Pride president Nobuyuki Sakakibara announced at a press conference this evening (very early morning U.S. time) at the Tokyo Roppongi Hills that Dream Stage Entertainment has sold the assets of the Pride Fighting Championships to Lorenzo Fertitta-led ownership group of the UFC.
The new company, called Pride Fighting Championships Worldwide, would operate as a separate company from UFC. Sakakibara publicly announced he was leaving the organization. No new organization president was announced nor were much in the way of details given about the future.
An estimated 2,500 fans attended the outdoor press conference, with Sakakibara on the verge of tears when talking about his involvement ending with the organization. Both he and Nobuhiko Takada, as expected, tried to give the impression it was a merger ("a new relationship as one joint team") as opposed to a buyout.
Dana White, Fertitta and Sakakibara followed hours later with a conference call from Japan for the U.S. media to answer questions on the ownership change.
The battle plan will be to run separate shows and maintain separate staffs. The attempt will be to make the promotions competitive rivals, even though they would no longer be business rivals. No specifics were given, but they only seemed to indicate minimal mixing of talent. There would be a Pride roster of fighters and a UFC roster. There would be matches of champions in each promotion, although when and how often had not been determined. The indication was the mixing of talent would be limited to occasional champion vs. champion matches, perhaps once per year in each weight class, where neither specific title would be at stake. Although White or Fertitta would bring up any names of specific dream fights to the U.S. press, in the Japanese meeting he brought up Fedor Emelianenko vs. Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell vs. Mauricio Shogun Rua, Dan Henderson vs. Anderson Silva, Josh Barnett vs. Andrei Arlovsky and Georges St. Pierre vs. Takanori Gomi as potential matches.
Pride would continue holding matches in the ring and be, as Fertitta called it, a "Japanese-centric" organization while UFC would be an "American-centric" organization. The only significant change talked about would be worldwide unified rules would be put in place, which would be the same rules UFC fights under, with the elimination of knees to the head on a downed fighter, stomps and soccer kicks in Pride, but adding elbows. White said Pride would keep its judging criteria for fights in Japan, but obviously, when running in the U.S., would use the commission-dictated ten-point-must system. Pride will also have weight classes change for worldwide consistency, and will crown champions at 155, 170, 185, 205 and heavyweight. Currently Pride has champions at 161 (Takanori Gomi), 183 (Dan Henderson), 205 (Henderson) and heavyweight (Fedor Emelianenko).
No new television deal, which Pride desperately needs in both Japan and the U.S. to be viable long-term, were announced. White did mention hoping to get back on the Fuji Network. Pride will run shows in the U.S., although no date for a next show was announced. UFC is looking at running shows in Japan.
Fertitta and White indicated Pride heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko is under contract to the new organization.
Dream Stage Entertainment's final event will be on 4/8 from the Saitama Super Arena. They announced a Pride vs. UFC match with Jeff Monson vs. Kazuyuki Fujita today, although that bout had been expected even before the deal was finalized and Monson had gotten out of his UFC contract. Also announced was a Pride pro wrestler type battle with Minowa Man (the new ring name for Ikuhisa Minowa) vs. Don Frye (returning to Pride with the expiration of his K-1 contract). The new organization plans on keeping the current schedule commitment of Pride events.
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Originally Posted by Saint of Killers
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