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New defense tactic – blame Inoki
By Zach Arnold | March 3, 2006
By Zach Arnold
The Japanese fight industry is still in shock over last week’s arrests of three yakuza members of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime family. A fourth person is a fugitive and an arrest warrant has been issued. A lot of people were awaiting the reaction from the weekly tabloids regarding this story, but it has been strangely quiet. One person who decided to talk about the issue was Tarzan Yamamoto, who wrote a rather… interesting article in Weekly Pro-Wrestling magazine.
In my opinion, the article reads like spin doctoring and a public relations campaign to try to save the image of certain people in the Japanese fight industry.
In his Weekly Pro article, Yamamoto’s article asks why top yakuza members are being arrested now in relations to a fight event in 2003. Well, let me respond. Anyone who has paid an ounce of attention to the fallout from the Inoki show understands that civil court proceedings in Tokyo District Court have been transpiring since 2005.
Yamamoto starts off his article by talking about receiving a mobile phone call on 2/24 about the yakuza arrests in regards to charges of extortion and blackmail threats for the Inoki show in 2003. Yamamoto goes on to review a brief timeline of events that led up to the matchmaking of that event by Seiya Kawamata, whose K-Confidence office was paid by Nippon TV a lot of money to produce the show. Originally, Mirko Cro Cop vs. Yoshihiro Takayama was announced as the main event, along with Josh Barnett vs. Semmy Schiltt and the participation of Kazuyuki Fujita. On 12/5/03, Inoki announced that Emelianenko Fedor would work the show. On 12/10, PRIDE claimed that they had an exclusive contract with Fedor and attacked his participation on the Inoki show. Both Cro Cop & Fedor at the time were managed by power-agent, attorney, and businessman Miro Mijatovic. On 12/16/03, Mirko announced the cancellation of his participation from the show and Takayama said that he wouldn’t fight on the event after that cancellation. 10 days before the 12/31/03 Inoki show, Kawamata couldn’t announce Mirko’s participation on the show and Inoki did not appear before the press. On 12/29/03, Yuji Nagata vs. Emelianenko Fedor was announced.
Continuing the timelime from Yamamoto’s article, he talks about Kawamata filing a complaint with the Kanagawa police in regards to threats from the Yakuza. Kawamata claimed that he ran away from Japan. Yamamoto claims that Kawamata came back to Japan in February 2003 and it appeared that the police wouldn’t prosecute his complaint. Tarzan spreads a rumor that Kawamata met with a top Yakuza boss and settled this problem, therefore making the arrests (in his opinion) confusing to understand.
Yamamoto notes that because of the recent yakuza arrests, it proves that the police have been investigating the criminal complaint the entire time and that this will be a launching pad to investigate the links because the yakuza and fight industry. Tarzan goes on to state that this incident proves that everything related to Inoki has major problems (including Inoki transferring his private stockholder shares to Yukes in 2005) and the recent cancellation of shows in Bangladesh.
Now that Yamamoto’s article has been laid out, let’s go through some of the claims he makes in the column.
Yamamoto talks about how everything related to Inoki has been bad over the last few years. The involvement of Inoki in the 2003 MMA show has been debatable, since the word inside the industry was that Inoki was paid by the K-Confidence office for an appearance fee to show up on TV and be at the event, and also for the usage of the likeness of his image. While Inoki had some involvement in the show, it may not be necessarily to the extent that is being portrayed on a public level. Tarzan is clearly using the story of the yakuza being arrested as an attack point on Inoki and also as an attack on Kawamata’s credibility, trying to paint Kawamata as a man who has yakuza connections himself. He tries to make Kawamata look bad by talking about Mirko’s no-show on the Inoki event and all the problems surrounding Fedor’s participation. However, Yamamoto doesn’t ask the questions that Gryphon and other Japanese online writers have pointed out:
- Why would the yakuza be involved in regards to the appearance of Fedor on the Inoki show? Why would they care if he fought on the Inoki show?
- Who ordered or asked the yakuza to try to intervene in this situation?
Is this the line of defense from those inside Japan’s fight industry?
- PRIDE agreed to let Fedor fight on the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show with no reservations
- The problems are between Kawamata/Inoki and the yakuza
Let’s further break down how the process for the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2003 show took place.
The first problems on the show came after Mirko Cro Cop vs. Yoshihiro Takayama was announced. This was announced on 11/11/2003. However, between the time period of 11/11/2003 and 12/16/2003 when Mirko announced on his web site that he wasn’t fighting, something happened that changed Mirko’s mind. On January 7, 2004 in Japan, Mirko had a letter published on the front page of Sankei Sports. The letter stated that he was breaking off his relations with Miro Mijatovic (claiming that Miro had signed his biggest rival, Fedor) and made former K-1 boss Ken Imai his agent. Imai’s close relationships to DSE boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara & Fuji TV producer Kunio Kiyohara were known in the industry.
Here is my news report from 1/6/2004 in regards to the letter published in Sankei Sports:
Sankei Sports reported on Wednesday that Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic is a free agent and can fight in any promotion he wants to. The two big targets for Filipovic in ’04 appear to be Mike Tyson and Bob Sapp. An official split has occurred between Filipovic and power agent Miro Mijatovic of IbizCube Japan. In a letter sent on 1/1/04, Filipovic told Mijatovic of his intentions of split because of “conflicts of interest.” Furthermore, the letter states that Mirko is looking forward to fighting Emelianenko Fedor with Miro in Fedor’s corner. In response, Miro Mijatovic told the press that he was perplexed by Filipovic’s response, and that he would continue representing Fedor for PRIDE’s Heavyweight GP tournament starting in April.
According to court documents filed by Mijatovic in his civil case against Seiya Kawamata for non-payment of money (from the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2003 show), the official public reason for Mirko’s non-participation on the Inoki show was due to a back injury. However, Mirko ended up working on 2/1/2004 at Osaka Castle Hall on the PRIDE 27 show against Ron Waterman and two weeks later on 2/15/2004 on the Bushido 2 event against Yoshihisa Yamamoto.
According to one source, there may be a investigation by the police in regards to a rumor/story that Mirko Cro Cop was paid a large amount of money to not fight on the Inoki show in 2003 and to terminate his relations with Mijatovic. The big questions are whether this allegation is true, and if it is, who financed this payment & whether there was any yakuza involvement in the transaction or not.
In regards to Fedor’s participation on the Inoki show, Inoki announced that Fedor would work the event on 12/5/2003. DSE boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara was upset about this announcement and threatened legal action (stating this through the Japanese media). He made the claim that DSE had signed Fedor to an exclusive contract. Nobody knows how the dispute between DSE & those in charge of the Inoki show was settled, but it was mysterious and nobody has said anything about it since then. On February 26, 2006, Sakakibara issued the following statement:
“Back then we graciously endorsed, and sent Fedor to their show. I have no way of knowing what happened between them and I don’t intent to know about it.”
One of the most confusing issues about this story is why did Sakakibara change his attitude so quickly in regards to the participation of Fedor on the Inoki show in December of 2003? He went from:
- Wanting to sue those involved in booking Fedor on the Inoki (with the claim that Fedor was under exclusive PRIDE contract) by claiming Fedor’s contract with DSE was violated to…
- Claiming that he “graciously endorsed” Fedor’s participation within a matter of days or week(s)?
Tarzan Yamamoto’s article about the yakuza arrests was, in my opinion, a disservice to the readers of Weekly Pro-Wrestling magazine. Instead of talking about all the facts of the case, he decided to attack everyone’s favorite target, Antonio Inoki, and attack Kawamata, the man who police claim was the victim of extortion and blackmail attempts from Yamaguchi-gumi gang members. Unacceptable.
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |
[…] Update: More on Sherdog forums. I don’t know how much of this is true or false (the content in that person’s post), but I did state on this week’s FOR radio show that the Japanese police were interested in the financing of the fight game. This would include analysis of financial records, payoffs, etc. We only know, so far, surface information. I think the investigation has a long ways to go in terms of digging deeper. I did address the Mirko rumors here. […]