- [Narrator] Japan, our former foe in the Pacific.
It experienced what economists call a post-war miracle
as their economy reached unforeseen growth for decades,
to the point that they had the world's
second highest gross domestic product,
and a per capita income as high or higher
than any of its Western counterparts
from the 70s to the 80s.
By the early 80s, Japan surpassed the US
in production of cars and electronics,
and its richest institutions were eyeing
up prized American real estate.
The trade deficit between the two states ballooned.
That booming Japanese economy?
It turns out, for that last decade,
it was due to our old friends, cheap credit
and overspeculation.
(foreboding music)
Real estate stocks and every other kind of instrument
was so overpriced after the 1980s
that the Bank of Japan tried to halt the resulting inflation
by massively increasing their interest rates,
that banks could lend each other money with.
This caused prices of those overvalued equities
to crater, and since every major institution
was loaded with debt from trying to buy more assets,
they were now totally underwater and unable
to make their basic payments.
The government swooped in to rescue firms
that were too big to fail, guaranteeing their debt
and injecting them with more capital.
These were called zombie firms,
lurching shells of their former overborrowing selves,
who were worth less than their combined assets,
as they shuffled around aimlessly in post-bubble Japan.
Lenders who once cut a check to anyone with a pulse
now barely opened their books at all.
Youth unemployment surged, wages fell,
Japan's economy lost a fifth of its value.
But someone had money, and a lot of it.
People didn't stop needing money
just because the banks told them no.
They turned to loan sharks, and in Japan,
loan sharks often belong
to the preeminent organized crime groups, Yakuza.
Yakuza, like anyone else,
have to park their money somewhere.
(dramatic music)
If the openly trashy UFC was America's answer
to the pain of dislocation
and a changing antiseptic world,
the grand baroque display of Pride Fighting Championship
was an oasis for a beleaguered, staggering Japan.
(dramatic music)
In 1997, the UFC was toiling in the dark ages.
They could fill smaller venues,
but guys were mostly giving and receiving brain damage
for archival footage that would be seen by most
decades after the fact.
At this same time in Japan, Pride's first event,
a match between the legendary Rickson Gracie
and Nobuhiko Takada, drew 47,000 fans at the Tokyo Dome.
(dramatic music)
While the UFC was still working out the kinks
of its supposedly safer rule set,
Pride fighters were permitted
to soccer kick an opponents' head.
It's exactly what it sounds like,
as Mirko Cro Cop demonstrates here
against the unfortunate Ron Waterman.
Their opening rounds went a grueling 10 minutes.
Instead of matching up a ladder,
they did one night tournaments, as the UFC once did.
Only the loose medical oversight
and the promotion's pro-steroid policy
allowed Pride's champions to so consistently
break laws of God and man.
It also didn't hurt that this was the start
of the second era of MMA.
The first one, the one of the early UFC,
was characterized by fighters only excelling
at one set of skills. It was striker versus grappler,
wrestler versus judo player, et cetera.
By the time that Pride rolled around,
MMA athletes began developing secondary skill sets
that would allow them to oppose their primary ones.
Ukrainian Igor Vovchanchyn, originally just a kickboxer,
developed a command of advanced punching techniques,
in addition to becoming more formidable
while grappling on the ground.
It was tough for a relatively single faceted
jujitsu player like Francisco Bueno,
to know how to attack him, so Bueno didn't.
A minute in, he got danced into a corner
and suffered one of the most brutal knockouts
in the history of the sport.
(crowd shouting)
- [Announcer] Igor Vovchanchyn, oh my god!
- [Narrator] Wrestlers like Rampage Jackson
developed rudimentary boxing that enabled them
to set up their takedowns or, as we see here,
use the threat of his takedown to surprise
Kevin Randleman with a barrage of strikes.
Unsurprisingly, what started out big only got bigger.
Because of the influence of both pro-wrestling
and involvement with organized crime,
there was a lot of silly bullshit.
Your typical Pride card may have been headlined
by, say, Russian hardass Fedor Emelianenko,
versus Croatian Special Forces officer Mirko Cro Cop,
a match steeped in nationalism,
history, and feverish anticipation, of seeing a guy
who would seemingly walk through anything to win,
against a man with a ballistic missile
for a left high kick, to determine who was truly
the scariest Eastern European stoic.
You would get some other legit fights,
legends like Takanori Gomi, Hayato Sakurai, and Shogun Rua,
but they would be sandwiched in between matches
that were kind of like "fat guy versus whoever."
Consider Bob Sapp, who was enormous, artless,
and beloved by everyone.
Once an offensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings,
all 350 pounds of him were suspended
by the NFL for alleged steroid use.
A few years later, he showed up in the Pride ring
with nothing but football and pro wrestling on his resume,
and zero actual martial arts ability.
In his second fight, he met Kiyoshi Tamura,
a disciplined veteran who had notched wins
over several notable fighters, including Renzo Gracie.
Sapp, who outweighed Tamura by 150 pounds,
appeared to have absolutely no plan of attack
beyond bull rushing him and throwing a haymaker.
That plan, plus 11 seconds, was all he needed.
This was not the early UFC.
It was not an ostensibly noble quest
to determine the superior fighting style.
It was a promotion rife with freak shows
that showed enormous crowds what it looked like
when a normal looking guy got hit by an enormous strong guy.
Management often fucked with fighters,
switching their opponents at the last minute
to psych them out and giving them
only a week or two to prepare.
Multiple fighters alleged some matches were fixed outright.
The one fight more or less confirmed
by a participant to be rigged was former UFC champion
Mark Coleman diving into a heel hook from Nobuhiko Takada,
who, by all rights, should have been plastered
all over the mat by Coleman.
Said Coleman, years later, "I needed to support my family.
"They guaranteed me another fight after that,
"and I needed that security.
"It was what it was, I'm going to leave it at that."
(dramatic music)
Pride was often not even close
to a legitimate sporting event,
but for all the freak shows, rigged fights
and weird bullshit, it could feel bigger than a sport, too.
Take Mauricio Shogun Rua and his otherworldly
2005 tournament run.
(gentle music)
At a time where most fighters could juice
to their heart's content,
Shogun didn't look like the Olympia competitor
his opponents and his Chute Boxe stable mates resembled.
The guys who dominated the tables in Pride
had looks, howling rage, terrifying iciness,
or smartass attitudes that endeared
the marketing side as well as the matchmakers.
Some quiet 23 year old who smiled bashfully
when interviewed was not the type.
He had the body of a podcaster
who hits the gym a few times a week,
but also the youthful good looks
and friendly affect of a podcaster.
He was just an unlikely tournament hero.
Most thought he would fare fine in the 2005
Middleweight Grand Prix, but would ultimately wash out.
(dramatic string music)
He was dealt American wrestle-boxer
Quinton Rampage Jackson on his first go.
(anticipatory music)
In under five minutes, he rocked Jackson,
pulverized his body, and bullied him into a corner
where he stomped him out like he was an NFL t-shirt
someone burned in a protest gone awry.
(dramatic music)
He drew rival camp Brazilian Top Team's
Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in his next go.
Nogueira was the twin brother of former Pride
heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira,
a famously tough fighter who survived
being run over by a fruit truck as a child,
temporary paralysis, and its resulting physical limitations
to become an impossible to finish grappling phenom.
His brother wasn't as good a grappler,
but being that he avoided the fruit truck,
Rogerio was a little lighter, a little faster,
and a far better boxer.
This is when Shogun's luck was supposed to run out,
but there was no luck at play.
The younger fighter pushed Rogerio to the limit.
Both men dropped each other, but Shogun got the edge
through takedowns and aggression.
These fights were weeks apart,
however, Shogun had a double date later in the month
to determine the tournament's final conclusion.
(dramatic music)
First, Alistair Overeem, a physical specimen
who suffered from frontrunner syndrome
and trainers who made such an unusually big man
cut to 205 pounds and nearly die every time.
Still, Alistair had dangerous power
and a guillotine choke from hell,
but Shogun had already savaged one superstar
and triumphed over another.
He stopped the Dutchman at six minutes
and 42 seconds in the first round.
- [Announcer] And Shogun first, Shogun continues.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] This was where things were supposed
to get truly difficult.
(intense music)
Ricardo Arona was the ur-asshole of Brazilian MMA.
A chiseled specimen next to Shogun's normie gym guy,
Arona was a rich kid lothario who never saw
a way to fight dirty that he didn't like.
He did everything he could
to be an absolute prick in his matches.
He stuck his thumbs in Kazushi Sakuraba's wounds
to gape them open during their fight.
A year later, he would go on to force a tap out
from Alistair Overeem, then deliver
an absolutely filthy late hit.
Instead of stopping fights with his unequal technique,
Arona would just lay on people,
suffocating their movement and waiting
until the final bell rang.
He did this to Wanderlei Silva in the previous round.
So Shogun, the one from Chute Boxe,
with worse takedown defense
and more youthful imprudence was fucked, right?
(dramatic music)
Shogun started out the fight with a flying tornado kick
and was immediately taken down.
This is where it's supposed to end,
with the young upstart making a quick mistake
and being sentenced to several minutes of prone sweating.
But if it wasn't apparent by now, Shogun was special.
Shogun's hips immediately opened up,
and instead of desperately hanging on
in hopes of keeping Arona from a better position,
he snatched an incredibly rare omaplata submission,
where one does a near full circle from their backs
while catching the person on top's arm in their hips
so as to pop out their shoulder joint.
The omaplata wasn't about to be finished,
but Shogun had no intention of stopping the fight that way.
Instead, he used his newly gained top position
to escape the ground, went for a stomp
on Arona's smug face, missed,
then beat his fucking brains in,
becoming the unlikely Grand Prix champion
only two minutes and 34 seconds into round one.
(dramatic music)
In retrospect, it made a ton of sense.
Shogun was the first really excellent athlete
of the two dimensional era, and was an absolute
offensive powerhouse in his two main arsenals,
muay thai on the feet, and utter brutality on the ground.
But everything is always inevitable after it happens.
While it's unfolding, you still get to suspend
your disbelief and watch the narrative
that binds all great fights.
Shogun's run was everything people loved about Pride.
It was an insane spectacle that, despite itself,
told stories through its fights
that transcended what was a very niche sport
on the other side of the ocean.
Let's check in on that other side
of that ocean, while we're here.
Remember the first big push for MMA in the United States,
when culture was getting cleaned up
and the economy was getting more degrading for more people?
It was just as quickly thrown into the dark ages,
while Japan in limbo played out its wildest fantasies
with the same sport. But when it came back
into our cultural imagination,
we were more ready for it this time.
(helicopter blades whirring)
America in 2005 was drunk off cheap credit
and revenge manifested as endless warfare,
and while we used our imperial might
to impart our superior way of life on hapless nations,
we let a major American city drown amidst billions allocated
to the nebulous concept of homeland security.
(helicopter blades whirring)
It was a good time for a select group,
those who could benefit from quick credit,
short term investments,
or prosthetic sales for American troops.
(crowd applauding)
But in our unconscious minds, we saw our WASP
secret society president pretend
to be a simple cowboy while he spewed megachurch bullshit
about how God was his close personal friend.
(crowd applauding)
Our culture had an insatiable need for violence,
but Iraq was now just too real,
with Americans dying in scores in asymmetrical warfare.
We loved the concept of revenge,
but couldn't deal with the cost of how it was dealt
to the unsuspecting weddings, schools, and hospitals
on the other side of the world.
(helicopter blades whirring)
But there was some very real, very consensual violence
that did not cause body bags filled with Americans
or the humiliation of an empire
that could be found in mixed martial arts.
The unambiguity of fighting didn't hurt either.
When we called a bunch of Ivy League dickheads
profiting off of people's shitty credit "ownership society"
and mass murder "nation building,"
it was nice to see two guys fucking demolish each other
without someone telling you
it was competitive self learning, or whatever, beforehand.
(tense music)
Your home belongs to the bank,
your gas tank is lining the pockets
of those who had more to do with 9/11
than the country your brother just died fighting in,
and you're told the economy is in high gear,
even though your paycheck is buying less and less.
But what you just saw in the cage was unambiguous.
One person hit another, and the other fell.
Nothing about it lied to you.
(dramatic music)
In other words, the earnest UFC
was actually seeing the benefits
of a nation that needed something as tangible
as tribal tattoos and knockouts.
First, they had some unusually successful pay-per-views,
thanks to the stoic Chuck Liddell,
the wizened Randy Couture, and the muddle mouthed
trash talk of Tito Ortiz.
While they were losing so much money
the Fertittas considered the selling company,
they went all in on reality TV, and it paid off big.
(perky music)
"The Ultimate Fighter" placed 16 fighters
in a gaudy Vegas McMansion as they fought
through a tournament to decide the ultimate fighter himself.
Its first season finally showed regular American
cable watching families the world of MMA.
The stars of TUF One were all the types
of bizarre human beings you find in the sport,
from the irony poisoned
but tougher than dogshit Forrest Griffin,
to the inconceivably prickish Josh Koscheck.
Audiences were dispelled of the notion
of fighters as terminators who lived,
breathed and slept harming other human beings.
Instead of T-1000, we saw John Connor.
A bunch of fucked up outcasts who could be funny,
vulnerable, cruel, petty and compassionate,
in the ways that people who never really gelled
anywhere in society could.
This show exposed casual viewers to the sometimes
bleak realities of fighting for a living.
In the third episode, light heavyweight
Bobby Southworth found himself
with only 24 hours to make weight for his fight
against Lodune Sincaid.
Within those 24 hours,
he had to somehow cut approximately 20 pounds,
an impossible task for the uninitiated,
but a common practice in the world of fighting.
His teammate, Josh Koscheck,
and his coach, Chuck Liddell,
shut him inside a sauna for one hour intervals,
behind a door with a sign on it
that recommended no more than 20 minutes.
Southworth, wearing a sweatsuit
on top of a plastic suit, pedaled a stationary bike
in the 210 degree heat, for awhile anyway.
He eventually lied down, and was so weakened
by the end of the hour that he had to butt scoot
his way out of a room hot enough to slow cook a brisket.
(bright music)
Two hours before the weigh-in,
Southworth still had three pounds left to lose,
so it was back to the sauna for him.
By this point, his kidneys were aching
and he had to be dragged back in.
When it was all over, Southworth
had just barely made weight.
He would eventually knock out his opponent
in the second round, but to the average cable viewer,
the superhuman feat of strength
was the one they had already seen.
A reality TV producer with all of the Adderall
and non-union contracts in the world
couldn't have planned the finale, though.
With the show itself being a tournament structure,
the finale featured the top two fighters
in both of the season's weight classes
vie for a vaunted six figure UFC contract.
The UFC, being very much who they are,
split the contract across three years
and wouldn't pay out the maximum amount
unless the fighter went undefeated,
so it wasn't a guaranteed annual contract,
but they sure fought like it was.
3.3 million people watched Stephan Bonnar
fight Forrest Griffin in the finale.
It was beyond the wildest expectations
of Dana White and Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta.
(bright music)
UFC 52, where TUF One coaches
Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture
squared off in a rematch of a pre-reality TV fight
that Liddell dropped did 300,000 buys.
That was double the previous record,
and it was the new normal.
The modern UFC was built on the blood and scar tissue
shed on the mat that night.
Pride, then the top promotion in the world,
had some real competition.
A victor would be declared, but not before America
finally crashed from its upper high,
and the rest of the world had to go through
the same withdrawals as us.
The promotion that once nearly vanished
from the face of the earth, now had aims of taking it over.
Dana was beginning to set goals
once thought impossible for the sport.
Years later, in 2013, the UFC's Twitter account
tweeted out a photo that they soon deleted
for reasons unclear.
This photo showed Dana and the Fertittas
standing below three words in big bold letters,
that suddenly seemed a lot less crazy
than they would have back when they were holding fights
in a Mississippi casino.
(dramatic music)