SCRAPP! FIGHT MAGAZINE
January - 2016
11
names like Bob Sapp, Gabi
Garcia, Brennan Ward,
Kron Gracie, and Baruto
Kaito — and that’s where
the problems began.
As much as Pride always
loved its freakshow fights,
it still boasted the best ros-
ter of its era, at least for
a time. Say what you will
about how the company
was run, but with names
like Emelianenko, Mirko
Cro-Cop, Alistair Overeem,
Wanderlei Silva, Sakuraba,
Mark Coleman, Ken Sham-
rock, the Nogueira broth-
ers, and a host of others —
well, even if you couldn’t
take every fight seriously, it
was impossible not to take
Pride as a whole seriously.
That’s exactly why the UFC
took the approach they
did with their biggest rival
in the end. There was a
time, after all, when Pride
dominated.
The freakshow fights
were spectacles within the
card, not the point of the
card. Rizin Fighting Fed-
eration? Well, the whole
thing, while serving up a
fun dose of nostalgia, was
hard to take as anything
but a sideshow. It is not, at
least as it stands, the an-
swer to the MMA problem
in Japan.
Watching Bob Sapp and
Akebono in a shootboxing
match, rematching their
K-1 bout from years ear-
lier, wasn’t even entertain-
ing in a freakshow way, it
was downright embarrass-
ing. So, to, was witness-
ing the MMA debut of
Jiu-jitsu expert Gabi Garcia
against pro wrestler Lei’D
Tapa. The fight, which was
contested basically entirely
standing, saw some slop-
py striking, Tapa tagging
Garcia early, Garcia land-
ing what could be consid-
ered the ugliest back fist
in pro MMA to stun and
drop Tapa, and then some
ground and pound to mer-
cifully put an end to the
affair.
In short, it was ugly. While
the heavyweight tourna-
ment provided some de-
cent action, and puts a
bit of a shine on King Mo,
who needed a high pro-
file coup like this, it’s clear
Rizin has a lot of work to
do. There simply isn’t the
talent pool required to
have quality fights on Rizin
cards, but the freakshow
route isn’t the answer ei-
ther, given that most of the
big names familiar to Jap-
anese MMA fans are way
past their prime (lets not
get into how hard it was
to watch Sakuraba take a
beating from Shinya Aoki
— it appeared even Aoki
had reservations about
what transpired).
Watching Fedor beat an in-
experienced mixed martial
artist while barely breaking
a sweat? Why not just air
video of him sparring?
Rizin, if it really wants to
bring MMA back to the
forefront in Japan, needs
to utilize its partnership
with other promotions
to put on solid fights,
and focus on growing
some young, local fight-
ers as well — rather than
watching a couple of tired
“names” from a bygone
era gas halfway through
the first round.
Nostalgia isn’t the cure to
everything, after all. It’s
nice now and then, but
Pride 2.0 this was not.
