Old Pride fights worked (predetermined)

I have been watching MMA about 15 years at this stage and have been active in the community MMA online community for quite some time.

Going back to my old Pride days , it was my understanding that some of the fights were worked or predetermined due to a strong cross over with Pro wrestling .

Some fighters have come out saying that they were in worked fights ect ect .....

Whilst having a conversation with a work colligue about this , he became highly defensive about this and said it didnt happen.

I know there is no official line stating that this did happen but i thought this was a well known issue that pride had .

Anybody any thoughts ?

pablohoney87

The only one thats very well known to be fixed is mark coleman vs Nobuhiko Takada. Even the commentators were puzzeled by some of colemans actions during the fight.

rovert

There has been some tears on here about this before *whispers* Japanese MMA was strongly linked to Pro Wrestling. PRIDE was setup initally as a promotional vechile for this Pro Wrestler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuhiko_Takada

Read the tranistion to MMA section.

There has been one or two pre Zuffa UFC worked fights as well.

Edit found this an old Dave Meltzer post:

Pride started like RINGS, 50% shoots and 50% works. Like RINGS, the percentage of shoots grew and the last few years worked matches are either gone completely, or rare. That was a work(Nathan Jones vs. Kitao, early Pride), and half that card was a work.

Before someone gets the wrong idea, RINGS did not start at 50% work. It started as probably 90% work or more. By the time Pride started, RINGS was doing many shoot matches, and when Pride got popular, RINGS went to an all shoot format because its fan base understood the difference.

Shooto to my knowledge has never had a suspicious fight.

UFC management has never worked a fight. Two or three UFC fights in history were worked by management of the fighters inovolved without knowledge of UFC. One PPV main event and a huge fight, that fell apart at the end, fell apart because one of the participants refused to work and the other refused unless it was a work. But the UFC had no knowledge of the time of any of this happening and it was nine years ago.

Coleman-Takada was a work. I can tell you that 100% because weeks before the fight I was involved in a discussion regarding how they would work the finish. There's a lot more to this story but people who don't understand Japan, wrestling and the fight business will never get this, but had Takada not been given some bought and paid for wins early on, Pride would have folded long before Sakuraba got hot and turned it into what it turned into. Business was not good those early years and Takada was the only guy over, and people were losing faith in him. He needed a big win at that moment. It's never been an issue in Japan because all they were drawing were pro wrestling fans until probably 2001 anyway, and they understood business is business.

Niall0

rovert wrote: »

There has been one or two pre Zuffa UFC worked fights as well.

Which ones?

rovert

Niall0 wrote: »

Which ones?

Oleg Taktarov vs. Anthony Macias from UFC 6
Don Frye vs. Mark Hall from the 1996 Ultimate Ultimate but I dont Frye was in on it or something

DrPhilG

rovert wrote: »

Oleg Taktarov vs. Anthony Macias from UFC 6
Don Frye vs. Mark Hall from the 1996 Ultimate Ultimate but I dont Frye was in on it or something

Am I not right in thinking that Taktarov wasn't in on the Macias work either? They had the same management and the Manager felt that Taktarov would beat Macias but might be knackered from the effort so he forced Macias to roll over or he'd never get another fight again. So Taktarov went to the final fresh after a 12 second win while Tank went 2 minutes in his semi.

Pride Fighter

Dre as in Dray wrote: »

I have been watching MMA about 15 years at this stage and have been active in the community MMA online community for quite some time.

Going back to my old Pride days , it was my understanding that some of the fights were worked or predetermined due to a strong cross over with Pro wrestling .

Some fighters have come out saying that they were in worked fights ect ect .....

Whilst having a conversation with a work colligue about this , he became highly defensive about this and said it didnt happen.

I know there is no official line stating that this did happen but i thought this was a well known issue that pride had .

Anybody any thoughts ?

Take the words of online forums with a pinch of salt. I'd not trust them as far as I could throw them.

Pride was an MMA organisation. So was the UFC. Both had worked fights in the early days such as Takada's fights and Don Frye/Hall and the Taktarov one mentioned. They are just small blots on the overall spectrum.

Online fora such as sherdog are not to be taken as truth or gospel. They are just uber-trollfests with idiot fat American keyboard warriors who say the same lies over and over again.

rovert

Pride Fighter wrote: »

Pride was an MMA organisation. So was the UFC. Both had worked fights in the early days such as Takada's fights and Don Frye/Hall and the Taktarov one mentioned. They are just small blots on the overall spectrum.

You cant say that categorically, yes UFC run real tight ship it seems on this front but fighters are still reluctant to talk about worked fights even in distanced retrospect. As it relates to Japan specfically due to the Yakuza and the fear burning bridges with Japanese promotions fighters are VERY reluctant to even talk about it. As a result of it you could summise that it is still happening over there in some form.

Evil_Clown

Bas Rutten admits here that some of the rings fights were pre-determined

http://mixedmartialartvideos.com/bas-rutten-on-fighting-words-%E2%80%93-video/

calex71

There was one very recently at a Dream event that convinced me the "work" is alive and well in Japan. The fight escapes me at the moment

Edit: Could have been Minowa vs Sokoudjou @ Dynamite

rovert

Evil_Clown wrote: »

Bas Rutten admits here that some of the rings fights were pre-determined

http://mixedmartialartvideos.com/bas-rutten-on-fighting-words-%E2%80%93-video/

Enjoyed this alot cheers.