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PRIDE’s new big signing
By Zach Arnold | August 7, 2006
By Zach Arnold
Yeo Jong-Hoon (long-time correspondent) reports that Lee Tae Hyun (born on 1/17/1976, 196 cm, 138 kg) announced at a press conference today that he would fight in PRIDE. (Sports Navigator report here). Nobuyuki Sakakibara & Nobuhiko Takada were present at the media briefing. Tae Hyun is considered one of the great Ssirum (South Korean sumo) fighters, the same sport that Choi Hong-Man came from. Tae Hyun was the No. 1 Ssirum fighter for the last 10 years, including a regional heavyweight championship in March of 2006.
Update: Here is an article in The Korea Times on the new signing.
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Forgive me for being a skeptic but whoopdey doo.
I think pride should leave it to K1 to sign the freaks (in the MMA sense of the term) and stick to signing real MMA fighters.
This guy is obviously coming into the heavyweight division, right? How the hell is he going to stand against Kharitonov, Minotauro, Fedor, Cro Cop, Barnett, Hunt, etc.?
He hasn’t got a chance.
IMO it seems to be a ploy by Pride to increase popularity. The Japanese audience seems to love the freakshow side of K1, so maybe Pride is trying to follow suit…
Sakakibara has often been enamored in the past with big signings of South Korean fighters (not that his boss, Ishizaka, hanging out in South Korea has anything to do with it…)
Remember the Yoon Dong-Sik experiment (in which Sakuraba beat him in no time)? Luckily, Yoon became a much better defensive fighter, but the South Korean stars really haven’t shined in PRIDE (outside of Denis Kang who is marketed half the time from France or Vancouver). At 138 kg, Tae-Hyun certainly would be their largest active heavyweight right now.
>At 138 kg, Tae-Hyun certainly would be their largest active heavyweight right now.
Hint:Giant Silva
Giant Silva hasn’t had a fight in a long time. Sentoryu (Henry Miller) is now in Pancrase, DEEP, and Cage Rage.
Zulu.