Forget Fedor; Samurai Needs a Japanese Star

The sweepstakes is over, and the winner was neither of the favorites.

A nameless, formless company headed by former Pride front man Nobuyuki Sakakibara bested the UFC and other suitors by coming away with a signed contract with the newly unretired Fedor Emelianenko. The promotion, rumored to be called Samurai, will debut on New Year’s Eve – the biggest television night of the year in Japan and once upon a time the biggest night of the year for combat sports – with Emelianenko in the headlining spot.

Sakakibara’s mission is to revitalize the near-dead Japanese MMA scene – the same scene that used to sell out large arenas regularly and drew television audiences in the tens of millions for the biggest events. Many promoters have had that lofty goal over the past eight years, and none came close to reaching it. The decline of MMA in Japan can be traced back to the fall of Pride in 2006, when a Yakuza scandal cost the promotion its television deal, but the real killer was the inability of numerous promotions to create a new Japanese superstar. No matter how many Emelianenkos or other past superstars Sakakibara can gather, without a new Japanese superstar the new venture will not succeed on a major level.

The early years of Pride were built on the back of Nobuhiko Takada, a Japanese pro-wrestler that was the top star of a shoot-style group. Takada’s feud with Rickson Gracie, whose 1994 and 1995 tournament wins, coupled with his family name recognition built by early UFC videotapes (which were top-sellers in Japan), made him a known commodity in Japan, was the high point of Pride’s early years. However, outside of the pair of Takada vs. Rickson fights, early Pride struggled along. Takada, the centerpiece of the promotion, had to buy his rare wins, and there were frequent rumors that Pride’s parent company would shut down the promotion and enter the pro-wrestling business. Then, a pro-wrestler elevated the promotion to a new level.

Kazushi Sakuraba’s breakout win as a fighter was an April 1999 win over Vitor Belfort, but his breakout moment as a star, and the turnaround moment for the company, came later that year. In November, Sakuraba was matched with Royler Gracie. The much smaller Gracie’s rule demands created controversy in the media, and pushed the public more toward Sakuraba. Headlining Pride 8, the fight drew Pride’s first sellout crowd, and Sakuraba’s win made him one of the promotion’s top stars. The next year, Sakuraba’s remarkable performance in the Pride Grand Prix made him the promotion’s top star, leading to the promotion’s long stretch of success.

More Japanese superstars came after Sakuraba fell victim to constantly being match against larger opponents. Hidehiko Yoshida became a major star right off the bat, defeating Royce Gracie in a grappling match at Shockwave 2002. Naoya Ogawa, who had a couple of hugely successful (although perhaps not entirely legitimate) matches in Pride’s younger days, began to compete more regularly.

Unfortunately, the top-tier Japanese superstars had trouble sustaining their success as fighters. After Pride’s fall, new stars were tough to make. K-1 had major success with Kid Yamamoto, but he was plagued by injuries after 2007, and by the time he returned the sport’s decline was well underway. Yoshihiro Akiyama was a superstar in a different sense, as a hated figure in Japan.

There was a major attempt to make a new superstar on New Year’s Eve 2009 with Olympic gold medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii. Ishii faced Hidehiko Yoshida in the main event of a show that also featured the retirement match of K-1 superstar Masato. The match did a very strong 24.3 rating, but Ishii lost and newspapers ridiculed him on the front page the next day. He didn’t have the charisma to recover and never became the savior of Japanese MMA. Two years later, promoters brought in Fedor Emelianenko to face Ishii on New Year’s Eve, but their combined star power wasn’t enough at that point to secure a network television deal.

Four years on, Nobuyuki Sakakibara is betting on Emelianenko to jumpstart his new promotion. Success isn’t likely. Details about the new promotion are scarce (more should be known after a press conference scheduled for next month), but it has a mountain to overcome. It needs a significant television rights deal with a Japanese network in order to gain substantial traction and compete with the UFC for talent. It needs to reverse eight years of decline and revive an industry. Most of all, if it has any hope of meeting those necessities, it needs a Japanese superstar.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.