UFC Confirms Suspicions, Gives Japan the Cold Shoulder

Continue developing your foothold in Australia. Let OneFC develop and eventually buy it up.

Just an idea.

Interest in MMA in Japan is at an all time low in Japan so putting together Monster card and having tank is pointless so instead they take babysteps to see if there’s even a miniscule amount of interest. It’s like buying a lottery ticket. If you lose no big deal, you didn’t risk/spend much, but if you win you make a killing. If interest were higher then it make sense to put on a showstopper card, but in this climate no since there’s a chance that it would tank and hurt their profit margins. By putting on a smaller show they get see if there’s any lingering interest while not punching a hole in their profits.

I’ve been beating the drum that the Japanese expansion at this point in time is a bad business decision for the UFC for a while now.

That being said, I’m ok with it. With the UFC basically dominating the higher end MMA market for a while they’ve gotten complacent with their “we can do no wrong” approach. They need a “loss” to remember that the English speaking world is only part of the total global market.

This weak move into the Asian MMA scene gives other orgs like One FC time to keep building their brand and really give the UFC some credible global competition.

Then I give up, Zach Arnold is right, the UFC are just being utter dicks here. From the timing I figured it would be some mega combo where you’d get a 4-hour Vegas show leading into a 4-hour Japan show (with maybe one dark match on the Japan show). A 3-hour Japan show acting as a live lead-in is just a total dick move, fuck that noise.

UFC going to Japan reminds me of when wrestling promotion ROH traveled to Japan to do some shows. Years ago the former columnist for Cageside wrote this about ROH Japanese endeavors:

“If you’ve been around die-hard wrestling, comic book, animation, video game, pornography, toy, or movie fans over the years, you’ve probably felt some of the allure of Japan. Via a weird fetishization of the ENTIRE COUNTRY, it’s considered this magical land full of five star matches, subservient women who want our big American penises, the most innovative video games, violent art films, and robot dogs. It’s a mindset that has reverberated through the geekier aspects of popular culture for the last 15 years or so, getting worse and worse over time. Somehow this concept of Japan conned professional con men. I’m not quite sure how, but it happened. Thus, ROH spent massive amounts of money to run what were basically normal ROH shows in Japan, just because they are huge marks for the concept of Japan. These shows featured nobody of any consequence that hasn’t been to ROH before. Not enough Americans were in attendance to generate a buzz based off their live reports of the show. It cost a huge amount of money to put on. Plus, in falling victim to this con, they were unable to con their usual marks effectively. A fan or two flew to Japan specifically for these shows. If you have a fan dedicated enough to spend thousands of dollars on your company, shouldn’t you try to con him on to giving the money TO YOUR COMPANY instead of an airline? How do you run a wrestling promotion and get conned so hideously while also failing to properly con your marks? "

Replace “ROH” with "UFC’ and “wrestling” with “MMA” and its an exact mirror of the situation. Stupid on all parts because of the 20th century romanticizing of The Lad of the Rising Sun.

Any chance of yakuza involvement behind the scenes?
Perhaps they are unwilling to let an MMA event run there without their approval. I can’t imagine the yakuza associated with Pride have all disappeared in the last few years.

I don’t even think the UFC knows this yet, why would anyone where know? The safe answer though is “not Fox.”

Although the Japan card isn’t on PPV, I don’t really think that the PPV market would support this (both in the States and in Japan). By making the card open to everyone, I think that Dana F-ing White (whom I normally really dislike) is giving the Japanese audience a chance to demonstrate interest in the UFC style of MMA, while giving the audience everywhere else a really good, 2 or 3 hour card of widely available free fights.

The biggest audience for PPV is in the USA, and by leading up with some good fights, it’s a half-decent marketing strategy for the actual PPV portion.

I will never argue against free fights, and I think that what we’re being shown will be some truly good fights. This is just my opinion, of course, but I don’t think that this is a show of disrespect to anyone by just showing it to everyone.

I’d like to hear some additional discussion on why a 10AM start time and why, if it’s a good card full of good fights, it’s a “slap in the face”. I don’t pretend to have the knowledge that Mr. Roling has, but it seems to me like the UFC is catering to the `lack of real drawing power` by making it available to anyone who wants to tune in on free TV. Why offer a Japanese PPV if they can`t make decent money off of it, and why not offer a great free card to a potentially huge audience that has nothing to lose?

Again, I don`t pretend to have the knowledge of a lot of the previous post-ers, but to me this seems like a smart decision to reach both a good (established) PPV audience and a potentially large new audience.

Am I missing something here?

I mean I’m not quite sure what I’m missing. If the UFC doesn’t have the popularity that many are stating, why would they make the big leap and center the event around Japan when it could fail? Doesn’t it make more sense to test the market like this, and then follow up after? If it doesn’t draw, the audience will look no different then most do during the undercard fights.

I also wonder if the UFC will take a page out of the OneFC promotional book. A read a lot of praise of OneFC’s push of the Champion vs. Champion promos, granted it never materialized really. But, isn’t that something the UFC could do? Hatsu Hioki vs. Jose Aldo? I’m sure there are enough former and current Olympic, Judo, BJJ, Wrestling, or Kickboxing/Muay Thai champions on the roster to make a card that wouldn’t have to be all for show. I’m not suggesting a complete ripoff, maybe just a little Otis-ish.

At the end of the day, maybe it’s just that the allure of Professional Wrestling and MMA isn’t what it used to be in Japan. DREAM and Sengoku never approached what PRIDE had done there, and the hey-day of the giant Pro Wrestling crowds on a monthly basis have passed. This is from a Westerner who has only Google and StumbleUpon as a resource to form these opinions, so it could be a load of shit. But there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to prove otherwise at this point.

The people asking why Zuffa would want to stomp out the memory of a property that they own need to look no further then the world of pro wrestling where Vince McMahon (after buying WCW and all of the rights to the company) buried the WCW’s top stars. Vince McMahon in the early 2000’s was in a war with his own intellectual property because he lacked competition. Zuffa may fall into the same trap if UFC: Japan is being done purely based around ego (or even if its one of the major factors).

Remember, Dana White has taken a lot of q’s from Vinny Mac himself and has had tons of meetings with him.

Who puts on a mma event at 8am? Is this accurate information?

I’ll be really surprised if this happens. They’ll realise it’s too soon to try this stuff and the Japan card will either run as a standalone or not at all.

This whole endeavor almost makes as little sense as matching up Hector Lombard and Trevor Prangley.

Even if they stack the card, the fact that it is at 10am local is complete BS. I hate it when they do this in Australia, and it is BS for Japan too.

Leland Roling you totally saved face on your rebuttles on the follow up!

• I have lived in Japan for a few years now, and he has great insight.

I want to add my two cents for what it’s worth and educate some the ignorant peeps to the cultral and socialocial aspects of Japan.
  

• Nationalism is strong and unified in Japan, always has been and always will.

‘’Kind of a shame that that’s the way it is, really. If I was the UFC, I would just tell Japan to go screw off if that is their attitude. ’’

→ You always play on their terms if you want to do business with them, it has always been this way always will. If they don’t see a direct benefit for Japan then why would they consider any business venture. If you didn’t know, Japanese people don’t consider MMA much of a sport, it is still regarded as entertainment closer to WWE than even that of Sumo. The majority of the ticket holders are people of status that are there enjoying a night out to be entertained and could care less of the MMA industry or UFC rankings. You won’t be seeing 17 – 25 year-olds willing to wake up and ‘rock’ doing the same for UFC/MMA …

This leads me to the last point about the slated time/ event.

• If you didn’t already know, there was an earthquake and following Tsunami in March of this year. The resulting HIGH valued yen /vs/ the very LOW american dollar is causing problems for the economy – and the business, manufacture, exporting and industrial sectors need improving. So what are the Japanese people doing? … Japanese are loyal to their employers more than ANY other country – most people have extended their work hours and or work weeks to accomodate their companies with little to no financial benefit to themselves. This is a major problem because 10 AM Sunday slot on the one day off most people get would be a tough sell to someone who just worked 72 hours and would like to sleep in or spend time with their family..

• So stop being ingnorant and childish because the lack of enthusiasm toward a culture that has enjoyed the entertainment of Combat sports longer than your country has been a country.