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Friday funhouse: No Josh Barnett for you at PRIDE
By Zach Arnold | March 15, 2007
Bas Rutten has more to say about PRIDE, Josh Barnett likely won’t be fighting in Japan any time soon, Tim Sylvia speaks out, Art of War says they made more than the IFL, and video links to Forrest Griffin’s staph infection shown on camera.
Story of the day: In a Thursday night radio interview, Dave Meltzer talked about teaching a business class at Stanford University on Monday. The topic was primarily the IFL and its business model. After breaking into groups, all the students deliberated their verdict on the IFL. The verdict? The IFL is a money-burning proposition that won’t succeed. Meltzer relays a couple of suggestions that the students made to improve the IFL’s business model. One suggestion was to move the IFL TV tapings to Las Vegas in a 2,500-seat building (or something similar to the Orleans Arena) and try to keep in the fly-in costs low as opposed to booking big buildings like the LA Forum and having to paper them like crazy.
- The Porterville Recorder: Preview of upcoming 3/22 Tachi Palace Hotel & Casino MMA card
- The Oregonian: MMA notebook – WEC enjoys big backing
- The Chicago Sun-Times: White-collar ‘Fight Club’ helps keep boxing out of red (mention of Andrei Arlovski in the piece)
- The Fight Network: Cage Rage 4/21 Wembley Arena card line-up
- The Associated Press: Evander Holyfield perplexed by links to steroids
- MMA News: Interview with Bas Rutten (in the article, the two Japanese names he’s referring to that aren’t listed are Yukino Kanda and Hideki Yamamoto)
- The Baltimore Sun: One-on-one with UFC’s Tim Sylvia
- Press Release: Jeff Osborne named BoDogFight commissioner
- Josh Barnett: I’m not likely going to fight for PRIDE on 4/8 in Saitama
- The Brooklyn Rail: Sam Sheridan with Rene A. Dreifuss on A Fighter’s Heart
- Press Release: MeTV Network teams with IFC to launch “FightTV”
- The Los Angeles Times: ‘Ultimate Fighter’ returns to the airwaves
- Marketwire (PR): SUN reports financial results of “Art of War” event (and take a look at the slam against the IFL right away)
- Fight Report: Letter to HBO – “You’re Blowing it?”
- UFC HP: David Heath to replace Forrest Griffin against Ryoto Machida at UFC 70
- NBC Sports: April brings four must-see bouts
- Fox Sports: Anacondas take momentum into home meet
- UFC Junkie: Forrest Griffin’s staph infection is disgusting
Topics: All Topics, BoDog, Boxing, IFL, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UK, Zach Arnold | 15 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
*The next PRIDE fight card isn’t looking too good in terms of star power and strong matchups from my point of view.
*Are plans still in place to air the show LIVE~! from Japan on American PPV at like 2am in the morning?
*If Barnett will not be fighting, will he be commentating? God I hope so.
*I can see Filho/Misaki happening for the WW title.
*Gomi needs a quick rebound win.
*I guess they’re building Aoki as the next potential Japanese star.
*I wonder what’s the rumored “price tag” for PRIDE. 50 mil? 75 mil?
UFC offered a lot more than that and got declined.
Is HBO blowing it? Or is UFC blowing it?
Considering the post is about boxing I’d say HBO is blowing it.
RE: PRIDE – I think its becoming more and more clear that PRIDE isn’t going to be sold because I don’t think anyone can cleanly buy its assets. They might buy US rights to footage and stuff like that, but I don’t know that the promotion can truly be sold anymore. If it could be, it probably would have been by now.
RE: HBO and Boxing – Everyone knows that HBO has done a great job botching their boxing programming, themselves included. They pretty much admit to it and to killing the sport, and their general defense is, “well, the promoters will just run PPVs of the bouts instead.” It illustrates how much time HBO is interested in spending to create new stars and replace the aging names of the late 90s (Trinidad, Vargas, Judah, Mosley, Barrera, Morales) as well the fact that they’re looking to make as much of a profit right this second rather than thinking down the line to creating big, interesting bouts.
yeah, i remember zach writing something to the same effect about pride being hard to sell. does anybody even know who owns pride??? and furthermore how much can pride really be worth?? whoever buys them will have to dump a hell of alot dough into the company probably for years to come
I can see PRIDE going out of business and Dana still wanting to buy the video library to promote the former PRIDE fighters that he’ll eventually sign to the UFC.
Just another thought that occurred to me regarding the salability of PRIDE (I could obviously be way off base here and maybe Zach has mentioned this before)…
With Sakikibara recently calling PRIDE “his daughter”, I wonder if one of the difficulties in dealing with the UFC was not wanting to give up control?
I would imagine that if Zuffa were to buy DSE or PRIDE, there would have to be a wholesale restructuring of management (ie, firing everyone including Sakikibara) because of the Nevada Gaming Commission’s tight regulations concerning ownership/management of licensees having any sort of ties to organized crime.
If the UFC were to buy DSE or PRIDE, the gaming commission would most certainly scrutinize the links from Station Casinos -> Fertittas -> Zuffa -> DSE/PRIDE -> Japanese Yakuza.
So given that Sakikibara would most likely not retain management control of DSE in the event of a sale to the UFC, maybe that was the hangup,rather than the price tag? Maybe Sakikibara is just looking for an equity investor or silent partner rather than a full takeover.
And if GKH is right, might be why Vince McMahon might not buy either?
Spayed & Neutered: It’s a good idea to stop by the official sites now and then. PRIDEfc.com answers about half of your questions, including Hendo still being champion at WW.
GKH: Sakakibara may be anything from a 100% personal owner of PRIDE to a completely powerless doll for the real owners. Most likely somewhere inbetween, which means any statement he makes about selling PRIDE should should not be taken at face value. Read between the lines. This is one of the things Zach Arnold has actually hit right on the head for ages now.
Are Art of War getting good sponsor deals since they’re basically committing themselves to Texas – making local investors happy? Good on them for making a profit, although it makes you wonder what the fighters were paid(probably a lot less than IFL spends – per head – on their crew).
Rutten is so good I almost want to see PRIDE crumble after reading his comments. The PRIDE.34 card appears to follow in the footsteps of .32 and .33. It’s just the new norm for the company. Great first fight for Galesic, and Monson vs. Fujita sounds great to me.
At this point, I’d rather see DSE go quietly into the night and not prolong the inevitable any further, given how many memorable moments PRIDE has produced. If they would just hang it up, we could be on with our lives and spared tales of embarassment and idiocy.
http://www.ufc.com/
– TUF 6 will have Welterweight-fighters. Tryouts in April. Poor winner will hopefully be awarded with a WEC-spot rather than be thrown in with the wolves in UFC at that weight :S
Jthue, I’m not really giving Sakikibara’s statements any value other than that it is obvious he has an emotional bond with PRIDE, not just a business tie.
I was just conjecturing on, assuming PRIDE is actually for sale, why they might not have accepted one of the UFC’s alleged multiple offers (one of which was supposedly more than $100 million).
Regardless, if the UFC ever were to buy DSE or PRIDE, it’s pretty obvious to me that the current executive management of DSE would NOT be able to continue under Zuffa ownership given DSE’s alleged ties to organized crime and the Fertitta’s needing to stay clean to keep their gaming licenses.
MMA News: Interview with Bas Rutten (in the article, the two Japanese names he’s referring to that aren’t listed are Yukino Kanda and Hideki Yamamoto)
hah, you’re right too I just checked. He only refers to them as “Yukino and Hideki” and if you mix his accent with the speed in which he talks, you could see how transcribing fourty minutes of him talking isn’t the easiest task in the world. Gotta love him though!
Well, look, if everything we believe is true, and there’s no reason to not believe it, then PRIDE is owned at least in large part, if not in full, by people in the South Korean Yakuza. If not them, then some other group. Established that already. So, if that’s true, then whomever buys them has to buy them from said group, because as far as I know, its a privately held company. UFC can offer a billion dollars and they’ll turn it down because such a transaction would be easily watched by government bodies and authorities (US law need not apply anywhere that isn’t the US, remember). Basically, they can’t sell if that’s the case, unless someone is just handed full ownership. Its also why they can’t run the US unless through a third part (Fishman). Same goes for K-1 (who has a totally independant promoter stateside).
PRIDE is near collapse according to everyone. There’s no reason for them to keep digging themselves into a hole and refusing what are at this point extremely reasonable offers. Seriously, is the PRIDE name worth $100 million? If they default, there’s a ton of guys that instantly hit the free agent market. No way that they’re all worth even half that to Zuffa together.