Beyond the Fight 05.09.08: Icarus of the East Pt. 3 - End of the Century

Posted by Sergio G. Hernandez on 05.09.2008

It was over. Not with a bang but with a whimper. The best fighting organization the world had ever known was dying and there was nothing anyone could do to save it. The last installment chronicling the fall of Pride Fighting Championships takes a closer look at it's final months and it's dying breath.

Last week we looked at the year that literally destroyed Pride Fighting Championships. A yakuza scandal brought on by a Japanese newspaper crippled the organization. As a result, Fuji TV dropped DSE programming, also taking away a sizable portion of their revenue. DSE President Sakakibara tried to downplay the drastic turn of events but the writing was on the wall.

There is an old cliché that goes, "It's better to burn out than fade away." Pride FC kind of did both. Their fall was so sudden and so quick but by the end of it, it was a mere shell of its former self.

In their last year, they tried to invade North American. In an attempt to carve out a piece of the United States MMA landscape for themselves, they ran Pride 32: The Real Deal. They ran the Thomas and Mack Center, a venue the Ultimate Fighting Championships used for their lower-tier Fight Night cards.

The Real Deal didn't look all too impressive on paper and didn't provide any real fireworks. Sure, Fedor Emelianenko made his North American debut but it was against Mark Coleman, a man Fedor had easily beaten two years prior. The card was littered with great American fighters such as Josh Barnett, Dan Henderson, and Robbie Lawler but they were all fighting opponents who had little chance at beating them.

It seems DSE and Sakakibara, for all the millions of yen they made and all the millions of tickets they sold in Japan, did not understand the United States.

Hey, SEG made that same mistake when they took the UFC to the Far East.

What followed next were the last Bushido and Shockwave shows, again after so many classic events, going out on a whimper. Bushido 13 was a chore to sit through, with decision after decision. Shockwave, the annual New Year's Eve show whose card would be stacked to garner high TV ratings was a shell of its former self. Pride FC had no TV deal, hence no need to battle for TV ratings. It was still a solid card, however, but where Barnett should have challenged Fedor, he instead re-matched Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fedor fought an overmatched Mark Hunt.

Gomi and Ishida, Hansen and Aoki, and Kawajiri and Melendez all had great bouts, I guess to make up for the snoozefest that was Bushido 13.

Pride was dying. It was gasping for air. Rumors of a sale began to pick up steam. They took one more plunge into the United States MMA scene.

Like The Real Deal, Second Coming didn't look terribly great on paper. Sure, Henderson taking on Silva for the Middleweight was interesting but the match-up smacked of jingoism. Henderson had been bouncing from weight class to weight class before settling at 183. And now all of a sudden, he gets a Middleweight title shot?

Gomi, the Lightweight champion was taking on UFC castoff Nick Diaz and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira was taking on a nobody.

But unlike The Real, Second Coming delivered the goods. That "nobody" shocked the world when he knocked out Lil Nog. Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou shocked the world again two months later when he did the same thing to Ricardo Arona at Kamikaze. The UFC castoff shocked the world by gogoplataing Gomi only to have it overturned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission for a drug violation. Still, seeing Diaz, giant scar and broken orbital bone being hoisted up after making the best lightweight in the world tap is something I'll never forget.

And that 183 pounder with no business in a Middleweight title fight? Knock out in the third round. New champ.

As great a card that Second Coming was, it couldn't stop the inevitable.

A little over a month later, on March 27, 2007, it was announced that Pride Fighting Championships was sold to Lorenzo Fertitta, co-owner of Zuffa and the UFC for a reported $70 million.

Rumors of an MMA Super Bowl, title unifications, and everything else imaginable under the sun began to pop up and very few of those promises were fulfilled. But that's a whole other column in and of itself.

April 8, 2007. Pride FC, under DSE management presented their last show: Kamikaze.

My introduction to Pride FC was back in 2001 when I found a copy of the 2000 Grand Prix. I hadn't followed MMA for about a year so I was eager to see what an old favorite, Royce Gracie, was up to.

Imagine my surprise when a Japanese fighter I'd never heard of had his way with the BJJ legend for an hour and a half. I nudged my girlfriend, who had fallen asleep about 30 minutes into the bout, and said, "Kazushi Sakuraba just fought Royce Gracie for 90 minutes and made him quit." "Sakuraba? Who is that," she asked. "Well… I think he's the best fighter in the world right now."

Since then, I was hooked on MMA again and especially on Pride. So yeah, my eyes welled up when a montage of famous Pride moments set to The Ramones' "Do you Remember Rock ‘n' Roll Radio" played.

The card was one of Pride's worst.

But in the end, it didn't really matter.

Pride FC had given MMA fans even memories that they could get away with ending on a down note. I mean, when your lifetime is filled with high notes like the Gracie/Sakuraba Classic, Silva/Rampage I and II, Shogun marching through the 2005 GP, Fedor/Big Nog, CroCop, Herring, Rampage/Arona, or the entire Bushido 9 card, you can get a freebie.

So long, Pride Fighting Championships. We'll always have Saitama.