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Report: K-1 Dynamite show may not happen
By Zach Arnold | May 22, 2007
By Zach Arnold
If you want a perfect example of why Japanese fight promoters act like total marks and are clueless when doing business outside of Japan, look no further than this report at The Fight Network web site in regards to the upcoming K-1 Dynamite event. Audio of Loretta Hunt report here. MMA Weekly has an update on the story. Every problem listed in the TFN report reads like it is right out of the ‘Japanese fight promoter 101’ playbook.
- FEG not granted a promoter’s license by the California SAC. (In Japan, there’s no regulation to get into the fight business.)
- FEG won’t reveal financial paperwork regarding their company. (Typical of how Japanese fight promoters operate – like PRIDE. This is why you’ll never see a Japanese fight company being publicly-traded on any stock exchange.)
- FEG hasn’t put up the bond money to cover fighter’s salaries, despite the fact that they will likely make millions of dollars in Japanese TV revenue. (This bond stipulation never exists in the Japanese fight game, an industry dominated by the theory of honor-among-thieves.)
- FEG is advertising fighters that will not appear on their big show. (A standard Japanese fight promoter practice.)
- The CSAC has not reportedly received paperwork for 19 of the 22 fighters scheduled to fight. (K-1 has been in trouble before in regards to paperwork with fighters, as they got caught in South Korea using fighters on tourist visas instead of working visas.)
When it comes to Japanese fight promoters who have generated tens of millions of dollars in their home country but can’t generate much money outside of it, the laundry list is pretty high (New Japan Pro-Wrestling was the hottest company in the 1990s and they accomplished nothing globally, PRIDE ran two shows in Las Vegas thanks to the help of casino boss Ed Fishman who promoted the events, and K-1’s continued failures in Las Vegas and now Los Angeles).
The reality is that the rules of doing fight-related business activities in Japan are entirely different than they are in any other country. A first-class image with third-world politics behind the scenes. There is a thuggish lawlessness and taint of criminal activity that has all but self-destructed the Japanese fight industry as being a major global player. The various Japanese power brokers have brought this onto themselves and they have no one else to blame for it. A culture of corruption turned a $60-75 million USD-a-year Japanese fight business (the MMA side) into total extinction overnight.
K-1 is the same organization that suffered from a corporate tax evasion scandal in late 2002-early 2003, producing a net result of Kazuyoshi Ishii sitting in a jail cell right now. I personally expect every excuse under the sun to be used in the Japanese media to shift the blame as to why the LA Coliseum show is a disaster, including the race card. The tactic still works in Japan in 2007.
Topics: HERO's, Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Bummer if it doesn’t come off…I was really looking forward to this.
Well atleast theyre will be preshow on showtime. Awesomeness
I was sort of thinking the same thing, although it wasn’t as blunt as you put it.
I guess I’m optimistic and I think the show will end up happening. If not as advertised then in some other capacity.
I will never understand how a relatively wealthy, clean-cut, crime-free and not-afraid-to-throw-people-in-jail-for-decades country like Japan can be the victim of such societal sleaze for so long. You’ve got two tiers of problems:
A. Unenforced laws.
B. Lack of regulation.
‘Third-world’ isn’t a way you describe just about anything in Japan, but this is one of them. Making it easy for yakuza gangs to operate and then failing to punish many of the slip-ups they do make is inexcusable, and in this case we have an entire industry that’s been irreparably damaged by the taint of criminals.
If K-1 cancels the event, they will lose a bunch of money.
They were the best hope to compete with Zuffa. But it doesn’t look like they have a clue.
And that laundry list of issues isn’t just tiny problems. Those are big problems.
I’m not sure if this is just a Nevada Law (or national one), but it is illegal to advertise fighters without their name on the dotted line. Hence why the UFC often doesn’t post the picture of a fighter on their website until he has signed for the fight.
Keep in mind that Sakuraba still hasn’t cleared his physical.
I looked at this card and I just can’t justify purchasing it on PPV. The Shamrock/Baroni fight perhaps, but not this thing.
Assuming ticket sales have been awful, would it be wise for K1 to just allow the commision to shut down the show? Would they lose money or save money? They could always blame the corrupt commision for PR purposes and claim Zuffa and Dana worked behind the scenes to stop it.
Another comment on this…..
This is exactly why working with other promoters is a bad idea. Look at K-1 already. They had an “alliance” with Cage Rage, and then forced Bob Sapp off the card, despite the fact that he didn’t have a scheduled date with K-1. They had an “alliance” with Pro Elite, and if the event gets canceled, they are going to piss off both Pro Elite and Showtime, and probably lose them some money. Not to mention make the network look stupid by haveing 24/7 type of documentary special, that leads to basically no event.
It is events like this that makes it apparent why the UFC doesn’t work with other organizations.
Great article Zach, in a few short sentences you got down to the story, told it how it is, and give your view. Great job.
This also adds to the UFC-not-wanting-to-buy-Pride story. Maybe the UFC is doing the right thing by not getting involved with in a fight culture that is chalk full of corruption and shady backroom dealings.
Was it you that said After the K-1/Strikeforce/Elite-XC/Cage Rage/etc. alliance “lets just hope they all agree on the same restaurant after the press conference”? Just like in real life, they all can agree on the restaurant to go to, but someone always ends up stiffing others on the bill.
Dana must be pissing himself laughing at all this.
“FEG’s financial statements just came through the fax and to my attention for reviewâ€
CSAC CLARIFIES DYNAMITE USA! CONCERNS
Basically it’s looking a bit better right now.
I think that the fight card will still happen. Just a feeling.
Off topic about UFC not wanting to buy Pride….
They already got footage for the countdown show to show Liddell getting wrecked by Rampage. That is worth a few more PPV buys, which means that is worth a fraction of the company right there. Perhaps $2 Million. Access to the fighters is big. Just the fact that the fighters know they are the big guns, they have already signed Nogueira, Cro Cop, Filho, & Rua. Those are some big guns.
According to The Fight Network, the new documents that were received were not what the commission asked for, which means they are still not out of the water.
Imagine a US company pulling this crap. They just wouldn’t.