good read on first Pride GP - long

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from Sherdog -

http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/1/Pride-and-Glory-25240

some really cool behind the scenes insight from fighters, trainers and potential participants. worth the read.

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Mixed martial arts evolution forced the single-night elimination tournament to tap out in 2000 -- but not before Japan hosted a murderer’s row of elite fighters facing off for a chance at a quarter-million dollars and ring immortality. On the 10th anniversary of the first Pride Grand Prix, Sherdog has the complete no-holds-barred history of the eight-man open-weight rumble, from Mark Coleman’s comeback that nearly wasn’t to Kazushi Sakuraba’s record-breaking, legend-making (and diaper-wearing) 90-minute war with Royce Gracie. The tantrums, the fixes and the concussions: it's the story of one humid night in Tokyo that changed fighting sports forever.

* * *


The Tokyo Dome, a 1988 construct meant to host Japan’s longtime fixations for professional wrestling and baseball, is massive in a way that can only be understood by the people who have had to navigate it. There’s the shuttle bus, which doesn’t take people from the hotel to the arena but from one section of the building to another; instead of waiting for the doors to open, you can kill time in the neighboring theme park; because air pressure is required to keep the ceiling’s membrane inflated, it literally has its own atmosphere.

The 48,316 people who entered the Dome on Jan. 30, 2000 for the opening round of the Pride Grand Prix observed pressure of a different sort: the three-year-old organization, built on the premise of famous professional wrestlers fighting, had used its considerable -- and somewhat dubious -- resources to assemble 16 fighters of various disciplines for the most ambitious tournament ever attempted. Mark Kerr, the Brock Lesnar of his day, was a favorite in a field that ranged from the absurd (an unprepared sumo) to the alarming (Kazushi Sakuraba, no bigger than Georges St. Pierre) to the unlikely (Mark Coleman, who had bounced out of the UFC with a 0-3 run).

Rules were murky, weight classes were ignored, but the drama was unmatched: by the time it was over, Pride’s brand had been elevated, reputations had been tested, and the sport had sent the tournament format to rest in the most electric -- and expensive -- way possible. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the two-night classic, Sherdog has collected the memories of the athletes who participated and the eyewitnesses who were there. Organized crime, screw jobs, screaming matches and the beginning of the most dramatic comeback in MMA history -- and that was just round one.

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Breaking Ground
開拓します。

Japan had gotten its taste for mixed martial arts on a grand scale when professional wrestlers like Nobuhiko Takada began blurring the lines between scripted competition and real athletics: if Hulk Hogan and Mike Tyson had ever made good on talks to have a real match in the 1980s, it would be easier to imagine the level of attention garnered by Takada’s two matches with jiu-jitsu artist Rickson Gracie in 1997 and 1998.

With Rickson proving to be a difficult negotiator and Takada ill-suited for unscripted fighting, Pride’s parent company, Dream Stage Entertainment, pursued more creative thinking. Among their ideas: meetings with the WWE and WCW wrestling groups about talent exchange; a series of “Ultimate Boxing” stand-up-only shows with Evander Holyfield; and an all-in tournament field of the best available talent. President Naoto Morishita announced the “last big event of the decade” on Nov. 23, 1999: 16 fighters with various titles from various organizations would vie for $250,000 and the unofficial title of the toughest man in the world.

To indicate their commitment to a fantasy lineup, they managed to accomplish what no promotion had in five years of trying: corral a dormant Royce Gracie out of semi-retirement following his 1993-1995 UFC stint.

Jeff Osborne, Videographer: At the time, there wasn’t any money in the UFC. Pride had money coming in from all over the place. Japan teaches judo in their schools: fighting was more of a big deal to the Japanese and they could make more television revenue off of it than the U.S. could at the time.

Sam Rand, Gracie Academy Business Manager: Rorion Gracie and I were right in the middle of negotiating a fight for Royce for another UFC appearance. I received a phone call from Pride and went up to Rorion’s office. I think Rorion may have even been on the phone with the UFC at the time. We agreed we should ask for a number 20 percent higher than what we were asking the UFC for.

File Photo: Mike Fridley/Sherdog.com

Jeff Osborne
Rorion Gracie, Gracie Academy Owner: UFC wanted a three-fight deal. I didn’t.

Rand: I called Pride back and said, “Here’s my number. I need to know in 20 minutes if it’s a yes or a no.” They called me back 20 minutes later and said, “We’ll do it.” I said, “I need to see a letter of intent in one hour and I need to have a deposit within 72 hours.” They were like clockwork, man. They were good on their word on everything.

Royce Gracie: At the time, I stayed out of the negotiations and details. My brother would just say, “Hey, there’s a tournament going on. Would you like to be in it?” Sure. I show up and fight. That was my business.

Jon Burke, Gracie Training Partner: There was a lot of excitement. It was an opportunity for Royce to get back into fighting and showcase his skills again with fewer constraints on him. Being smaller and weaker, Royce played that patient bottom guard game. That doesn’t work in a five-minute time limit.

Osborne: Royce put himself in that position, marketed himself brilliantly to where he and Rickson both got seven figure paydays for talking sh-t for several years and not fighting.

Gracie’s original deal to face Mark Kerr fell through after suffering a back ailment that kept him sidelined for another two years: he accepted the tournament invite. While Gracie’s slight 175-pound frame was not expected to do well against the mammoth wrestlers, the big men had problems of their own. Both Mark Coleman and Kerr had remained friends since college. Now, both were faced with the very real possibility of fighting each other.

Mark Coleman: I guess we had some phone conversations. In my mind, there wasn’t anything to talk about. Yes, he’s a friend, but it made no difference to me. He might’ve thought differently, but if I had to fight him, I would’ve had only one thing on my mind.

Bas Rutten, Kerr’s Trainer: I asked Kerr about it. He told me, “Coleman will not take me down.”

Coleman: That surprises me. I had beaten Kerr just about every time we wrestled. In practice, I didn’t have too many problems with him. I really don’t think he wanted to fight me. I would’ve been able to take him down. If not, I don’t think his stand-up was all that great anyway.

Mark Kerr: I always thought I was the better wrestler. I think I just had more talent than Mark. Mark got to where he got in life because he’s a hard-working dude. He’s nothing that super-special, but he’s gritty. He’s like a blue-collar guy.

John Hyams, Director, “The Smashing Machine”: It just wasn’t something they wanted to do. The fact that enough money had been put in front of them that forced them to do it -- there was a sinister aspect to it.

Kerr: At first, it was like, “Sh-t.” It was my friend, a guy I’ve trained with. But he and I always understood that if there was the opportunity and if the money made sense, we’d fight just about anybody. It’s kind of like being a mercenary, I guess. Our discussion basically consisted of, “Good luck.” That was as deep as it went.

Coleman: By the time we were in Japan, we could be in the same room together, but I was eyeballing him up, and I’m pretty sure he was eyeballing me up. It was getting awkward to even talk to him at that point.

Unbeknownst to anyone but his closest friends, Kerr was slated for the opening round (against Shooto veteran Enson Inoue, who had recently submitted Randy Couture) just a month out of rehab for an addiction to opiates, as depicted in Hyams’ “Smashing Machine” documentary.
Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Frank Shamrock: The then-semi-retired UFC
middleweight champion was negotiating a fight
with Kazushi Sakuraba when he was offered a slot
in the tournament. “I was most into fighting
Sakuraba,” he said, “and thought they were just
using him as a carrot for the tourney, which
would hold no Sakuraba at the end.”



Rutten: I had a really bad case of tendonitis in both arms. I was training with Mark in Japan. We got to the hotel and Kerr pulled out syringes. He said, “Bas, the pain will be gone.” And he gave it to me. Right away, the pain was gone, but I was like catatonic. I started sweating profusely. I couldn’t move on that stuff. I knew, from that moment on, every time he was sweating, he was on that stuff. It’s Nubain, a painkiller. It’s one just underneath morphine.

Kerr: It was probably my first or second year of fighting. You can walk into any gym in America and go up to the guy who looks like he’s on steroids and you can ask him where you can get steroids. He can probably get them for you. At one point, I just asked a person if they could get some things, and the answer was yes. That’s where it started.

Hyams: The producer was a good friend of Mark’s, so it wasn’t like we were a completely anonymous film crew. I think the presence of cameras when someone has something they’ve been hiding in their life and are being followed by a camera crew 24/7, it starts to become this confessional environment. We went home to Arizona with Mark after Pride 8, and within a week, everything came out.

Kerr: I trained really, really hard, and when you train really, really hard, you inadvertently get injuries. You go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Hey, you can take one of these for pain.” I’d go ahead and train without pain, and that was kind of the formula. The harder I train, the harder I work, the more money I can make fighting. And then it turns into something that gets out of control.

Kerr, Coleman and Gracie were joined by other favorites in Igor Vovchanchyn, a dangerous striker from the Ukraine; Gary Goodridge, a brawler with little ring patience; Kazuyuki Fujita, a New Japan Pro Wrestling star getting weekly television exposure; Kazushi Sakuraba, already Pride’s most accomplished pro wrestler-turned-fighter; and Akira Shoji, a durable but undersized Takada Dojo athlete.

Opposing them were a mixture of threats like Inoue and tragic choices like Osamu Tachihikari, a former plumber turned pro wrestler who commanded a high price tag for his celebrity. Frank Shamrock, who had recently left the UFC over money, was invited but felt that a promise to meet Sakuraba was an empty incentive; Randy Couture opted to re-sign with the UFC. The field’s most glaring omission may have been Tom Erikson, a dangerous American grappler who had perpetual trouble finding fights.

File Photo: Heath Sims/Sherdog.com

Tom Erikson
Tom Erikson: I have heard from several reliable sources of why I was not invited. One of them involved Kerr and Coleman: they did not want me in the Grand Prix because they did not want to have to fight me. I think at the time Coleman was taking whatever and did not have the pull to make that happen. Kerr, on the other hand, I believe might have tried to do that. Could I ever prove it? No. But I can believe it.

Kerr: I didn’t petition anybody. If Tom wanted in that tournament, he could’ve gotten in the tournament. We’re professionals, man. Regardless if you think you can or not, you just do it.

Hyams: Here you have a fighter in Kerr making good money from this and is essentially the champion. I think Pride’s philosophy was, you build up fighters to a point. But no fighter should be someone who can dictate the direction of the company and his career. It indicated that they wanted to put everyone on notice, that you’re a champion only as long as we say you are.

Kerr: The first six Prides, they pushed to make me the biggest star I could possibly be over there. I flew out weeks in advance to do radio, TV, photo shoots. I think they felt like their return for doing that was for me to fight like a Samurai warrior, like I was protecting the village. They wanted me to be the champion.

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First Blood (Jan. 30, 2000)
ランボー (2000年1月30日)

Pride’s elaborate production -- pyrotechnics, drum orchestras, and the occasional magician -- helped attracted nearly 50,000 people to the Tokyo Dome for the opening round, which would ostensibly allow the eight favorites (Coleman, Kerr, Gracie, Sakuraba, Vovchanchyn, Goodridge, Shoji and Fujita) to advance to the May 1 finals. (A December UFC event held in Japan later that year hosted 1,414.) The production also attracted special guests of a different sort.

Stephen Quadros, Play-by-Play Announcer: Going to the Tokyo Dome for the first time -- I was just in awe. I had never been in an arena like that, which was so spacious. It was high up, it was wide, it was like being in an underground city, like a biosphere. It’s like right when you come on to a psychedelic drug, right when you peak. That’s what it was like.

Michael Braverman, U.S. Producer: It’s impossible to tell what things cost there. In Japan, this costs this, but it doesn’t really cost that because I have a deal with so-and-so. Japanese business is completely byzantine. Pride spent whatever they had to spend on those shows.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Tom Erikson:The hulking freestyle
wrestler had perpetual trouble getting
bouts due to a smothering fighting style;
allegedly, some fighters had it guaranteed
in their contracts they would never have
to face the 6-foot-3, 285-pound fighter.
Erikson was not invited to the Grand Prix,
a slight he attributes to the possible
influence of other grapplers in the fold.

Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice Journalist: Whenever they had a Pride event, they had special seats marked off for the Yakuza, Japan’s organized crime. They knew they were coming, and they made sure that the competing groups all had separate seats. They wouldn’t make the mistake of putting them in the same area.

Enson Inoue: A lot of times, after a fight, fighters would go to shake hands with a Yakuza guy. He was always there. I don’t think the fighters knew who he was. He was one of the Yakuza backers of Pride. So they’d all go and bow down to him. I never got a chance to ask, “Do you guys know who that is?”

Adelstein: They loved to hang out with fighters. They love tough guys. Just like in the boxing industry. There’s a celebrity status to being seen with a fighter. You want to show you’re tough and hang out with tough guys. They’re totally fascinated with fighters and their life.

As the favorites advanced, it looked as though Pride would see their preferred field materialize. Sakuraba’s opponent, the Ken Shamrock-trained Guy Mezger, had other plans.

Guy Mezger: I was actually recovering from a kidney problem. They said they wanted me to fight Sakuraba on two weeks’ notice. They offered me six figures. They were notorious for doing stuff like that. I go, “All right, we’ll take the fight if it’s just one 15-minute round.” It was part of the contract. But I knew some kind of bullsh-t was going to be pulled.

Kazushi Sakuraba: When asked who I want to fight, I usually don't have an answer. But if asked who I don't want to fight, I could answer easily. Mezger. His fighting style is so boring.

Mezger: I’m sure he didn’t like Wanderlei Silva’s fighting style, either.

Sakuraba: The promoters told me to arrive at 2, but my fight wasn't until 5, so I decided it would be fine if I arrived around 3. But I left my house late and because of traffic ended up arriving at the arena at 4:30. Just as I was intensifying my running and thinking about taking a rest, the staff came and told me, "Please go to the entrance gate and stand by."

Mezger: For some reason, I had a tremendous amount of energy for that 15 minutes, but I started to kind of wilt near the end. Then they called it a draw and I’m like, “What?”

Quadros: They still had that 10kg handicapping. Let’s say a fighter was 10 kilos or more lighter than another fighter. He already had a point in the round, so you basically had to beat him more than someone your own size.

Mezger: That’s what they said. That’s how they justified it. The problem is, there wasn’t a 10 kilo weight difference. I was 199 pounds. I got the flu from Ken’s kids in training. I took four bags of fluids with me because I was so sick and dehydrated.
File Photo: Heath Sims/Sherdog.com

Ken Shamrock


Sakuraba: I wanted to go another round, thinking it would be possible to salvage the match, but when it was decide to extend the fight, Ken Shamrock was making scary faces.

Mezger: Everyone blames Ken for being unprofessional. Really, Ken was protecting his fighter. We had an agreement.

Quadros: Ken Shamrock is in the broadcast booth -- we’re sitting there and they say, “Draw, one more round.” Ken flips out and stands up and starts screaming at the judges, slams his headset.

Sakuraba: Later I heard that Mezger's contract was only for a one-round fight. I thought, "Ah, then it couldn't be helped." But Shamrock didn't have to get so angry like that. Seeing Mezger getting scolded by him, I felt sorry for him.


Matt Hume, Fight Judge: We knew nothing about that. I don’t doubt Ken had an agreement with them. What he claimed he was told was that it would be one round and then a decision would be made and that there would be no overtime. The officials knew nothing about a side agreement like that.

Hyams: I think that any advantage they could use, they would use. The best way I can illustrate that is, as a film crew we’d have to sit and have negotiations with these guys. Anytime we’d have negotiations with them, they would always do all of their business through an interpreter. Now, a lot of these guys could speak perfect English. That was the key to me that they could use that barrier to their advantage.

Braverman: Kenny went out of his mind. Kenny went crazy. He stormed into their office. I was going, “This can’t be good.” He was furious. Have you ever seen Kenny mad? It was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen. He could eat your head if he felt like it. Kenny foaming at the mouth is enough to scare the sh-t out of anybody.

Mezger: They came straight to us. They did the whole dog and pony show. They had all the low-level management guys standing in a row with their heads bowed. They’re being yelled at by their guy. They’re apologizing and bowing to us for the misunderstanding. They do what Japan always does: they throw money at it.

Braverman: We had a big meeting. We were able to get some concessions out of them, money and guarantees of future fights. They wanted to make it right. One thing I said in the meeting was, “Do you want me to call Kenny back in here and see what he says?” “No, no, no, no!”

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Randy Couture: He was offered a Pride
contract but opted to re-sign with the UFC
instead. He defeated Kevin Randleman to earn
his second heavyweight title in November 2000.

Mezger: What we found out later on was that the lower-level Pride guys made this deal, put the contract together with the stipulation, but did not notify -- well, I don’t know if they did or not, but that’s what the Japanese said -- they did not know that they made that agreement. You never know in Japan. They make the little guys fall on the swords.


Adelstein: This is a classic Japanese strategy of dealing with foreigners when anything goes wrong. “Oh, you don’t understand.” It’s a classic Yakuza technique as well. You blame everything on miscommunication. It wasn’t miscommunication. They probably just didn’t anticipate things would go this way, and then they needed to get out of it.

Mezger: Royce’s father came up to me after my fight and said, “You got screwed. You won that fight.” Here’s Helio Gracie walking up to me and telling me I got ripped off. Japan is notorious for the big f-cking.

Adelstein: In cases where there’s a Japanese player involved, the confusion is to the advantage of a Japanese person. It’s in the best interests of the promoters of these fights. When Japanese people get defeated by a foreigner, the sport’s newspapers don’t give it as much coverage as when a Japanese person wins. I’m not saying the Japanese are racist. They just identify with other Japanese people.

One celebrity they had trouble identifying with that night was Takada, who was booked against Gracie. For virtually the entire fight, Takada stayed nestled inside Gracie’s guard, clinging to his Gi and throwing only a single strike in their 15-minute round.

Rand: They picked Takada. I would never have picked him. He came out of their equivalent of the WWE. I didn’t like that association with Royce. I didn’t want Royce to fight somebody who did that fake pro wrestling stuff. And the guy laid down, man. He laid down.

Rutten: It was the most bizarre thing ever. I had no clue what was going on. Takada is a pro wrestler. He wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t know how to fight. He went to the Beverly Hills Jiu-Jitsu Club to train for the first fight with Rickson, and white belts were tapping the guy.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Kevin Randleman: He was announced as
Sakuraba’s opening round opponent by the
promotion, but his status as the UFC’s
champion prohibited his participation;
Randleman claims no knowledge of the deal.

Quadros: Kimbo Slice is not known as the greatest or even a top-10 fighter, but the thing is, he will draw fans. So these companies have to think in terms of, “We have to sell tickets, so we’re going to put in a Kimbo Slice.” Takada was a similar situation.

Royce Gracie: Was I disappointed? No. Good for me that he didn’t put up a fight. Maybe he realized he didn’t know what to do with me.

Rand: I didn’t ask them what happened. I went up to them and said, “Listen, that fight was fixed. That is not ethical. I’m pissed off and the family is pissed off.” They were giving me the no, no, no, and I’m like, “Bullsh-t.” If you’ve got a brain, you can see that. I was furious, man. Of course they denied it.

Royce Gracie Sam doesn’t know sh-t about fighting. This is a guy who never fought before. He’s not really a manager. He just managed the Gracie Academy. His opinion is worthless to me. To say Takada threw the fight -- did Ken Shamrock throw the fight in the first UFC because I choked him in less than a minute?

Mezger: Takada’s Takada. I know they wanted him to fight Ken when Ken was in the WWE, but they basically wanted him to work a match. Royce is not the least bit scared of that man. I think Takada for the most part was thinking, “How can I get out of this fight without pissing off a guy who can break both of my legs?”

Rand: I was so pissed off about it I canceled all of Royce’s press interviews the next day. I was furious. I thought that just reflected horribly on us. I was a complete assh-le with the promoters about it afterwards.

Inoue: The Japanese are pretty loyal to their own kind, you know? For them to start booing Takada, you really, really gotta disappoint people.

[stretcharmstrong]

Intermission (February-April 2000)
幕間 (2000年2月-4月)

A lackluster first round -- half the bouts went to a decision -- still resulted in Pride getting their star eight in the finals. To stir fan interest, they distributed ballots that would allow observers to vote on their preferred finals pairings, though it was more a series of leading questions than empty brackets. Naturally, Gracie would face Sakuraba despite Fujita lobbying hard for the Brazilian; Coleman and Kerr would be kept apart until the semifinals; Goodridge and Vovchanchyn would slug it out.

After a successful training camp with Rutten, Kerr stayed in Los Angeles only briefly to prepare for the finals, preferring to return to Phoenix -- and a toxic relationship with a girlfriend.

Rutten: You can call her “the bitch.” She was nuts. That was a problem. He would have two-hour conversations on the telephone. I said, “Mark, get off that phone, what are you doing?” I knew it was a bad decision and I told him that.

Hyams: He had some training partners, but didn’t have a real coach. When you don’t have Bas, or someone who’s going to force you to do things -- nobody is going to make Mark do anything he didn’t want to do.

Kerr: It was one of those situations where a simple decision can change everything. I wanted to go back to Arizona. I didn’t get as much training as I probably could have. I look back on it and yes, the outcome could have been different.

Rutten: He left me. He was not up to shape and I was kind of pissed about that. I knew that nobody would push him when he was back in Phoenix. Nobody is going to say to him, “One more round.” He’s going to decide. If he trained with me and I said, “One more round” and he said no, then it was two more rounds.

Kerr: I ended up going to the Abu Dhabi Combat Championships a month before the finals. It was stupid, but it was close to six figures in cash. In 2000, to do a grappling event and make almost six figures for one event? It doesn’t take much math to figure it out. But if I balanced it out -- being the Pride champ, which would’ve been $250,000 plus my appearance fee, I probably lost $200,000.

One of the first rounds biggest stars, anomalous Japanese heavyweight Kazuyuki Fujita, embarked on a world tour of training, with stops in Seattle, Texas and with trainer Brian Johnston at the behest of his mentor, famous pro wrestler Antonio Inoki.

File Photo: Sherdog.com

Brian Johnston.
Brian Johnston: He was very raw. No striking, no submission, but excellent positioning. One time he shot a double on me and I hit him with a knee by accident. It was hard, right on the button. It laid him out for like 20 seconds. I thought, “Oh, great. I’m going to lose my job.” But he just kind of woke up and kept training. That’s when I knew he was tough.

Don Frye: We got Fujita a fight in Fort Hood. Old Shannon Ritch had a show. We went there one night and the crowd went nuts for him. We put him in under the name “Saito” in honor of Masa Saito, the best f-cking pro wrestler to ever come out of Japan. He went in there and did so good they asked him if he wanted to fight again. He said, “Yeah, let’s do it!” Two fights in one night. The crowd embraced them as one of their own because he had f-cking balls. This was a month before Pride.

Coleman opted not to return to trainer Tim Catalfo in Atlanta, instead heading for the first of MMA’s big-name, big-reputation fight camps: Pat Miletich’s school in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Coleman: I cut ties with Catalfo. He just wasn’t a person I wanted to be around. The guy took my trophy from the Ricardo Morais fight. They found it in his gym when he cleared out. He’s not very well-liked at the moment.

Pat had been inviting me up there for a long time. He had been talking about the famous Hill in Iowa. I showed up to his place a couple weeks before we had to leave for Japan. He put me through a two-hour workout and when I thought the practice was over, he said, “So you wanna go run the Hill?” I’m not going to say no. And when I kicked eight to 10 of them with no problem, I think he was a little bit impressed from day one.

Pat Miletich: I remember some big guys that weren’t there one day. I had him spar with one of my heavyweights. Mark and this guy agreed to start out light. Then Mark clobbers the guy with a left hook and knocks him out.

Coleman: I hadn’t done much sparring up until this point. I was a ground and pounder. The night before, when he said we’re going to spar tomorrow, I admit I was a little bit worried. It was a surprise for him.
Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Allan Goes: Was announced as Hans
Nijman’s original opponent but has no
recollection of being invited; Kazuyuki
Fujita fought Nijman instead.



Miletich: I go, “Oh, sh-t,” because there was nobody else there to spar with him. At the time, Mark was friggin’ huge. I sparred with him and we rent really hard for five, six rounds. As big as he was then and as hard as he hit, I was better technically than him. But I just about survived the sh-t he was throwing at me, trying to kill me in a racquetball court. It was pretty comical, actually.

Coleman: He was a lot better boxer, but it was definitely fun to be the bigger guy in the room that day. You can ask him how it went. By the end of the second round, he was fighting with one hand because the left side of his body was paralyzed.

Miletich: Mark was very aggressive. He got frustrated at times. He screams and yells and raises hell, which is good. If somebody would do something to him where he’d get himself in trouble, he’d basically just start screaming, “F-ck” and “son of a bitch” and stomp around the room and then come back and start wrestling again or doing whatever. It was awesome. You’ve got to love that kind of intensity.

Coleman: I was very immature. I was extremely emotional in practice. I didn’t like doing things wrong, and when I wasn’t able to pick something up quickly, I would get frustrated. There probably were some F-bombs thrown out.

Miletich: He was a perfectionist back then and wanted to do well. He had a lot of energy, to put it lightly. It was fun. Those were really intense days. Everyone in my gym was really aggressive and in their primes and meaner than sh-t. Mark fit in pretty well.

While everyone worked for the possibility of facing opponents of various strengths, Gracie was occupying himself with demands for unprecedented rules changes: no time limit and no referee. While he eased up on the latter, the biggest match Japan could make at the time was in danger of being buried by his demands. Because Japan was both in awe of the Gracies and desperate to conquer them, no request was turned down -- though Sakuraba threatened to learn ventriloquism to make the referee believe Royce was verbally giving up.

Sakuraba: To ask for rule changes, you come all the way to Japan? Is that normal? Instead of going through all the trouble to hold a press conference, you could've just faxed it. If you have that much time, you should stay in Los Angeles and train!

Kerr: Everyone was going to walk away from the show. All of us were going to protest and say no, we’re not going to do unlimited rounds. They ended up compensating the fighters a little bit more money to just accept the rule.

Royce Gracie: I have my demands. It’s not exactly special treatment. My family, my father, created this fighting business. What he created in Brazil a long time ago, the challenge matches, it’s why we have Pride, the UFC, Strikeforce. I’m already giving the weight advantage, so give me something back. They know my name is going to be a draw on the show.

Rand: I know we were contractually obligated, so I know we wouldn’t have put something on the table and said we were withdrawing. We wouldn’t have done that on an ethical basis. We wouldn’t want to fight the legal fees.

Sakuraba: “Crazy” and “Gracie” sound more similar in Japanese, but they really are crazy. I can't even put into words my feelings for them. I'll take you on, with your own rules. Let me say that it is due to expressionless Royce and his relative Rorion that we have this no-rules fighting. But isn't it that this fire that they lit has gotten bigger than them and now they are running away from it?

Rorion: They really wanted Royce in there and they were willing to stretch the rules. If you’re in a position to ask for it and you have enough clout to ask for it and they respect it, it’s good.

Sakuraba: Unlimited rounds? Okay. Let's fight for about a week. We can hurt each other for six days and decide it on the seventh. I'll have to go to the bathroom, so I'm going to borrow a diaper from my son and head to the Dome. The audience should be prepared. Please bring at least three days' worth of change of clothes. Oh, and bedpans.

Quadros: The day before the tournament, they had a rule meeting, and the Royce Gracie camp had gotten the unlimited time limit. Royce didn’t show up to the rule meeting. And Sakuraba, very uncharacteristically, got up and started yelling, “Where’s Royce Gracie?” He’s usually this wisecracking, quiet-type guy, with almost a self-effacing sense of humor. He’s standing there livid.

Royce Gracie: I didn’t go to the rules meeting. I know the rules. It’s a waste of time. You just sit there and fighters go, “I want this, I want that.” The rules were set already in the contract we signed. They don’t even have them anymore. I guess I was ahead of my time.

[stretcharmstrong]

The week of the event, fighters began to descend on the Tokyo Hilton, one of Japan’s most opulent hotels. It was used by Pride until company president Naoto Morishita committed suicide in one of its rooms in 2003 -- a moment when many feel Pride was almost completely taken over by the Yakuza.

Coleman: Everybody loved the Tokyo Hilton. You can ask any fighter out there what they loved most about it, and they’ll tell you: the breakfast buffet. Best breakfast buffet ever. Fighters didn’t miss it. Chefs there serving it really loved the fighters. They got to know you so well you didn’t even have to order.

Hyams: Breakfast is fascinating because the guy you’re about to fight is two tables over. Everyone in this same building together, passing each other, riding in the elevator together, in the lobby. It made for a very tense environment in the way that was ripe for theater for the whole thing. I think that was somewhat by design.

Quadros: The buffet just went on forever. It was like going off into a fantasy world. All the executives were there. It’s right next to this other place where people dined called the Royal Host. The Royal Host was like a Denny’s style restaurant, but obviously served a lot more noodles than French fries and burgers. The fighters, especially the Dutch contingency who could be a little bit loud, would go in there and terrorize these poor people running around and taking our orders.

Coleman: They have American channels over there. You got to watch a lot of CNN. You watch that pretty much non-stop. It’s a Japanese version of CNN. You’re getting to see some pretty neat stuff.

Gary Goodridge: If you can understand it, it’s great. I find Japanese television very funny.

Coleman: Gary speaks a few languages. He’s a smart guy. He comes in handy.

While Pride spared little expense with its production and accommodations, the fighters’ actual purses were largely dependent on their own sense of self-worth.

Inoue: I think I got $80,000 for the Kerr fight. They paid Sakuraba peanuts. Pride didn’t pay Sakuraba well because Takada was in charge of him. He was taking all the money. Pride would pay Takada Dojo. Sakuraba got a salary from Takada Dojo. … That’s why they ended up having a falling-out. They want nothing to do with each other now.

Burke: We flew to Tokyo and went to a very nice, very remote summer resort. It was quiet. We had the opportunity to have a resort to ourselves, run on the beach and all that fun stuff. It was a decision to get there early and that Dream Stage would pay for it.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Naoya Ogawa: Nobuhiko Takada’s original
opponent, he was unable to come to terms with
the promotion for his participation despite
being present at an early news conference to
give Takada flowers for his “funeral.”

Gary Goodridge: Royce, Wanderlei [Silva], Sakuraba -- once you’re in the upper echelon, that’s the only time you can get what you want. Other than that, you have to play their games.

Mezger: Basically, you were led to believe in a very strong way that when the contract negotiations came up, there was a good chance you wouldn’t be part of it if you refused fights.

Inoue: I believe Pride was the type of association that could take what they could get. It wasn’t an association where they treated all the fighters fairly. I was treated very differently in Pride because I was needed. I was popular in Japan. They knew I didn’t need them. They played hardball with people that needed them. Igor Vovchanchyn made peanuts -- $10,000. They’d threaten Mark Kerr, go down to where Kerr was training and make sure he was ready. Pretty much bully him around.

Kerr: The hardest thing in the world about working for a Japanese company is that you don’t know what rules you broke until you broke them. The one time I had elbow surgery, I took my own money and paid for my ticket over to Japan, paid for my hotel room, went into the ring -- this is when I was supposed to fight Enson in Nagoya -- and I let the stitches stay in my arm about a week past the point they were supposed to come out. That was so I could take off my shirt and literally show them, yes, I actually had surgery. That was the length you had to go to for the Japanese.

Hyams: You couldn’t go anywhere else and get paid the same amount. So they more or less had a monopoly on the fighters who wanted to earn anything close to six figures.

Burke: This thing was created because of the Gracies. It’s business. The Japanese knew, if they can get Royce, the man who started this whole thing, they can make 10 times more money than if they don’t. If it takes five extra hotel rooms, paying for his team’s food, $40 per diem a day instead of $15, I don’t think the Japanese cared.

Mezger: I didn’t give a sh-t. You get what you can.

Rand: The winner of the tournament got $250,000, but Royce’s number was significantly more than that. Part of it was wire transfer and part was cash.

Osborne: I know of a guy in Japan who won a quarter-million, got paid in cash and left the money in a cab when he got back home. He never would’ve seen that bag again if his brother hadn’t been friends with the cab driver.

Japan’s loose structure -- no athletic commission has any jurisdiction -- meant that promoters could organize events as they saw fit; athletes had few restrictions.
File Photo: Sherdog.com

Enson Inoue


Inoue: In our contracts there was a clause that specifically stated, “We do not test for steroids.” In other words, it was like a clause that you can do steroids.

Hyams: A lot of guys started doing steroids because it would give you a lot of strength and a lot of power and you could go in there and finish a guy off really quickly. However, once the fight started going longer, suddenly steroids had a really detrimental effect on that game plan. From the way everyone described it to me, they give you that big burst of power but your heart and lungs are powering a bigger body. You get gassed quickly.

Kerr: You see the period where I was over-built because I took anabolics. But it was a short little window where I used them and that was it. After I figured out that it was a bodybuilder’s body, not a fighter’s body, you’ll see my physique change again.


Goodridge: Right before we were walking out onstage for the first round, Osamu was smoking a cigarette. I thought, “What the f-ck?” I think 90 percent of Japanese smoke.

Coleman: All of a sudden, I’m sitting in the rules meeting. I’m not waiting for something bad to go wrong, but out of nowhere, a day before the show, the president gets up and says, “The finals will be a no time limit match.” It was supposed to be a 20-minute time limit. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Rorion Gracie: It’s part of the deal when you’re dealing with the Japanese. You get what you can before because there’s not much you can do at the time of the fight. In the moment, they can say they didn’t understand and that’s the end of that.

Mezger: Mainly, I felt like they were just disorganized. I didn’t know I was going to fight Masaaki Satake until 18 days before the fight. Their take was, “If you’re a real warrior, you’ll do it.” I go, “Really? OK. All right.”

Coleman: I could wear wrestling shoes there. As far as my speed and power, once you take the shoes away, you take a lot of that away. It just gave me so much grip that it made me so much stronger. I went into the Ohio State wrestling room once before and tried to wrestle some college guys wearing shoes while I wasn’t. It was embarrassing. I had to come back a couple of days later with shoes on just to save face.

Kerr: I probably could’ve gotten paid twice or three times the amount of money I got paid to do what I did for them. I was functioning under the assumption that pigs get fed while hogs get slaughtered. That was my mentality.

Mezger: There’s an old saying: a friend of mine told me this. He said, “If you think you made a good deal with a Japanese businessman, check all your fingers and toes. If you have them, count your relatives because somebody’s missing.” And that’s a Japanese guy telling me that.

In April ’00, Miletich posted a message to mixedmartialarts.com that claimed Sakuraba would purposely lose the fight to Gracie. It was another indication Pride may have been getting uncomfortably close with the demands of the Yakuza and their penchant for gambling.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Tra Telligman and Carlos Barreto: Both were
to be involved in a reserve match for the
opening round; the bout was cancelled when
Barreto suffered an injury.

Miletich: With Pride back in those days, there were obviously some fights that were works. A lot of people were talking about it. I was hoping that wasn’t the case.

Inoue: Knowing Sakuraba personally, he would never do that. With Takada, I’d have my doubts. But Sakuraba, there’s no way. He has a lot of integrity and honor. I don’t think he’d ever throw a fight in an MMA ring. Not Sakuraba.

Adelstein: I can’t imagine any motivation for him to lose that fight, unless it was about gambling. If you put out that Sakuraba is going to lose and it’s already been fixed and people believe that, they’re going to bet against him and bet on Gracie. And when Gracie loses, they make more if people believe Sakuraba is the weak horse. Certainly, the Yakuza would be good at facilitating such a rumor.

Mezger: You’re told, “Oh, this guy is who he is,” all that kind of stuff. But it’s not like you’re living in fear for your life or anything like that. It’s just the opposite. They were very good about treating you well. You got a really nice place, they made sure you were taken care of financially, got food, gave you every opportunity. That was nice.

Adelstein: Every time they staged an event in Tokyo or Osaka where there’s a big arena, they had to pay a certain amount of money: permission to perform in their area. It was kind of like a tax. That was the standard thing at the time.

Inoue: It had to be done. You can’t avoid it. It’s the custom. I have a gym in Saitama. If I didn’t have friends who were close to me in that group, I would have to pay monthly. It’s like protecting us from them so they don’t give us sh-t or trouble.

Adelstein: The consequences of not paying the site tax are that you may have interference with your ticket sales. Scandals about your athletes would be released to the media. It’s not always the threat of physical violence. If you’re not paying your dues and operating in their area, they’ll do something that makes life difficult for you. That can include things like telling a local magazine, this competitor is sleeping with an underage girl. Or, this guy is cheating on his wife.

Inoue: If you go to 100 people in America and ask if they have mafia acquaintances, 90 percent of them would probably say no. It’s the opposite here. Maybe 90 percent of people would say, “Oh, I know Yakuza.” I had a Yakuza guy at my house the other night. It’s not a big thing.

[shadyasfok]

colinpowelliaintreadinthatshit.jpg

[shadyasfok]

TL/DR

[super hot]

I don't have time for that shit right now

[stretcharmstrong]

The Finals (May 1, 2000)
決勝 (2000年5月1日)

Monday is an odd day for a major sporting event, but it happened to be a Japanese national holiday. “Tonight,” the event program announced, “the strongest man in the world shows up!”

Because of a lackluster first round and the absence of Takada -- who had intended to face Ken Shamrock in Shamrock’s comeback bout before suffering an injury -- 38,429 people entered the Tokyo Dome to see the resolution, a sharp decline in attendance. A Toyota logo decorated the ring center; American audiences would see a condensed version weeks later on DirecTV for $19.95.

In the opening bout, Vovchanchyn knocked out Goodridge without issue -- save for Goodridge lacerating his scrotum on the edge of a fractured athletic cup; while it held main event status, the fight between Sakuraba and Gracie was scheduled second on the card because of the tournament format. Musician Eric Clapton was on hand to deliver flowers to the fighters; Sakuraba entered wearing the mask of a famous pro wrestler, accompanied by two doppelgangers; when he revealed himself, his hair was dyed bright orange.

Rorion Gracie: For me, it takes away from the seriousness of the event. It’s a clownish approach to the whole thing.

Royce Gracie: Everyone has a different way to concentrate and settle themselves down. If it calms you down coming to the catwalk rapping, hey, go for it. Knock yourself out. I don’t care.

Sakuraba: The first round, Royce stuck to my back like an octopus tentacle. I moved the fight to my corner. My head is outside the ropes. This isn't my move to run away from him; it's to counterbalance the pressure of him hanging on me.

Quadros: Sakuraba, in the first round, he let Royce take his back standing up. His head is through the ropes and out of the ring right in Royce’s corner. His face is maybe literally three feet away from Royce’s cornermen. And he’s sitting there with a look on his face like he’s at the park feeding the birds or something.

Sakuraba: At one point, I wasn't doing anything special, but the crowd burst out in cheers and laughs. I didn't know, but they had a close-up of me smiling. Off to the side, my friend Ueda was operating the camera. When I recognized Ueda, I looked at him and sort of greeted him, and this went from his camera to the big screen.
Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Wallid Ismail: He floated the idea
of facing Royce Gracie in an opening-round
rematch of their 1998 grappling match in
Brazil. (Gracie lost via choke.) The
promotion opted for Takada instead.

Rorion Gracie: The issue for me is that Sakuraba was holding onto the ropes. That’s the kind of stuff I would hope the referee would prevent from happening.

Burke: The referee doesn’t open his mouth. There’s a scenario where Royce is going for something and his elbow touches the rope and the referee slaps him and gives him a warning.


Sakuraba: I had a kneebar locked up on him. I know I must've thought, if only for a split second, "I've got it." I could see a sense of urgency on Royce's face. Then Royce's foot in my butt.

Royce Gracie: I pulled it out right away. He was hanging on and it looked like he had it, so the crowd was like, “Wow.” It was a show for the judges, except there weren’t any judges. Heh, heh, heh.

With one competitive round over, Gracie’s chances against a contemporary fighter didn’t look as dour as his critics had figured. But as the fight continued, it became more apparent that Sakuraba was using Gracie’s pressure-cooker strategy against him.

Sakuraba: We had two-minute breaks. I was quite tired from just one round, but with two minutes, I could recover fairly well.

Rorion Gracie: Sakuraba was more prepared than Royce expected, number one. He played defense for a long time. For him, going on a long run was the right thing to do. It was a smart strategy -- not trying to beat Royce, but trying to stay alive.

Royce Gracie: After the third, I remember sitting down and saying, “Son of a gun, this guy has endurance.” Forget about the next fight, we’re gonna finish this one. Let’s see who can go further.

Burke: I think Sakuraba’s game plan was to frustrate and annoy Royce, get under his skin, take it longer. Royce started getting frustrated. Then he started to inflict some damage on Royce and used Royce’s Gi well against him.

Sakuraba: The Gi isn't that great a thing. It also helps me with its ability to stop things from slipping. And I can get better control of him by grabbing it. I figured I could blind him with it and start hitting him. According to the rules, as long as I don't take it off and choke him with it, it's okay.

Quadros: Sakuraba, to me, is akin to Buster Keaton or Benny Hill or some of the other great physical comedians in that he can do things in a fight that are really, really entertaining.

Sakuraba: I hit Royce's leg with really good low kicks in the third. It made him come in, but it was in a kind of desperate anger, so the timing was really easy to read. I think his knee started to accumulate damage from around then.

Royce Gracie: I always told everybody, I’m not punch proof. One punch can knock me out. I never said I was Superman. I never put that kind of pressure on me. If other people look at me that way, it’s not my problem.

Sakuraba: The fifth round, Royce beckoned me to the ground, I say why not, as he's tired. It's my first time feeling him on the ground. He has long shins. He wraps around my back and easily closes his legs. It's a pain to fight someone with such long legs, making a strategy is next to impossible.

Quadros: At the time, 2000, they weren’t using digital. They were using film. The photographer, Susumu Nagao, had a situation where he ran out of film halfway through the fight. He had to send some guy to the store to get more film to bring back to him.

Sakuraba: I heard people on the Internet saying that I tapped. Royce whispered in my ear, "Sorry" because his knee hit my cup. I tapped his butt while saying "OK, OK" to accept his apology. I wasn't giving up.

Burke: He tapped. He got caught in a guillotine early. He tapped. It was clear. Sakuraba kept fighting. If you rewatch the fight, he tapped to a guillotine. Bottom line.

Royce Gracie: I don’t remember kneeing him in the groin. I did not see him tap. I didn’t feel him tap. I can’t say he tapped. I never said he did.

Sakuraba: Maybe because he's feeling pain in his leg, he appears to be disliking the standup fighting. He butt-flops. Maybe he can't stand anymore. In my corner, Hidehiko Yoshida is yelling, "Fly! Fly!" So I jumped, as if jumping into a pool, to punch him in the face. Then the bell rang, ending the sixth round. Then the towel was thrown in.

Rorian Gracie throws in the towel: Susumu Nagao/en.susumug.com


Rorion: I made the decision. I talked to the old man, of course. He thought it was the right thing to do.

Royce Gracie: After the sixth round, I told my father and brother, “I can get up but I can’t walk.” I had a partial tear on the tendon and a crack on the shin. If they had told me to get up and fight, I would have.

Burke: I carried him out of the ring. I have newspapers with the two of us on the cover.

For the first time in modern mixed martial arts, a Gracie had given up -- but only after 90 minutes of fighting. With each round 15 minutes, the two had essentially fought six regulation-period fights in a row.

Quadros: The way the crowd erupted after that -- it was like the crowd had been lulled into this state, and then all of a sudden it woke up and realized, “Hey, Sakuraba won!” I looked around and saw people way, way up in the nosebleed seats standing up holding their fist in the air and going crazy. That was probably the most dramatic ovation I’ve ever heard in my entire career.

Hume: It was very emotional. When they finally decided to throw the towel in, it was huge for Japan. The Gracies are legends. It was a huge thing for Japan and for Sakuraba to have their equality and legitimacy for what we now call mixed martial artists.

Miletich: More than anything to me, it gave me a lot more respect for Royce. He went out there and fought a guy who was legitimately one of the best, most well-rounded fighters in the world at the time. I remember walking up to him the next morning and shaking his hand and saying, “I just want to let you know that all the fighters, including myself, have a lot of respect for what you did last night.”

Sakuraba: Usually after a fight I celebrate with a beer, but with this Grand Prix, I have to fight again because I won. To win the tournament, there are still two more fights. If you think about it, winning is worse than losing.

[stretcharmstrong]

haha, i have more to copy/paste. hold please.

[stretcharmstrong]

Johnston: Fujita had no striking and no submission. What he had was being friggin’ tough. He didn’t have a whole lot of skill, and he’d have to take what Kerr gives and then eventually give it back. But in the beginning, he was probably going to take a beating. He knew that going in.

Rutten: Kerr was eating a lot of candy. His blood pressure was off the charts; it was very bad. He had a big bag of M&Ms and chocolates. He was eating chocolates all the time.

Kerr: My body was telling me I wasn’t eating enough calories for how much I was working out. Your body craves quick fuel sources: candy, alcohol, wine. It’s a real quick shot of sugar or whatever.

Rutten: I knew Mark didn’t train as hard as I wanted him to before this. I knew that there was a chance he would run out of gas. And if he put all of his efforts into somebody and drills him with knees to the face and the guy doesn’t even flinch, you’re going to get tired, but it’s a mental intimidation factor.

Kazuyuki Fujita: The knee to my head hurt me, but it pissed me off, too. I think that is one of the reasons I won the fight. He made me mad.

Kerr: I had torn my MCL a few weeks prior and kept injecting Lidocaine during the Sakuraba fight because I didn’t know when it was going to end. By the time I came out, I had deadened my senses all the way down to the ankle. I broke his nose -- I felt it pop under my knee -- but I got hypoglycemia.

Hyams: When that guy didn’t go down after those, I think that’s when the fight was over. Kerr and fighters would always say, the worst thing that can happen in a fight is that you give a guy your hardest shot and he takes it. Then you know you’re in for a long one. Knowing he was in for a long one, he didn’t have the conditioning or the will to take it.

Rutten: Mark was one of those guys that in training would explode up. I knew he was getting hurt, but you don’t know if he would do that again. One thing you don’t want to do is throw the towel and have him jump up and say, “What did you do that for?” As long as I see he’s OK, I’m not going to throw it.

Hyams: It went beyond that. Suddenly, a moment occurs, you knee a guy as hard as you can in the face, twice, and he’s not even flinching. Now you’re realizing that not only are you going to have to outlast this guy, right after that you’re going to have to get into the ring with Coleman. Even if you survive that, your night is not over. I’m not saying he willingly shut down. But subconsciously, his body might have shut down on him.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

John McCarthy: He was approached by
Pride to officiate the GP bouts; SEG, the
UFC’s then-current owner, resolved their
contractual issues with McCarthy and he
remained with the U.S. promotion.

Fujita: As a kind of strategy, I figured that if I held him off for five minutes, then the match would start to move more at my pace … . I am not so great a puncher, not so great a kicker. I don't really have anything all that great, but in today's vale tudo, the strongest is the one that can take a beating.

Hyams: He wasn’t even really hurt. He was just gassed and covered up and Fujita was mostly giving him body blows.

Rutten: With everything, all the supplements, God knows what he took -- I was never impressed with that. When you gas out, people don’t realize that what really gasses are your abs. When your abs gas, they pop out and build up lactic acid. You can’t breathe anymore because your abs are pushing your lungs. That’s why you see those big, muscular guys get strong and then hit the wall after three minutes.

Kerr: It was my first real loss. The relief didn’t come until much later. Within a couple of hours, I went in the shower with my brother sitting next to me and just sat down and let it all out.

Miletich: I liked Kerr because he wrestled with me for a year in high school. He was a couple of years younger than I was. I think he was a sophomore when I was a senior, something like that. He was always a nice kid. I was hoping he and Mark would end up fighting each other in the tournament. Watching him come apart, I didn’t enjoy watching that.

Coleman: I’m a competitor. I was glad the fight was a war and those two were beating the crap out of each other. I was looking to win this thing. Just as bad as I felt for him, I felt good for me.

Fujita took a decision after hammering a turtled Kerr, but his knee may have paid the price; relieved that Kerr was no longer a possibility, Coleman prepared for Fujita.

Miletich: There was a discussion because Fujita was injured in his first fight. They were trying to talk Gary Goodridge into taking his place and coming back into the tournament.

Coleman: In between rounds, I was sitting with Goodridge. We were pretty good friends at the time. I had a pretty damaged knuckle from my first fight. It was all swollen up. I’m sitting here showing it to him and we’re talking about it. All of a sudden, the Japanese bosses come in and say, “Well, Fujita might be done. If he’s done, you’re going to be fighting Goodridge.” I was like, oh, sh-t! Well, my hand feels pretty good, Gary.

Johnston: His knee was so loose. He didn’t have pain, but it was loose. We were really worried. When he got in there to shoot that double and collapsed -- pro wrestling pays you a lot of money. It wasn’t worth it: ACL repair, torn meniscus.

Coleman: There were all kinds of whispers going around. I heard this, I heard that. But I’m not listening to sh-t. I’m getting ready to go out there and fight Fujita like he’d come out at me like a bull. This knee, that knee -- I’m not going to believe any of it. He got in the ring and he got paid.

Miletich: We weren’t sure, but I think the feeling was that he wasn’t going to follow through. I think Fujita wanted the second round money. I think Mark was going to win either way, whether it was Goodridge or Fujita, but Fujita wanted the money.

Coleman (right) and Fujita: Susumu Nagao/en.susumug.com


Fujita: It was bad since I'd been training, a chronic thing. It was really terrible for it to happen during a fight. If Coleman wins, of course I want to properly congratulate him, but I think to myself for it to end like that ... It's not over.

Johnston: He doesn’t usually get mad, but I think he might’ve gotten a little perturbed by that. The thing about the Japanese is, they always have a smile on their face, but inside they may be thinking, “You assh-le.”

Fujita managed only one feeble takedown attempt before Johnston threw in the towel. Coleman would have a full gas tank for his final bout; Vovchanchyn would have his hands full with Sakuraba -- incredibly, the fighter had elected to come out after his marathon with Gracie. But barely an hour after he delivered the first loss of Gracie’s career, Sakuraba suffered his first defeat in the Pride ring: Vovchanchyn was too much, and Sakuraba refused a second round. Vovchanchyn and Coleman were the two foreign finalists.

Miletich: The Vovchanchyn/Sakuraba fight helped our confidence quite a bit, knowing Vovchanchyn had just been through that war.

Hyams: I know Coleman going into that final fight was thinking, “I need to force him to quit,” and that’s not an easy thing to do.

Susumu Nagao/en.susumug.com

Mark Coleman won it all.
Coleman: I knew I didn’t want to stand with Vovchanchyn. I knew there weren’t any headbutts. I knew it was going to be hard to get him in a position to finish him. This fight could’ve lasted a freakin’ hour. I knew this guy could take it for an hour. Can I give it for an hour? I hoped so, but I wasn’t positive.

Hyams: At that point, we’re not only covering Kerr but Coleman, too. Now Coleman is out there waiting to fight. Logistically, we’re running around. We’ve got one guy in one place, one guy in another.

Coleman: Ground and pounding him could take three hours because the guy can just take a beating. I hit him with 15 or 16 knees and the guy still stood up and shook it off when it was over.

Hyams: I thought it was poetic justice, that Kerr had somehow helped his road to victory.

Coleman: I mean, what’s it going to take? Finally, I changed angles with my knee. Until he tapped my belly, I was thinking, “I don’t know what to do.”

Coleman had done what most had given him very little chance of pulling off: navigating the most substantial tournament in MMA history. As confetti rained down and he was awarded with an oversized belt and trophy, the emotion was literally too much to contain.

Coleman: My first thought was, “I have to get to the fans and give them a hug.” For some crazy reason, I guess this was the moment I felt I could jump outside the freakin’ ropes. I thought I was Kevin Randleman for a second. When I got mid-air, I made a bad choice. I felt like the way I pulled out of it was pretty athletic. It could’ve been ugly. Out of embarrassment, I got up pretty quick.

Quadros: Vovchanchyn and Coleman, they weren’t getting as much play -- I’m talking about around the lobby, with the journalists and the fans and whatnot. They weren’t getting the kind of play the famous fighters were. I don’t know if that didn’t burn inside of Coleman.

Coleman: I knew I could do it, but until you do it, you don’t know. That belt was a mile away until I felt that guy tapping on my stomach.

[stretcharmstrong]

Fallout
降下

Filling its promise as a loss-leader, the Pride Grand Prix elevated Dream Stage’s presence as a sports entertainment destination. Fighters began getting commercial endorsements and subsequent events were finding new sources of income: Pride 12 sold $140,000 worth of event programs alone. In December 2000, Pride also began a “Pre-Pride” reality show on television that scouted amateur fighters five years before Spike’s “Ultimate Fighter” was realized. Yushin Okami was a graduate.

Sakuraba: Right after the fight I went to be medically examined. Then the doctor said, "You were hit too much in the head, so please refrain from alcohol today." The only thing I was allowed to do was go home and sleep. So I went home with my family and did that. But when I was trying to sleep, I had Vovchanchyn's entrance song stuck in my head and tossed and turned.

Coleman: It’s a non-stop eating session. You do a lot of eating after a fight. There were probably a few beers consumed. I don’t think I slept for two or three days. You don’t need to.

Shoji: I felt like I trained harder than any one. And then I lost. But then Mark Coleman won. I grabbed his tail. I came close to the strongest fighter in the world at that time, and there’s satisfaction in that. It still motivates me.

Hyams: There was that moment where Coleman came into the locker room before his final fight. He came in there and they have a few words. Kerr says something about Fujita not going to the next round. Coleman nodded and Kerr said, “It’s yours to win.” That was a very cathartic moment for both of them. I think they realized, these two guys who were friends and were forced into a situation where their friendship was being put to the test in a way that most of our friendships aren’t really tested, and somehow were able to come out of it with the friendship intact.
File Photo: Sherdog.com

Sakuraba became a legend.


Sakuraba: After the Royce fight, interest in me shot way up. Not just reports in magazines, but offers to appear on TV shows and in TV commercials. [Sakuraba appeared in a commercial for Tokuhon V Dash, a painkiller.]

Coleman: I did a couple of commercials over in Japan. I took a lot of sh-t about the Dole banana commercial. Did I know what I was going to do when I got there? No. Hell, no. I knew it was some kind of Dole banana commercial and that was it. But it was a blast doing it and my mom and dad got a first-class trip to Japan out of the deal.

Quadros: At the time, if people recall, K-1 was the biggest martial art fight promotion in the world. It was bigger than the UFC and bigger than Pride. Pride was second, but the Grand Prix was the beginning of coming up and facing off with K-1.


Adelstein: They weren’t under organized crime control in 2000, but they knew who they were dealing with and were very careful to pay tribute to the right people. You make any compromises, you give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. As soon as it becomes apparent you can make money, then they won’t go away.

While Sakuraba and Fujita had elevated themselves in losses, Gracie’s mystique as the invincible pioneer of modern no holds barred fighting had finally come to an end.

Burke: The bottom line is, a million people have careers due to the Gracie family. That’s just a fact. The people who gave him sh-t and talked sh-t, family or non-family, they’re doing what they’re doing because Rorion created an event and Royce walked through the doors and proved jiu-jitsu and opened people’s eyes. Freestyle wrestling didn’t have kimura locks and rear-naked chokes. No matter how you slice it, everyone has to learn what the Gracies do.

Rand: Sakuraba came into our locker room after the fight to shake Royce’s hand. I went up to him and I said, “Why did you disrespect Royce in the ring?” His manager got really pissed off at me. I said, “Watch the fight. You were disrespecting him the whole time.” He came in with that goofy-ass mask, he played to the audience a couple times to make the audience laugh. I thought that was disrespectful.

Burke: It was disheartening. Everyone looked to him as this invincible fighter. It was sad. He was in a medical boot and Royce was always such a positive, upbeat guy. People were bummed out. But once he was cleared, he was on the mat training. He didn’t skip a beat. He said, “Hey, I lost.” He never made an excuse.

Quadros: Royce and I were on the same flight back to Los Angeles. When Royce arrived, because of the swelling he’d experience when you go up 30,000 feet, they had a wheelchair there for him to cart him through luggage and things. He wasn’t walking.

Rorion: After Sakuraba’s fight, the Japanese came back. Sometimes they talk with me for a half-hour or hour and go back to Japan the next day. They talked about a rematch with Sakuraba. They offered me a certain amount of money that I didn’t think was appropriate. The argument was, “Listen, Royce lost to Sakuraba. So now his value is less.” To think that because Royce lost to Sakuraba has jeopardized or weakened the Gracie image doesn’t sit.

Coleman: These guys offered the same amount of money I made before the Grand Prix. They might’ve come up a little bit, but I just wasn’t going to do it. When you win the Grand Prix and get the same offer, it didn’t make any sense to me at all. I wasn’t being greedy. I’ll get used, but I ain’t getting used that bad.

Rand: Did it have some impact on the business? I would say moderate. Not big. Jiu-jitsu is either a casual sport or a lifestyle. For most of our students, it was a lifestyle. Did our business get hurt a little? Yeah. But our core business remained intact.

Hyams: We adapted the documentary into a screenplay for a producer and they ended up going off and deciding to do it as a Van Damme thing. That ended up falling apart, but now they actually want to try and go down the road with it again with me as the director. It would not be done as a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

Coleman: Me and Kerr actually got paid by the producers of the movie. They rewrote it. It was all set to go and start filming. When they wrote the script, they made me the main character. That was going to be neat. I saw the script. Jean-Claude Van Damme was going to play me. I wasn’t all that thrilled about that, but oh well.

Missing in Action

The fighters who almost made the GP field

Tskhadaze Zaouri: A former professional
arm wrestler, Zaouri was slated to face Gary
Goodridge in the opening round; he was unable
to schedule a travel Visa in time.

Kerr: John didn’t let me see one ounce of footage until it was totally done. I remember sitting in the Dolby sound studios in California. We had a whole theater to ourselves and watched the movie. They said, “What do you think?” I said, “I gotta get back with you on this.” It was my whole life laid open for everyone to see. I didn’t know how I’d be perceived. But it is what it is and it’s nothing I’m ashamed of.

Hyams: The UFC did not want us to release the documentary. It’s rare for an athlete to discuss substance issues. It was very courageous on his part.

Coleman: I started doing appearances at smaller shows and would take the belt with me. People got a kick out of it. It’s got some fake rubies in there, this and that. A couple kids would maybe drop it a little bit. The belt came back all scratched up one time and one of the rubies was chipped. When I went back to Japan for a show, the Japanese looked at it and they freaked out. They wondered what the hell happened, what I did to it. To me, it was only a couple of little scratches. “What do you mean? It’s fine. It’s my belt, anyway!” They asked me if they could keep it and refurbish it. I didn’t get it back for two or three years.

Kerr: I was burnt out. The only way to get money was to start challenging the better fighters, and I just wasn’t willing to do the training necessary. I didn’t feel like I had the ability to focus. If you get hit, you want to hit somebody back. If you don’t have that, you should do something else. And that’s the point I got to. I didn’t feel like fighting back.

Sakuraba: In the morning I saw a news article where Vovchanchyn said, "Sakuraba is light, so it was a matter of course that I would win." This really pissed me off. I was punched, disallowed from drinking beer, wrestled with a theme song all night ... I said to myself, "Sh-t! I want to choke him out!"

Coleman: I still owe Pat. I’m definitely going to get that taken care of one of these days. At the time, there weren’t many trainers getting paid. I don’t owe nobody sh-t, except for maybe him. Someday I’ll write him a check and he won’t be expecting it and it’ll be a good day.

[stretcharmstrong]

Mark Coleman, 45, spent several more years in the Pride ring, including high-profile bouts with Fedor Emelianenko (twice) and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira; a return bid in the UFC ended with a loss to Randy Couture in February. He intends to fight again.

Following the Grand Prix, Mark Kerr, 41, displayed little resemblance to the “Smashing Machine” of old, compiling a 3-10 record since 2000. He considers himself “99.9 percent” retired and is pursuing a degree with an eye on pharmaceutical sales.

Royce Gracie, 43, continued an annual fight schedule in Japan for several years, often requesting (and receiving) special rules. In 2007, he defeated Kazushi Sakuraba in a rematch; the result was upheld despite Gracie testing positive for anabolic steroids, a charge he denies. He intends to have one more bout before retiring.

Kazushi Sakuraba, 40, remained one of Pride’s biggest attractions, but a willingness to compete against larger opponents had mixed results. In 2006, Sakuraba signed with K-1: his most recent bout was a decision loss to Ralek Gracie, Royce’s nephew and Rorion’s son. He owns and operates the Laughter7 gym in Tokyo.

Akira Shoji, 36, alternated wins and losses in a career lauded for his perseverance. His last bout was a loss to Gilbert Yvel in 2007; now a judge for Dream, he is considering a retirement match.

Kazuyuki Fujita, 39, went on to memorable matches with Ken Shamrock and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic (in Filipovic’s MMA debut). He lost to Alistair Overeem during a K-1 2009 New Year’s Event.

Gary Goodridge, 44, kept his role as Pride’s premier brawler before moving to K-1 in 2004. He announced his retirement in May 2010.

Igor Vovchanchyn, 36, remained with Pride through his retirement in 2005. He now operates a catering business in the Ukraine.

Enson Inoue, 43, fought six more times following the Kerr bout before stepping away to run a gym and manage fighters. He ended a six-year hiatus with a submission victory over Antz Nansen in April.

Guy Mezger, 42, had memorable bouts with Chuck Liddell and Wanderlei Silva; a 2004 UFC return against Tito Ortiz was halted when Mezger suffered a stroke, prompting his retirement. He is now president of Mark Cuban’s HDNet Fights banner.

Following his bout with Gracie, Nobuhiko Takada, 48, went winless in his last four Pride appearances; a 2001 bout with Mirko Filipovic was so plodding it was left off the U.S. DVD release of the event. In 2002, Takada became a public face for Pride and stayed with the company until its demise in 2007. He remains involved in Japan’s professional wrestling industry.

Pride Before the Fall

How Japan’s biggest MMA show went
from one mob scene to another

Mark Coleman, Pride’s first open weight
Grand Prix champion, has fond memories
of the Tokyo Hilton hotel: great food,
beautiful architecture and an atmosphere
that seemed to soothe the tensions in
the days leading up to fights. » Continue

Jake Adelstein spent over a decade covering crime in Japan for the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper. His expose on a Yakuza member who entered the United States to receive a liver transplant was the subject of both a “60 Minutes” piece and repeated death threats from his subject. A journal of his experiences, “Tokyo Vice,” was published by Random House in 2009.

Michael Braverman produced Pride’s U.S. telecasts. He is now an executive producer on TruTV’s “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.”

After six years with the family, Sam Rand left the Gracie Academy in 2001 to pursue dot-com interests. He is now an executive with the Mullen advertising agency.

Rorion Gracie, 58, continues to own and operate the Gracie Academy in Torrance, Calif., where he keeps an extensive archive of his family’s mementos. His brother, Royce, left the gym in 2001 to pursue independent interests.

Brian Johnston, 41, continued on in Japanese pro wrestling until suffering a stroke in 2001.

Pat Miletich, 42, retained his UFC welterweight title until a loss to Carlos Newton in 2001. He continues to train fighters in Bettendorf, Iowa; a rumored match with Frank Shamrock for the Strikeforce promotion has yet to materialize. He can be seen as analyst for ESPN2’s “MMA Live.”

Hampered by injuries, Bas Rutten, 45, returned to fighting only once, a TKO win over Rueben Villareal in 2006. He is now pursuing an acting career and can be seen as a co-host on HDNet’s “Inside MMA.” He has not spoken with Kerr since 2006.

Jeff Osborne promotes Hook ‘n Shoot shows in Indiana and consults for televised promotions.

John Hyams followed “The Smashing Machine” with directorial work in television and for the well-received direct-to-DVD “Universal Soldier: Regeneration,” starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Another “Universal Soldier” film is in the works.

Stephen Quadros stayed on with Pride through 2003. He is currently an on-air personality for Showtime’s Strikeforce series of MMA broadcasts.

Matt Hume remained with Pride as an official through 2007. He owns and operates AMC, a Kirkland, Wash., mixed martial arts gym.

Pride continued to entertain Japanese and American audiences, twice running in Las Vegas in an attempt to broaden its international appeal. In 2007, the Japanese newspaper Shukan Gendai accused the promotion of having ties to organized crime: the ensuing scandal led to the loss of their television partner and a public backlash. Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, purchased Pride and its assets in 2007, intending to operate the promotion as a separate brand. To date, they have not run any shows under the Pride banner; Pride action figures, rings and other paraphernalia have been marketed to U.S. consumers; a best-of program airs on Spike weekly.

Special thanks to Katie Kitamura, Gino Mongelli and Nakabayashi Yosuke for foreign-language assistance. Sakuraba’s quotes courtesy of Boku and Kaette Kita Boku (Toho Publishing). Some photos courtesy of Susumu Nagao. For comments, e-mail the author at jrossen@sherdog.com

[stretcharmstrong]

http://luderchris3.lenzus.com/content/64188339/31859675.jpg

[shadyasfok]

WOAH NIGGA I AINT READIN THAT SHIT

[stretcharmstrong]

check it out on your lunchbreak. i have only read the first 2 pages, but so far it's very good.

[SatNav]

I'll check it out later tonight.

thanks.

[___]

ATTN MANTE

Gary Goodridge: Royce, Wanderlei [Silva], Sakuraba -- once you’re in the upper echelon, that’s the only time you can get what you want. Other than that, you have to play their games.

Mezger: Basically, you were led to believe in a very strong way that when the contract negotiations came up, there was a good chance you wouldn’t be part of it if you refused fights.

Inoue: I believe Pride was the type of association that could take what they could get. It wasn’t an association where they treated all the fighters fairly. I was treated very differently in Pride because I was needed. I was popular in Japan. They knew I didn’t need them. They played hardball with people that needed them. Igor Vovchanchyn made peanuts -- $10,000. They’d threaten Mark Kerr, go down to where Kerr was training and make sure he was ready. Pretty much bully him around.

Kerr: The hardest thing in the world about working for a Japanese company is that you don’t know what rules you broke until you broke them. The one time I had elbow surgery, I took my own money and paid for my ticket over to Japan, paid for my hotel room, went into the ring -- this is when I was supposed to fight Enson in Nagoya -- and I let the stitches stay in my arm about a week past the point they were supposed to come out. That was so I could take off my shirt and literally show them, yes, I actually had surgery. That was the length you had to go to for the Japanese.

Hyams: You couldn’t go anywhere else and get paid the same amount. So they more or less had a monopoly on the fighters who wanted to earn anything close to six figures.

Mezger: I didn’t give a sh-t. You get what you can.

Inoue: In our contracts there was a clause that specifically stated, “We do not test for steroids.” In other words, it was like a clause that you can do steroids.

Hyams: A lot of guys started doing steroids because it would give you a lot of strength and a lot of power and you could go in there and finish a guy off really quickly. However, once the fight started going longer, suddenly steroids had a really detrimental effect on that game plan. From the way everyone described it to me, they give you that big burst of power but your heart and lungs are powering a bigger body. You get gassed quickly.

Kerr: You see the period where I was over-built because I took anabolics. But it was a short little window where I used them and that was it. After I figured out that it was a bodybuilder’s body, not a fighter’s body, you’ll see my physique change again.

[___]

In our contracts there was a clause that specifically stated, “We do not test for steroids.” In other words, it was like a clause that you can do steroids.

lmao

[___]

Stuff kills me

Mezger: There’s an old saying: a friend of mine told me this. He said, “If you think you made a good deal with a Japanese businessman, check all your fingers and toes. If you have them, count your relatives because somebody’s missing.” And that’s a Japanese guy telling me that.

[HOODS]

lol, that is surprising to you wig? I mean how long have we known that japs didnt test? This is old news to me. Problem being, we dont know who roided and who didnt, and probably never will.

[___]

I think it's funny that they put it in their contract, essentially telling them they should roid. A bit different than simply not testing.

[stretcharmstrong]

there's some good shit in that article. i'm still reading it right now...

[shadyasfok]

I think it's funny that they put it in their contract, essentially telling them they should roid. A bit different than simply not testing.

this

[HOODS]

this

you simply dont understand that steroids and other performance enhancer arent illegal in japan, so why would they test? It would be like testing fighters for vitamin c here in America.

[___]

you simply dont understand that steroids and other performance enhancer arent illegal in japan, so why would they test? It would be like testing fighters for vitamin c here in America.

I think it's funny that they put it in their contract, essentially telling them they should roid. A bit different than simply not testing.

[HOODS]

thats you're interpretation, i see it as them putting in the contract the terms that they don't test for steroids, plain and simple. You see that as the japs telling the fighters to take steroids. Thats solely your opinion. Two different opinions, anyone can take a statement and mold it into what they want it to mean.

[shadyasfok]

you simply dont understand that steroids and other performance enhancer arent illegal in japan, so why would they test? It would be like testing fighters for vitamin c here in America.

yes but the fact that it explicitly said they don't test is hilarious

[shadyasfok]

it's like a supermarket having a sign up that says they don't have security cameras. it encourages thieves

[ArtardFiesta]

No solid. That's nothing like it.

[WAR SYNTHOL]

pride was awesome but alot of those guys were roided to the fucking gills

[___]

thats you're interpretation, i see it as them putting in the contract the terms that they don't test for steroids, plain and simple. You see that as the japs telling the fighters to take steroids. Thats solely your opinion. Two different opinions, anyone can take a statement and mold it into what they want it to mean.

It's not my opinion.

In our contracts there was a clause that specifically stated, “We do not test for steroids.” In other words, it was like a clause that you can do steroids.

[super hot]

ATTN MANTE

Gary Goodridge: Royce, Wanderlei [Silva], Sakuraba -- once you’re in the upper echelon, that’s the only time you can get what you want. Other than that, you have to play their games.

Mezger: Basically, you were led to believe in a very strong way that when the contract negotiations came up, there was a good chance you wouldn’t be part of it if you refused fights.

Inoue: I believe Pride was the type of association that could take what they could get. It wasn’t an association where they treated all the fighters fairly. I was treated very differently in Pride because I was needed. I was popular in Japan. They knew I didn’t need them. They played hardball with people that needed them. Igor Vovchanchyn made peanuts -- $10,000. They’d threaten Mark Kerr, go down to where Kerr was training and make sure he was ready. Pretty much bully him around.

Kerr: The hardest thing in the world about working for a Japanese company is that you don’t know what rules you broke until you broke them. The one time I had elbow surgery, I took my own money and paid for my ticket over to Japan, paid for my hotel room, went into the ring -- this is when I was supposed to fight Enson in Nagoya -- and I let the stitches stay in my arm about a week past the point they were supposed to come out. That was so I could take off my shirt and literally show them, yes, I actually had surgery. That was the length you had to go to for the Japanese.

Hyams: You couldn’t go anywhere else and get paid the same amount. So they more or less had a monopoly on the fighters who wanted to earn anything close to six figures.

Mezger: I didn’t give a sh-t. You get what you can.

Inoue: In our contracts there was a clause that specifically stated, “We do not test for steroids.” In other words, it was like a clause that you can do steroids.

Hyams: A lot of guys started doing steroids because it would give you a lot of strength and a lot of power and you could go in there and finish a guy off really quickly. However, once the fight started going longer, suddenly steroids had a really detrimental effect on that game plan. From the way everyone described it to me, they give you that big burst of power but your heart and lungs are powering a bigger body. You get gassed quickly.

Kerr: You see the period where I was over-built because I took anabolics. But it was a short little window where I used them and that was it. After I figured out that it was a bodybuilder’s body, not a fighter’s body, you’ll see my physique change again.

Notice how it's only the cans of Pride who talk shit. This goes with every organization or work place. Doesn't mean much to me.

[WAR SYNTHOL]

Mark Kerr was one of PRIDE's biggest stars in the early days mante and that's just an ingorant statement. Needless to say, smashing machine. Just ended that one with the quickness. lol.

[super hot]

Kerr was a can.

[WAR SYNTHOL]

no mante you're a can, an uninformed idiot who just shits out nuggets of fail hoping it rubs someone the wrong way. 98% of the time people just ignore you, the only time anyone pays attention to you is just to remind you how fucking stupid you are

[WAR SYNTHOL]

and I guess some mexican from cali that buys overpriced bottles to compensate for a lack of personality knows more than insiders who worked directly with PRIDE, to say nothing of the direct admissions from the fighters who competed in the organization

[Capt Lameius]

well put wr.

[Capt Lameius]

and what a horrible idea for a thread by stretch.

[Capt Lameius]

wr, susan put it best when she said, "it's obvious he is just a fat loser"

[SatNav]

no mante you're a can, an uninformed idiot who just shits out nuggets of fail hoping it rubs someone the wrong way. 98% of the time people just ignore you, the only time anyone pays attention to you is just to remind you how fucking stupid you are

pwn of the week.

[super hot]

no mante you're a can, an uninformed idiot who just shits out nuggets of fail hoping it rubs someone the wrong way. 98% of the time people just ignore you, the only time anyone pays attention to you is just to remind you how fucking stupid you are

I guess I can say the same shit about all your posts concerning fedor.

[Capt Lameius]

wr, susan put it best when she said, "it's obvious he is just a fat loser"

[stretcharmstrong]

and what a horrible idea for a thread by stretch.

sorry brah. i guess maybe a thread of black guys fucking dudes in the ass is more your style? www.lostinthehood.com

[gtard]

and I guess some mexican from cali that buys overpriced bottles to compensate for a lack of personality knows more than insiders who worked directly with PRIDE, to say nothing of the direct admissions from the fighters who competed in the organization

dude how come you go racist every time you don't have a valid argument?

[super hot]

that's what white people tend to do.

[gtard]

that's what white people tend to do.

I mean, really though. Everytime WR says some shit about Hulk Hogan being a legit HW and gets shut the fuck down, he goes back to "At least I ain't no beaner"

Only faggots argue like that.

[shadyasfok]

dude how come you go racist every time you don't have a valid argument?

you sure you're not talkin bout strech? look at the blatantly racist post he just made

[shadyasfok]

I mean, really though. Everytime WR says some shit about Hulk Hogan being a legit HW and gets shut the fuck down, he goes back to "At least I ain't no beaner"

Only faggots argue like that.

lol, looks like someone's an orange picker

[gtard]

lol, looks like someone's an orange picker

don't hate.

[shadyasfok]

gabe the beaner

[shadyasfok]

you sure it ain't short for gabriela?