Pride 11 card: WTF is this crap?!?

[fil]

How do you follow Pride 10 what may of been the peak of MMA events to date, with this...



Pride 11
October 31
Osaka Castle Hall

Sakuraba vs Shannon "the cannon" Ritch

Vochanchin vs Takada

Tom Erickson vs Heath Herring

Naoya Ogawa vs Satake

Goodridge vs Yoshiaki Yatsu (44 years old)

Yvel vs Venderlei Silva
At least their is one match that is intresting...

Akira Shoji vs Herman Renting

Otsuka may also be on the card.



[Edited by fil on 10-18-2000 at 09:30 PM]

[E1am]

I was just checking out Pride's homepage and they listed the scheduled fighters for the next tournament. They didn't have all the matchups listed that you have, but it looks pretty bad. I think the are trying to hype up Ogawa's fight and probably don't want to take away from it by having any other good fights. And, man, I was really hoping we had seen the last of Takada in the ring. I also hope his fight isn't a work. Please Igor, don't do it.

[bobby_steeles]

that poster looks more like it's for a bad japanese sitcom than it does for a mma tournament. and what the hell is with that picture of sak?! why didn't they just get a picture of him riding a unicycle or something for cryin out loud...

[L3FTH00K]

from what I have read about SAK he likes to kid around

[bobby_steeles]

yeah, HE likes to kid around. but who the hell picked THAT photo to put on the damn poster? i dont think sak made it himself.

[Zhoozhitsu]

Pride always comes up w/ surprise fights at the last moment. I must agree that this is one PATHETIC card, and an even worse poster. Maybe they're gathering their funds for a spectacular year end show. Who the f*ck knows.

And what happened to Ryan Gracie?!!!

[fil]

Note that this Pride will NOT be shown on North American PPV but a few matches might be shown on the Pride 12 PPV.

[Cooter]

DSE is planning to have Pride 12 be another blockbuster card, and they are going to continue the pattern of having every other card be mediocre. This policy started with Pride 9, which was intended to be a smaller-scale event in between the GP and Pride 10. This way, they can have events often and have spectacular cards half the time (they cannot afford to have blockbusters every 3 months), and fan favorites like Sakuraba can have a "rest match". They're done it in the past, e.g. Saku-Macias, so this is nothing new either.

[Cooter]

BTW, DSE announced that Pride 12 on December 23 will be a HUGE show with the following fighters (courtesy of http://puroresupower.com/):

Renzo Gracie
Ryan Gracie
Mark Coleman
Mark Kerr
Ken Shamrock
Gilbert Yvel
Igor Vovchanchin
Gary Goodridge
Ricco Rodriguez
Kazushi Sakuraba
Kazuyuki Fujita
Enson Inoue
Masaaki Satake
Alexander Otsuka
Akira Shoji

Looks like this will be a pretty good card!

[Zhoozhitsu]

What happened to Vitor???

[Cooter]

Zhoo,

The word is that DSE is fed up with Vitor's new boring style. They thought they were getting one of the most exciting fighters on the planet, but his fight with Matsui was probably the worst of Pride 10. It's not clear if/when he'll be back.

[GROUND CONTROL]

Cooter, the reason that Vitor's fight did not air was not because it was boring. The reason it was excluded was because it was a very brutal beating. DSE said that it was not good for the sport to see Matsui getting pounded.

Makes you wonder why they didn't pull the Enson vs Igor fight. But atleast Enson did try to fight back for a while.

[Cooter]

GC, that's interesting that they didn't air the Belfort-Matsui fight, I didn't know. It was a gore-fest, but DSE should've known what they were getting into, given that Matsui has shown that he can take punishment but little else.

Still, two facts remain--the Belfort-Matsui fight WAS boring, and DSE is not happy with Belfort's performances. The president of DSE has explicitly said that they are not interested in fighters who do not excite the crowd, regardless of whether they win or lose. Notice Goes and Barreto aren't slated to fight in the next two Prides either, and I have a feeling that Barreto will NEVER be back. It seems that the Top Team's new conservative strategy has backfired, even though they have been winning consistently.

[fil]

Having a smaller scale show is reasonable but the problem I have with this show is that most of these matches are very lopsided mismatches (asuming no works),it is beleivable that every match could last under 5 minutes. UFC has cheaper cards but at least they usually match fighters near each others level. Even Macias had improved (IFC tournament winner) to the point that he was considered a slight threat, Shannon is no Macias, LOL...

This card is more like alot of local boxing cards, fast impresive wins for the pros to prop up their records.

DSE/Pride president has said to the Japaneese press that he has no use for fighters that cant entertain the crowd. This may of influenced how the fighters fought in Pride 10 which had alot of very agresive fights not typical of most MMA events.

Since Pride has no oficial belts (exept for tourny winner) they are not obliged to bring certain fighters back. UFC is forced to bring certain "boring" fighters back because they hold the lightwight or heavyweight belt and have to defend it.

Note that card for Pride 12 is still much in the air so expect plenty of changes, they usualy anounce fighters before even the fighters know. Matt Serra vs Johil de Oliveira should also be on Pride 12 if the match is not added to the Pride 11 card.

[YeLLa-TiGeR]

Now thats a smart marketing stratagy on the behalf of PRIDE. What they are doing does make a lot of sense. But I'd give Vitor another chance!