Let The Debate Begin: DREAM & World Victory Road

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When Pride Fighting Championships was bought by Zuffa Inc. and the Fertita brothers in 2007, nowhere was it felt more than in Japan. This was not just because Pride was based in Japan, but because the country had just lost its biggest MMA promotion; to put it into context, think about where MMA in America would be if UFC were to disappear tomorrow. Enter DREAM and World Victory Road.

The two newest members of Japan’s MMA community both sprung up due to the demise of Pride, but the question remains: does there really need to be two MMA promotions fighting to be the biggest in Japan?

The only reason there even are two is because DREAM is primarily owned by K-1 yet still run by many former Pride FC employees while World Victory Road is basically the biggest Indy MMA promotion in Japan. K-1 folded HERO’S this year with the notion that a new promotion would be formed in its ashes, and with Pride gone and many of its fighters looking for a home, DREAM was formed. That same notion—former Pride fighters looking for a home—was the basis for WVR as not all former Pride fighters signed with DREAM or UFC or other promotions and those still left jobless were grouped up, along with fighters from other promotions, and formed a separate promotion.

Obviously the main reasons behind there being two promotions instead of one lie with the financial obligations involved. Such obligations lie with the amount of money generated from shows, the money needed to pay the talent, only being able to pay so many fighters, some fighters getting paid much more than others (Fedor was paid just to appear at Dream 6 in September), etc. Simply put, there isn’t enough money to go around these days with MMA’s popularity in Japan now in ruins compared to what it was just two years ago.

However, with rumors and notions and the very plausible possibility that a merger may take place, I would like to go on record as stating that there never should’ve been two promotions in the first place and that DREAM should be the only game in town as far as big MMA promotions in Japan is concerned.

The first problem with there being two big promotions is that they’ve both underestimated what the MMA market is today as evident by the venues they’ve ran and the attendances they’ve drawn in each promotion’s inaugural year. WVR had the right idea in running smaller venues like Ariake Coliseum and Yoyogi National Gymnasium because each of those hold no more than 12,000 people and for a smaller promotion with smaller star power and a much smaller roster, it would seem better and more likely to draw a full house to go that route; two shots at Saitama Super Arena, a 35,000 seat venue, where the claimed attendance wasn’t even made public until around a month ago shows that they overestimated themselves after drawing two good attendances in the smaller venues. DREAM is not immune to this as they have ran four Saitama shows this year with only two of them (Dream 2 and Dream 6) drawing past 20,000, a number that would’ve been low for non-tournament Pride shows, but both of the Dream shows mentioned here were tournament shows. The other two Saitama shows for Dream failed to pass 16,000 and yet their Yokohama Arena and Osaka Castle Hall shows (18,000 and 16,000 capacity respectively) both did good numbers and were nearly full. The fact that neither promotion has yet to have an event with a legit paid sell-out speaks to where MMA is in Japan right now in terms of popularity.

Star power and roster is part of WVR’s problem in being a small promotion compared to DREAM being a big promotion. WVR’s main draws reads: Takanori Gomi, Josh Barnett, Hidehiko Yoshida, Kazuo Misaki, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazuhiro Nakamura, and Roger Gracie. Nakamura’s known for getting beaten up by Machida and Sokoudjou in the last year while Fujita’s 84-second knockout loss to Travis Wiuff in June may have killed whatever drawing power he has left, and Roger hasn’t yet embodied the mystique that goes with the Gracie name, but he will if he continues to perform as well as he has so far in MMA. So far Gomi has been fed a series of tune-up fights for his January 4 title fight, Misaki hasn’t been impressive in his two WVR wins, and Yoshida is 1-1 with his win coming in a fight that was promoted as one where the combined age of the fighters was 85. That leaves Barnett, who so far has been the main draw for WVR as his two fights with the promotions have both been main-events and have both been on the smaller venue cards that were nearly full—that doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Like it or not—I don’t like it—Barnett has never been much of a draw anywhere and his drawing power has only gone down in recent years, something I don’t understand as he’s only gotten better in the ring, has a great personality and great charisma, and is a big American (something that has always been a positive in Japan). While most would think that Barnett’s fight with Yoshida should’ve drawn a sell-out by itself, it didn’t, and his fight with Monson couldn’t produce a sell-out for the show probably more for Monson’s lack of drawing power than Barnett’s, but that also speaks to Barnett needing credible, tough opponents because he’s not a big draw by himself. WVR gambled on Gomi being such a draw and he is as he practically carried the Bushido brand on his back, but the problem there is that drawing power and weight class are intertwined in that the higher up the weight goes, the higher up the drawing power goes; there are exceptions to this rule obviously and while Gomi can be considered one of them, it’s only to a certain degree.

Compare all of this to Dream, whose roster is more lightweight than anything, but still has more drawing power than WVR. DREAM’s main draws reads: Kazushi Sakuraba, Yoshihiro Akiyama, Mirko Cro Cop, Kiyoshi Tamura, Shinya Aoki, Joachim Hansen, Ikuhisa Minowa, Alistair Overeem, and Caol Uno; plus there’s Fedor and Royce Gracie who’ve both said they’d fight in the promotion and that alone would still draw numbers. Sakuraba has his legend status, which still helps as his fight against a debuting Andrews Nakahara helped draw DREAM’s biggest attendance of their first year and his fight with Melvin Manhoef was big news in Japan because of the legend versus new blood feel it had. Akiyama is without a doubt DREAM’s biggest draw as he, like Naoya Ogawa in the past, draws great T.V. ratings for any fight he has no matter whom it’s against, proof of that being that his two fights in DREAM this year have been the most watched fights of the respective shows. And while Akiyama’s drawing power—like Ogawa’s—doesn’t go as far at the live gate, T.V. is so much bigger business in Japan than the live gate that they will settle for a T.V. ratings magnet that isn’t quite as much a magnet at the box office. Cro Cop is still beloved in Japan and still sells tickets albeit at a lower rate than in the past. Aoki, Hansen, and Uno form the lightweight trinity in DREAM as they all are popular and can help sell for the smaller venues, as is a lightweight’s main drawing responsibility. What I’m getting at with DREAM is that while WVR has more heavyweights, DREAM has bigger drawing heavyweights, and while WVR does have middleweights and lightweights, DREAM has more of them and they have much more name recognition and drawing power attached to them.

Of course, the main (and really only) reason that the merger hasn’t taken place yet—after the two WVR debacles in Saitama—is due to T.V. Again, T.V. is so much bigger business than the live gate and attendance numbers that PRIDE died primarily because Fuji TV kicked them off after the Yakuza scandal. Fuji TV and Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) have been T.V. rivals—as far as MMA goes—since the New Year’s Eve war began back in 2003. TBS carried K-1 shows and is DREAM’s television provider while WVR inked a deal with Fuji TV this year to broadcast their shows. So we once against have a Fuji TV/TBS face-off in the MMA world as the two biggest and potentially biggest MMA promotions in Japan are being broadcast by the same networks that broadcasted PRIDE and HERO’S. The deal was so big for WVR that they now have a primetime slot for their January 4 taking over the slot where New Japan’s Tokyo Dome show on the same has been in recent years.

A merger between the two would be beneficial for both promotions and for the sport in general, but won’t happen anytime soon if WVR’s deal with Fuji TV is as for real as it seems to be or if their January 4 show is a big success through the airwaves, an area where DREAM has struggled as Dream 6 thoroughly came up short as far as T.V. ratings expectations are concerned. Plus, the fall out from any kind of merger from the network that would be scorned would likely make the UFC/Randy Couture mess seem tame. That being said, the merger would help rejuvenate the sport in Japan much better than having two promotions ever could. In the glory years of Pride, 2003-2005, they were THE promotion because they had the biggest roster, ran the biggest arenas, had the biggest cards with the biggest stars, etc. Again, they were in Japan what UFC is in the U.S. right now. And that is exactly what Japan’s MMA scene needs right now: a giant amongst all of the smaller promotions. It’s not like Japan doesn’t have Indy MMA promotions as they have Pancrase, ZST, DEEP, and Shooto.

The main reason that a merger is needed is that the MMA world in Japan can’t wait for a big promotion to build itself from the ground up. While both DREAM and WVR have their stars and drawing cards, neither has shown that they have the stability to last long enough to build themselves into a more respectable and potentially longer lasting promotion. When PRIDE began in ’97, they could afford to spend their first three years creating new stars and building the promotion up slowly by running smaller arenas with the occasional big show headlined by Rickson/Takada; the reason they could was because MMA was still growing as a sport in Japan and people who had already seen Pancrase and RINGS and wanted to see more. However, now people have seen MMA and with pro wrestling beginning to make a comeback in Japan, it’s now or never for MMA to re-solidify its position in Japan as being the #1 fight-based entertainment product.

One thing that helped jumpstart pro wrestling’s comeback in Japan and would be largely appreciated in Japan for MMA is dream matches, and MMA is full of them. With a merger between these two promotions, we’d likely see Yoshida/Sakuraba, Barnett/Fujita (that one could still happen in WVR), Gomi/Yamamoto, Gomi/Aoki, Yamamoto/Aoki (could still happen in DREAM), Barnett/Kharitonov, Akiyama/Misaki, Akiyama/Yoshida, and a host of other potentially huge matches involving Japanese fighters, Japan vs. Brazil, the Gracies (Royce and Roger in this case), and (should it happen) Satoshi Ishii’s MMA debut on a march larger stage.

While some including myself were quick to call DREAM “PRIDE part 2,” it isn’t and that is exactly what MMA needs to thrive in Japan instead of just survive.