Guest Editorials
ARNOLD: When a Japanese DREAM turns into an MMA nightmare
Sep 6, 2010 - 11:05:54 AM ARNOLD: When a Japanese DREAM turns into an MMA nightmare

DISCUSS ALL THIS IN OUR NEW MMATORCH FORUM

...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!

By: Zach Arnold, Special Guest Columnist

In Japan, there is one dominant storyline right now in the fight game and it's about the future of DREAM. DREAM is the bastard child off-shoot promotion featuring ex-PRIDE employees who are slightly aligned with K-1 due to K-1 controlling the television pipeline for broadcast networks in the country. If you haven't figured it out already, DREAM is a play off of the name Dream Stage Entertainment, which was the parent company of PRIDE, and Real Entertainment is the name of the company behind DREAM, which is also a play off of the DSE name.

Unfortunately for the ex-PRIDE employees, there's nothing dreamy about the circumstances they currently find themselves in. Despite having a press conference in Tokyo claiming that Shanghai-based investment firm PUJI Capital would help the company raise $230 million USD in funds, the truth is that more fighters are complaining about not getting paid on time. We know the past story about Nick Diaz having to wait months to get paid and now a DREAM champion, Bibiano Fernandes, says that he hasn't been paid for a fight last March. Fernandes now says he won't fight until he gets paid what is owed to him.

It's never a good sign when you have difference company 'representatives' saying different messages on different platforms. Mike Kogan, who is K-1's US representative, is talking up a storm about the financial concerns plaguing K-1 and that they need $230 million in investment capital to expand. When I read what Mr. Kogan said in an interview on MMA Junkie, I was actually very surprised by his candor. At the end of the interview, he said it's hard to understand the Japanese culture and why certain people or things are paid for and why others are not. It's not that hard to understand why if you've studied the past collapses in the Japanese fight industry.

Seeing what Mr. Kogan had to say publicly about K-1's future reminded me so much of the final days of PRIDE when you had US representatives like Turi Altavilla and Jerry Millen, who were not that powerful in the grand scheme of things, suddenly take the bull by the horns and talk to the media while the Japanese brain trust was saying something very different in the media that covers them.

All of this leads to an obvious question -- why does K-1 need $230 million dollars to run a fight organization? Where did that number come from? Hell, Zuffa burned through $45 million USD before they got out of that hole with The Ultimate Fighter. To me, seeing such a large number like $230 million indicates a few possibilities of what's going on to me. The first is that we know who is in charge of the entertainment world in Japan, and it's a question of whether or not certain people need to be paid off in order to maintain or build power structures. However, that leads to this question -- why would any money mark put up such significant money in a business where the assets are largely intangible? (Answer that one yourself.) Even money marks hate losing money on their joy ride.

When I hear a number like $230 million needed to be raised, I look at that and say, "OK, someone's looking to cash out and pay off people who are owed money so that there isn't trouble afterwards." I don't look at $230 million dollars as something you invest money into a fight league for. What are you investing in, exactly? Office space? A ring? Production equipment?

With all of this turmoil as a back drop to Sunday's DREAM 16 press conference in Tokyo, DREAM management announced for their 9/25 Nagoya Rainbow Hall show... about half the card line-up for a show that's happening in three weeks. When pressed by the media as to why it's so late for a card to be announced, it was explained that an explanation would be given after the DREAM 16 show. In the past glory days of Japanese MMA, PRIDE was able to get away with these tactics because they had a deep pocket book and could book a big name on stand-by in a heart beat. DREAM has no such luxury whatsoever, which makes their margin of error next to nothing for survival.

On top of all of this chaos, the company decided to announce the show's main event not at the presser but rather in a two-minute video on their Youtube channel at Midnight. It was a video package for Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Jason "Mayhem" Miller, a fight that is going to be incredibly sad to watch in terms of its one-sidedness.

Right now, everything about DREAM stinks, and even the company's followers know it. The promotion has the vibe of being a loser and the fans want to support a winner. (I feel like channeling the spirit of Mike Singletary's "I WANT WINNERS!" speech.) The few fans who are still following DREAM and remember the glory days of PRIDE feel sad every time DREAM whiffs and strikes out on putting together a big show.

Let's say that for argument's sake that K-1 is able to somehow raise some money via PUJI Capital. Do you honestly think that Godfather (Kazuyoshi) Ishii is going to put that money into DREAM? No, he doesn't even own DREAM, he is the man behind K-1. K-1 is what draws ratings on television in Japan, not DREAM. Therefore, it's hard to see how DREAM will survive even if K-1 raises the funds to finance their own separate product. Plus, Master Ishii's heart has always been with K-1, with wrestling/MMA secondarily as a joyride. It was a profitable joyride in the early part of the last decade but not so much now.

The financial problems that DREAM is having right now should haunt the very same people working for the company currently who used to work in PRIDE. It is history repeating itself all over again but on a quieter, less-noticed scale. For those ex-PRIDE employees, the past is coming back to haunt them. Compared to PRIDE, DREAM is barely a blip on the radar screen. What isn't a blip on the radar screen, however, is the ghost of PRIDE's past.

Despite reaching a settlement with Zuffa over the asset sale deal that happened with DSE a few years ago, Nobuyuki Sakakibara and company find themselves in the crosshairs again. The ghost of PRIDE's past will likely resurface in a couple of weeks when Kodansha, one of Japan's largest publishing houses, is expected to print the final book ever written by the late Toshiro Igari.

Igari, a 61-year old former prosecutor who fought the yakuza on many legal fronts, was found dead in Manila in late August. The local police claimed it was a suicide despite the fact that not one single person who knew Igari believed he was the type of person that would have killed himself. Before leaving for the Philippines, Igari finished writing a new book about his current projects and yakuza-related investigations, which included a seven-lawyer team working on a case involving former MMA power broker Miro Mijatovic, who has legally been going after Dream Stage Entertainment and the main players behind PRIDE.

It is expected that Mr. Igari's final book will discuss Mijatovic's case and what he found out in relation to the yakuza scandal that imploded Dream Stage Entertainment. There are rumors that some big names will be mentioned in Mr. Igari's book and that some spotlight will be shown on some previously shadowy figures that were power brokers behind-the-scenes. None of this is welcome news for those who were involved in PRIDE and now find themselves trying to prevent the DREAM boat from sinking into the abyss.

Zach Arnold is the Owner/Writer of FightOpinion.com. Check out the site for more from Zach daily.