[Pancrase] Pancrasists to PRIDE! (2002/01/27)

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

At Pancrase's Kourakuen Hall card, Minoru Suzuki announced that the Pancrase competitors would participate in PRIDE and UFC matches. Pancrase president Ozaki also announced that he was willing to send his fighters to the PRIDE 20.

In fact, I received a report last month that Pancrase was sending its wrestlers to PRIDE 19, but I decided not to post it here since there was no official announcement.

[lCS 39]

I've read about this news also, I think it's great for MMA because PRIDE has been lacking strong native fighters, though Shoji, Otsuka, Matsui are fan favorites in 2001 it was a bad year for the japanese fighters especially Sakuraba. Hopefully with Kikuta, Kondo, Minowa and others it'll strengthen the native talent and will help bring in the fans.

[TJ Vermeer]

PRIDE just wants to take Pancrase's best fighters and put Pancrase out of business, just like they did with RINGS Japan.

Pancrase should stay away from PRIDE and work together with Shooto or maybe even Maeda.

[lCS 39]

In my opinion I think sooner or later PRIDE will try to put Pancrase out of business, or at least weaken it in one way or another, But if you ask me I think Pancrase working with Pride is a smart business move for the time being. It will spotlight the Pancrase promotion and showcase there fighters especially if they can pull out some wins in there PRIDE fights preventing getting put out like they did with RINGS, the one thing thats uncertain is how all of this co-promoting will turn out in the end especially with PRIDE's financial stand point I wouldn't blame the Pancrase fighters for going where the money is.

And as far as working with Shooto, I think it would be great, i'm a big Shooto fan but I just don't see how Pancrase and Shooto working together will out do PRIDE. Shooto has tremendous bouts and fighters and have been around for a long time yet they arn't as big especially with the great fights they have majority of the time in there under-middleweight divisions, something PRIDE lacks, which is why they choose to work with the UFC. When the time comes, if ever...when PRIDE decides to make and get into the lightweights/featherweights divisions for there events and so on, I see Shooto being in a lot of trouble and also the UFC's talent too.

[LizardKing]

Yeah, I agree. I think it may well be good in the short term to see some Pancrase fighters in PRIDE shows. Pancrase was pretty hot in late 2001, and some more recognition would be good.