[Inoki/PRIDE] 2001/12/31 Saitama Super Arena "INOKI BOM-BA-YE 2001"

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

Yuji Nagata [New Japan] vs. Mirko Cro Cop

Masaaki Satake [Monster Kingdom] vs. Sam Greco

Don Frye vs. Cyril Abidi

Gary Goodridge vs. Rene Roza

Tokimitsu Ishizawa [New Japan] vs. Shingo Koyasu [Seido Kaikan]

Nobuhiko Takada [Takada Dojo] vs. Mike Bernardo

Tadao Yasuda [free] vs. Jerome Le Banner

Inoki Army on the left, K-1 on the right. Order unknown although
Yasuda - LeBanner will be the main event.

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

Nobuhiko Takada [Takada Dojo] (3min 3R time limit draw) Mike Bernardo

Masaaki Satake [Monster Kingdom] (3min 5R time limit draw) Sam Greco

Gary Goodridge (3min 5R time limit draw) Rene Roza

Tokimitsu Ishizawa [New Japan] (3min 5R time limit draw) Shingo Koyasu [Seido Kaikan]

Antonio Inoki & The Great Sasuke [Michinoku] (4'02" octopus hold) Giant Silva [Team 2000] & Kouhaku Kamen

Don Frye (2R 0'34" sleeper hold) Cyril Abidi

Mirko Cro Cop (1R 0'21" TKO) Yuji Nagata [New Japan]

Tadao Yasuda [free] (2R 2'10" guillotine sleeper hold) Jerome Le Banner

[Ganso]

Yuji Nagata will go Freelance after his match with Akiyama on 2002/1/4, he'll probably go to NOAH in my opinion.

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

Or, maybe Inoki convinced him to leave New Japan or he will be spoiled in the sports entertainment?

[El Gran Kurtisimo]

This frustrates me to no end. Is it the promoters or the public who can't seem to separate shooting from pro wrestling? Whoever it is needs to get their heads out of their asses.

The whole idea of mixing workers with shooters has done NOTHING but destroy the credibility of puroresu in Japan.

I have seen people on this site state that the rise of shooting organizations has taken away from puroresu's credibility.

Well, if the friggin' promoters would have left it alone instead of sacrificing their workers to shooters in mis-matches and making shooters their CHAMPIONS (thank you very little New Japan) the public might not have seen one as being better than the other, but just different instead.