The UFC + Ishii: A doomed relationship?

Written by Lyman Hoyt   |   Thursday, February 05 2009

Dana White poses with Olympic gold medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii in Las Vegas prior to UFC 92.  The union of one of the biggest sports superstars in Japan and the USA's #1 MMA promotion has been a curious pairing from the start.

It may be a bit of a stretch to call Satoshi Ishii the “Michael Phelps of Japan”, but not by much.  His victory in the heavyweight judo competition at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was easily the defining moment of the games for his countrymen and was considered by most media outlets the #1 highlight of the year in all of sports.  Though Japan does well at the Olympics for a country of its size and has won gold medals in a number of sports, it’s important to keep in mind that until the late 1970’s judo was the country’s most popular sport.  While its popularity in the intervening decades has been supplanted by imported team sports like soccer and baseball, judo still holds especially high prestige among the Japanese sports fans and general public.

Ishii himself is also a marketing dream.  He’s especially big by Japanese standards with 240 pounds packed on his bulky 5’11” frame.  Not surprisingly, he’s tough as nails and a terror on the mat but away from the gym he comes off like an awkwardly cheerful overgrown boy.  He definitely seems younger than his 22 years, but gives off the vibe of a nice neighbor boy who you’d gladly pay to mow your lawn.  Unlike his telegenic American gold medalist counterpart Phelps, who acts as if he spent as much time working on media relations as his backstroke heading up to the Olympic games, Ishii’s demeanor is of an athlete who literally spent the bulk of his life in a gym only to emerge and find himself a national hero and superstar.  He alternately seems to be having the time of his life at the vortex of a media frenzy as he is somewhat overwhelmed by the attention.

In other words, he’s a Japanese marketing dream.  He’s also in a position where he would be set for life financially via endorsements and appearances even should he decide that he never wanted to wear a gi again.  After the Olympics, however, he announced that he was taking the same path as other recent superstar judoka like Hidehiko Yoshida and Yoshihiro Akiyama and would begin training for a career in mixed martial arts.

With the ability to offer him the most money and exposure, it seemed almost a fait accompli that Ishii would sign with DREAM and K-1 parent group FEG.  Obviously it’s a good idea to keep your options open in negotiations, so he also reportedly talked to Sengoku parent World Victory Road and Antonio Inoki’s Inoki Genome Federation pro wrestling group.    As expected, however, FEG reportedly presented Ishii with the most lucrative offer:  500 million yen (roughly $5.5 million US) to fight on DREAM and K-1 cards, with ‘incentive bonuses’ based on his drawing power and performance.  He would very likely become the highest paid mixed martial artist in the world before he’d even stepped into the ring for the first time.  The tentative plan was for Ishii to appear on the year end K-1/DREAM Fields Dynamite! joint show, if not fighting at least in a heavily hyped opportunity for FEG to unveil their investment.

Ishii then shocked the Japanese fight sport world by categorically rejecting FEG’s offer, saying that it was his “lifelong dream” to fight in the UFC.  While this rationale might sound plausible to a US based fan, it’s akin to a top college baseball player from a SEC school turning down a big offer from the Atlanta Braves saying that it’s his “lifelong dream” to play for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan’ Central League.  It frequently comes a shock to US MMA fans when immersed in Japan’s culture for the first time just how low the UFC ranks in the country’s fight sport pantheon.   In MMA, their profile is lower than DREAM and Sengoku, but even smaller groups like Shooto and DEEP.  Overall, the interest in and prestige of the UFC is well below not only boxing but even Japanese pro wrestling (puroresu).  The UFC is making some progress, and big fights like GSP/Penn and Lesnar/Couture now get higher profile coverage (Lesnar/Couture owed most of its interest in the Japanese press to Brock’s run as IWGP pro wrestling champ) but by no means is the #1 US MMA promotion considered on par with any of the major Japanese fighting groups. 

Ishii travelled to Las Vegas for UFC 92, with the Japanese media in tow covering his every move.  There were countless photo opportunities with Dana White, who spoke of Ishii in glowing terms, along with top UFC stars.  Upon his return to Japan, he was repeatedly photographed wearing UFC t-shirts while speaking enthusiastically about Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta and everyone else involved with the promotion.  He appeared at the Sengoku card in January addressing the audience from the ring and wearing his ubiquitous UFC shirt; his message was that he was “going to fight in America for awhile” but would eventually return to Japan.

There are a few threads of logic that can be pulled from this mess of irrationality.  While no one is buying that fighting in the UFC is Ishii’s “lifelong dream”, there’s certainly logic in thinking that becoming familiar to the US marketplace is a good career move.   He may have also realized that it was a good move from a competitive standpoint as the Japanese fight promotions are notorious for throwing MMA neophytes who can draw fans in over their head early.  For example, Hidehiko Yoshida made his professional MMA debut against Don Frye, and it’s a testament to his toughness and skill as a fighter that he won.  Nevertheless, Ishii likely saw the “writing on the wall” and realized that in the UFC he could learn his craft slowly without the pressure of justifying a huge contract with hastily arranged mega-fights against overwhelming opposition.  Japanese fans might not have been excited at the prospect of seeing Ishii in a preliminary match against an also ran from the previous season of “The Ultimate Fighter”, but that would be the smart move for his development as a fighter.

The UFC also has some potential upside from signing Ishii, the most obvious being that with one fell swoop they would become relevant in Japanese fight sports.  The UFC has struggled in Japan since their bungled acquisition of PRIDE (though they’ve spent much more time and resources opening the European market) and Ishii’s mere presence at one of their live events afforded them more coverage than anything else they’ve done.  Obviously the interest was in Ishii and not the UFC product, but it had to be apparent to the Zuffa hierarchy that, properly promoted, the gold medal winning judoka could make them a player in the Japanese market.

Of course were it *that* easy the UFC would today be running big co-promotional shows with PRIDE several times a year.  The biggest risk to the UFC is that not properly promoting Ishii could undermine their already tenuous image in Japan.  Things didn’t get off to a good start when Ishii was shown on the arena big screen and on TV during one of the untelevised preliminary matches and then didn’t appear at all during the live broadcast while celebrities like talented Las Vegas magician Criss Angel and Hollywood B-list actor David Spade did.  Mike Goldberg and particularly Joe Rogan were very complimentary of Ishii, so it made for a nice clip for Japanese TV.  At the same time, however, the fact that Ishii wasn’t “deemed worthy” to appear on the live PPV telecast is the sort of seemingly minor thing that could be taken as an affront by the decorum obsessed Japanese.

To the surprise of no one, the live crowd didn’t have a clue who Ishii was when shown on the TV screen.  Not that a UFC crowd in Las Vegas should be expected to know, but it does underscore a problem that would be almost impossible for Zuffa to reconcile and particularly if the goal of signing Ishii were to improve their stature in Japan:  they would have to find away to promote him like enough of a superstar to placate his countrymen, while dealing with the fact that their mainstream US fan base doesn’t have a clue who he is.  Furthermore, Zuffa doesn’t have a good track record at promoting Japanese fighters to the US fan base.  Ryo Chonan may suffer more from the fact that he spectacularly submitted Anderson Silva at PRIDE Shockwave 2004, and since this detail undermines the mythology of invulnerability that the UFC has woven around “The Spider” they’re likely keeping him low profile by design.  That doesn’t explain their inability to better promote former PRIDE mainstay Akihiro Gono.  Not being able to promote the flamboyant “DJ Gozma” is like not being able to figure out how to differentiate Liberace from other Las Vegas lounge performers.

At age 22, Ishii’s got plenty of time to develop as a fighter.  His biggest downside risk from signing with Zuffa is financial since he’d be lucky to get a fraction of what FEG is willing to pay him.  The competitive logic of learning his craft slowly notwithstanding, there’s a huge risk in automatically assuming that he can fight for the UFC for a few years and then cash a big check when he returns to Japan as the potential of injury and changing market conditions could seriously impact his market value.  On the other hand, it could be a risk he’s willing to take given that he’s got his celebrity both with the mainstream public and in the judo community to fall back on.  Still, it’s a logical assumption that the goal of all professional fighters is to maximize their income while facing the best competition possible.  For Ishii, a move to the UFC defies both components of that axiom.

There’s another very realistic scenario that it was all a negotiating ploy by Ishii.  The UFC was likely willing to “play along”, figuring that their investment of a few plane tickets and hotel suites would be worth the resulting PR surge in Japan.  Ishii and the UFC develop a cordial relationship which could be to the benefit of both parties down the road and both sides realized that a “long term commitment” was the right move at this point. 

With the recent revelation that Ishii has broken off UFC negotiations to entertain offers from other parties including US rival Affliction, that’s starting to look like the plausible explanation for the once “hot and heavy” courtship between Ishii and Zuffa.  With a number of fighters that are already huge stars in Japan (Josh Barnett, Fedor Emelianenko, Gilbert Yvel) and a deep roster of heavyweights, Affliction may be the best fit for Ishii among American promotions.  Ultimately, the Ishii/UFC “affair” could simply prove to be a “fling” that accrued small benefits to each party, but both realized that there was no long term future for the pairing. 

As a postscript to the Ishii’s relationship with the UFC, it apparently opened the doors for his move to the US where he’ll be training with the American Top Team in Florida.  That alone is a positive for his future development as a fighter, as he’ll be training with a “who’s who” of professional fighting including another recent convert from another discipline in former WWE superstar Bobby Lashley.  Training at a high level facility like ATT among such an abundance of talent is a career move that’s difficult to second guess.

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