture graphic of it indexed on their site:
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |
Although I’m a few days late, I just wanted to add my thoughts on the difference between the DSE ban and the UFC ban. In the case of the UFC ban, it was basically reactionary to the growth of the UFC’s market moreso than any leak Fight Sport (or any other site) supposedly committed. According to the stories I heard from some of the site owners in questions’ mouths, they basically refused to give press credentials to them because they ‘were not professional enough’.
One could argue that it meant that the UFC thought the writers there were amateur or believed cheering for certain guys during a show was ‘unprofessional’ (although it would only be unprofessional if this bias carried over to a (theoretically) non-biased show summary and not to an opinionated review), but most reports indicate that they tried to give seats for guys from ESPN and some other big networks and newspapers in order to try and expand their mainstream coverage. In my opinion, Zuffa miscalculated their mainstream appeal level by tossing aside the news sources that covered them for so many years (including their slow recovery years) for the ‘big names’. Although I can’t blame them for making such a choice, I think in the end it greatly reduced the media coverage at the event and just gave them a bad reputation in terms of public relations rather than replacing the coverage of their product, as was probably anticipated.
In the case of DSE banning those news sources, there is a somewhat more tangible reason, as they were trying to finalize a big fight and to spoil the announcement of the potential main event before they even had Yoshida or Ogawa’s name on the paper. With that type of publicity, it would have placed Sakakibara in an awkward position as if either man backed out suddenly, it might have hurt his buildup leading to 12/31 (as the fans might believe that Sakakibara could not guarantee any of the card’s fights running that night) and would have placed him in a begging position to true to guarantee that the fight went through without a problem.