Can RIZIN revive JMMA?

The two “new PRIDE” RIZIN shows were a big hit with the hardcore MMA fanbase. Now Dave Meltzer explores whether it will be enough to restore JMMA. He says there is no easy answer.

Nobuyuki Sakakibara’s attempt to revive the memories of the Pride Fighting Championships, built around the stars of a decade ago, was a reminder, sometimes fun and sometimes painful, that time marches on.

Aside from the presence of John McCarthy as a referee, and a few fighters familiar to U.S. fans, the show seemed like a different animal to the MMA presented by UFC and Bellator, even with some Bellator stars on the shows.

From late 1999, when Pride really hit its stride on the back of Kazushi Sakuraba, until 2006, when it lost its television deal due to a Yakuza scandal, Pride was the biggest MMA promotion in the world. It was by modern terms, both freak show and sport. It had the best fighters of the time, the legendary fights of that era. but it also had an element of sideshow matches aimed at the non-fight fan in Japan, using celebrities, pro wrestlers, sumos, actors and comedians to draw what at times were incredible television ratings.

Was the show a success? That’s hard to say. Attendance was strong, with 12,214 fans on Tuesday and a nearly full house of 18,365 on Thursday. For a comparison, UFC ran the Saitama Super Arena in September with Josh Barnett vs. Roy Nelson and drew 10,137 fans. The year before, with Nelson vs. Mark Hunt, and they drew 12,395. It was nothing like the glory days of Pride, where they’d expand the building and put 35,000 in for the biggest MMA events of the era. But nobody was expecting that either.

UFC has tried for eight years to get network television in Japan without success, while Sakakibara got it for his first show, which shows why, for Japan to revive, it’s going to have to be with a Japanese promotion. But the big difference is, Pride had a lot of the top talent in the world, while today, almost all the top talent is under UFC contract.

Everything about the show was about drawing television ratings and getting the mainstream audience to watch the fights. 

The show did a 7.3 rating average during the key prime time period, which put it in fourth place among Japan’s six networks in that time slot. 

Anything under a 5.0 would have been a failure, but anything above a 6.0 was considered a success.

Rizin’s success will be determined by how the network will support their efforts, both financial and from an exposure standpoint, and the state of the world marketplace when it comes to MMA talent and creating stars outside the UFC, and the Japanese public’s interest level.

The general reaction to the Tuesday show was very positive. There were a lot of explosive finishes, and people enjoying the “Pride” style production, ring entrances, and even the return of the Pride theme music. 

The freak show stuff had its appeal early on, but it felt so dated and amateurish in the bad fights. 

That said, there is room for an alternative. MMA lost a lot when Japan went down. The “show” aspect of Pride that was brought back here is something different. There is something to be said for exciting fighters like Tokoro and Gracie, possibly Yamamoto as well, who have unique skill sets. They may have weaknesses where they wouldn’t be able to beat top guys, but when matched up in the right way, can give entertaining performances. 

But there is an extremely limited shelf life in the fighters who drew the big ratings a decade ago. In some cases, it’s sad to see. If anything, the take on the show is just how much MMA has evolved in the last decade, between a far higher quality of fighters, the implementation of drug testing and in all-around skill.

It was easy to see what Sakakibara’s vision was in bringing back the stars from the past and recreate what, in his mind, was something taken away by a scandal. It’s true actual market conditions or lack of public interest didn’t kill Pride. But reviving it in the same form, with some of the same stars, isn’t a long-term answer because the shelf life of many of those stars is over.

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Rizin announced a show for April 17, followed by shows in July and September. Sakakibara also said he’d like to run the July show at the Tokyo Dome.