Sherdog.com Exclusive: One-on-One with PRIDE’s Sakakibara
Coming to America
Josh Gross Aug 24, 2005
Gross: Let’s start with the events of today. How important is it
for PRIDE to come to the United States and promote its brand of
fighting?
Sakakibara: It has been our dream to hold a PRIDE event outside of Japan on U.S. soil. We will have done 50 events under the PRIDE name — our upcoming event August 28th is going to be the 50th event — and we’ve never been outside of Japan. The mixed martial arts was created in the U.S. and it has been our dream to hold a show where it came from. And we have been working with the California State [Athletic Commission] since 2000 and especially in 2004, 2005 until now we have really been working hard to legalize this sport in California state. After today’s meeting, that is the first step for the long [process] ahead of us. Our objective is to hold our event in California and to introduce what PRIDE is to the fans and, not through the TV, to see the live event is totally different. So we’d like to show what really is PRIDE to the American people.
Gross: Have the American people, through your pay-per-views and
other sort of marketing, really shown an interest in PRIDE, or is
it more an overall interest in mixed martial arts? Have you seen
people who are just dedicated PRIDE fans?
Sakakibara: At the moment we think that those fans who watch PRIDE events through the pay-per-view or DVD, but not live, they’re a big fan of mixed martial arts, not necessarily [only] PRIDE fans.
Sakakibara: Over the course of seven, eight years since we started the PRIDE brand, of course we have changed several times the rules to always update the current needs of the audience and also to make sure that the fighters are safe. But the original concept of mixed martial arts is to get rid of all the barriers of the different martial arts. We have opened the door to all the different discipline fighters — including wrestling, boxing, judo, jiu-jitsu, everybody — so our rules are more open to those fighters who are coming from different backgrounds. It is very important to keep our rules the current rules. The rules that we have request to be an alternate rules (in California) is because we believe those rules are unique to PRIDE and we don’t want to jeopardize that uniqueness, then come to the U.S. So we want to keep those rules only for maybe PRIDE. From our experience over 450 fights in PRIDE we know and we have proven that PRIDE rules [are] safer than any other event. We believe in that and our record says it’s a safe event, safe rules. If we come to the U.S. and compromise with the current Unified Rules — which we don’t know if they’re safe to us, to our fighters — if we take those rules as it is then we may be proving that our rules aren’t safe enough. That’s not our direction moving forward. Because we believe in our rules, for us it’s not necessary to adopt any other rules that’s already sanctioned in Nevada or New Jersey. So that’s our thoughts.
Gross: In North America, particularly the United States, there’s a movement in mixed martial arts towards getting a broad uniformity, getting unified rules. Does PRIDE at all envision a situation in which every promotion in the world, every show in the world is operating under one set of rules? And if you do, what do those rules look like?
Sakakibara: We believe in unified rules all over the world.
Gross: So you think eventually the American regulatory bodies, the state athletic commissions, the Nevadas and New Jerseys of the world will see …
Sakakibara: We are talking about worldwide, not just U.S. So when we see worldwide, global unified rules it will probably be PRIDE rules.
Gross: Why do you feel that PRIDE rules will become accepted as the world unified rules and not the rules that are being worked on throughout North America.
Sakakibara: That is because we are not using those rules. If we are not using those rules — American rules — then it’s not going to be worldwide rules. And, especially the biggest market in the world is still Japan. Japan is not going to use a cage. Japan is not going to use five three-minute rounds. We believe that it takes so many years to become sanctioned or come to this point [in the United States] is because it was started with a cage. If it was a ring it shouldn’t have taken that long. And if you see worldwide promoters or events, outside the U.S., we believe most of the promoters use a ring instead of a cage.
Sakakibara: It has been our dream to hold a PRIDE event outside of Japan on U.S. soil. We will have done 50 events under the PRIDE name — our upcoming event August 28th is going to be the 50th event — and we’ve never been outside of Japan. The mixed martial arts was created in the U.S. and it has been our dream to hold a show where it came from. And we have been working with the California State [Athletic Commission] since 2000 and especially in 2004, 2005 until now we have really been working hard to legalize this sport in California state. After today’s meeting, that is the first step for the long [process] ahead of us. Our objective is to hold our event in California and to introduce what PRIDE is to the fans and, not through the TV, to see the live event is totally different. So we’d like to show what really is PRIDE to the American people.
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Sakakibara: At the moment we think that those fans who watch PRIDE events through the pay-per-view or DVD, but not live, they’re a big fan of mixed martial arts, not necessarily [only] PRIDE fans.
Gross: I ask this question because it was so important today and
over the process of the last year and even over the last five years
for things unique to PRIDE — the ring and the rules — to stay
intact. Why were these things so important for you to come to
promote in the United States when you could have come to promote at
any time under what are accepted as the North American Unified
Rules?
Sakakibara: Over the course of seven, eight years since we started the PRIDE brand, of course we have changed several times the rules to always update the current needs of the audience and also to make sure that the fighters are safe. But the original concept of mixed martial arts is to get rid of all the barriers of the different martial arts. We have opened the door to all the different discipline fighters — including wrestling, boxing, judo, jiu-jitsu, everybody — so our rules are more open to those fighters who are coming from different backgrounds. It is very important to keep our rules the current rules. The rules that we have request to be an alternate rules (in California) is because we believe those rules are unique to PRIDE and we don’t want to jeopardize that uniqueness, then come to the U.S. So we want to keep those rules only for maybe PRIDE. From our experience over 450 fights in PRIDE we know and we have proven that PRIDE rules [are] safer than any other event. We believe in that and our record says it’s a safe event, safe rules. If we come to the U.S. and compromise with the current Unified Rules — which we don’t know if they’re safe to us, to our fighters — if we take those rules as it is then we may be proving that our rules aren’t safe enough. That’s not our direction moving forward. Because we believe in our rules, for us it’s not necessary to adopt any other rules that’s already sanctioned in Nevada or New Jersey. So that’s our thoughts.
Gross: In North America, particularly the United States, there’s a movement in mixed martial arts towards getting a broad uniformity, getting unified rules. Does PRIDE at all envision a situation in which every promotion in the world, every show in the world is operating under one set of rules? And if you do, what do those rules look like?
Sakakibara: We believe in unified rules all over the world.
Gross: So you think eventually the American regulatory bodies, the state athletic commissions, the Nevadas and New Jerseys of the world will see …
Sakakibara: We are talking about worldwide, not just U.S. So when we see worldwide, global unified rules it will probably be PRIDE rules.
Gross: Why do you feel that PRIDE rules will become accepted as the world unified rules and not the rules that are being worked on throughout North America.
Sakakibara: That is because we are not using those rules. If we are not using those rules — American rules — then it’s not going to be worldwide rules. And, especially the biggest market in the world is still Japan. Japan is not going to use a cage. Japan is not going to use five three-minute rounds. We believe that it takes so many years to become sanctioned or come to this point [in the United States] is because it was started with a cage. If it was a ring it shouldn’t have taken that long. And if you see worldwide promoters or events, outside the U.S., we believe most of the promoters use a ring instead of a cage.
