Pride Comes Heavy To Vegas
Posted by RB, 01 Sep 2006
The UFC has done such a good job in America of introducing new fans to the sport of MMA in recent years, through the doors of reality television and The Ultimate Fighter, that the majority of US audiences the sport enjoys today probably don't even call it "Mixed Martial Arts" but rather "Ultimate Fighting." Which is telling -- these fans have been brought into the sport subject to the UFC's terms and brand names, an MMA bubble where the best fighters in the world are Matt Hughes, Rich Franklin, Chuck Liddell, and Tim Sylvia (or whoever occupies the UFC belts at the next moment), and The Octagon is the sport's sole venue.
Thinking back to when I started following the sport (not after watching a reality TV series, but… after playing the original UFC videogame on the SEGA Dreamcast) (which was brilliant, by the way), it probably wasn't until after watching several UFC events that I became at all aware of the true boundaries of the sport, once I found my way onto the internet and the main MMA sites like mma.tv (home of the Underground forum), mmaweekly.com, and sherdog.com.
Before I stumbled across these sites I had no idea of the various organisations, rules, and formats MMA took place under. If a fighter dropped out of the UFC spotlight, I considered him retired from the sport. And that's exactly the position the casual fans of America find themselves in today. That is, today, but perhaps not tomorrow, or next month. For Pride FC are about to launch their invasion on American soil, which has been five years in the making.
Pride are in a strange position at the moment -- they are both in great shape and dangerously close to having serious financial troubles. On the one hand they claim for their own 80% of the world's best MMA heavyweights. This allows them to put on unparalleled cards showcasing this roster; the recent Open Weight Grand Prix included the best heavyweights along with a few fighters from lighter weight classes, culminating in the upcoming finals cards -- a card mouth-wateringly stacked to the roof with top-tier fighters (Barnett, Crop Cop, Nog, Silva…) and which could turn out to be one of the best in the sport's history.
At the same time as possessing a wealth of talent however, Pride ran into a snag recently (where 'snag' would be a euphemism of the highest order) when they lost their free TV deal in Japan due to a tabloid scandal associating top Pride executives with the Yakuza. For a short time their pay-per-view deal looked to be in jeopardy -- which would have dealt a death blow to the company.
While their pay-per-view seems safe for now, the 'for now' which was emphasised on the provider's press release spells a long and continued sense of instability for the company in their native country. It is perhaps this diminished sense of safety which prompts Pride to move forward at this point with their plans to expand to the US.
The first card the company intends to put on will come in October, one week after UFC 63, and has been put together with a clear sense of purpose -- to fill the card with name fighters and top talent and go for maximum impact with the current MMA audience in America. Two former UFC champions, Kevin Randleman and Mark Coleman, have been lined up against the number one fighters in their weight classes, who Pride just so happen to have under contract. Coleman goes up against the single most dominant (and for all purposes undefeated) force in the history of MMA: Fedor Emelianenko; Randleman, 'The Monster', fights 'Shogun' Rua.
The purpose of these two main events are fairly straightforward -- bring in two former champions well-known to the American MMA following public, and with them a large crowd of potential Pride fans, and put them up against two of the best Pride-only fighters out there. Fedor is all but certain to win his fight against Coleman, and Rua will also be the heavy favourite. If these bouts do go as the odds will indicate, a large audience in America will be introduced to Pride fighters relative to former UFC champions as being of a much higher breed.
But anything can happen in an MMA fight, especially with such wild-cards as Randleman. In any case, the UFC names are being put up against fighters who never fail to put on an impressive performance: whatever the outcome of these fights, Pride is sure to benefit greatly from them in the eyes of US fans of the sport. Also on the card are Barnett, Silva, Cro Cop, Belfort, Baroni, & Fujita -- all big names. The impact of this card cannot be underestimated.
Of course, in the US everything Pride does will be judged in relation to the current number one MMA promotion, the UFC. And while Pride are cramming an unbelievable amount of talent on their opening Vegas card, the UFC have been taking another route recently -- one pay-per-view equals one or two fights of note and a handful of unproven fighters, many coming off losses.
The message to them must be clear -- this strategy must be reversed immediately, or six months down the line they could have firmly established themselves as a lower class promotion playing second fiddle to Pride's premium calibre of fight cards. With a large part of the UFC's energies devoted to The Ultimate Fighter, which focuses on 'raw' upcoming talent, and free TV cards broadcast on Spike TV having a similar focus on new fighters, this image could be virtually impossible for the company to avoid unless their PPV quality increases two or three-fold from recent offerings. This may require a major revising to the format the UFC have been heading towards for the last year, where 'the more cards the better' has led to the continued dilution of each card.
And so here we stand at the imminent meeting of the world's two largest MMA organisations, competing for the same market on the same soil for the first time. On the face of it the UFC would appear to have a stranglehold on the market, and Pride will have a hard time cutting into it -- it's popularity has exploded due to its reality series and regular appearances on free TV, and Pride will have no equivalent deal as they enter the market next month.
But in such a new and volatile market, MMA being the fastest growing sport in the world, big changes can come surprisingly fast. Pride is sure to make its presence felt on the UFC, at least in how they will probably be forced to change their course in response to the presence of a new kid in town.
With the right timing, and their timing doesn't look bad at all justnow, they might just latch on to the UFC-created boost in popularity to snatch away the hoards of fans arriving in Vegas with an eye on the cage fighting billboards, or surfing the pay-per-view channels to see what the 'next step up' is from the cards they see on Spike TV. And then, just maybe, we'll have a new number one US MMA promotion in a relatively short space of time.
Either way, this move by Pride looks to secure the future in America of a sport that is only getting brighter.
