Can Kimbo Slice & Satoshi Ishii give K-1 a boost?
Published by Zach Arnold on October 31st, 2008 in Current Events

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With Mixed Martial Arts in a major slump in Japan, it is going to take some new stars to build up fan interest in a product that, five years ago, was drawing tens of thousands of fans to every major fighting event in the country. The Japanese fight fans love freak shows and native heros. The evil, monstrous gaijin and a tough countryman with fighting spirit has always been the easiest way to tug at the heartstrings of the casual fan in Japan.

For K-1, the promotion instantly struggled in attracting TV ratings and drawing a significant amount of fans to their DREAM MMA events. Shin’ya Aoki, who walk around at 155 pounds on the street, is not exactly the prototypical larger-than-life figure that appeals to the Japanese public as a mega-star. He’s a great undercard fighter, but a terrible choice to use as the main face of your company. Kazushi Sakuraba, who is a legend in the fight business, is literally on his last legs. Even Sakuraba, in a cold market, struggles to pop a rating. The only draw that K-1 has that can pop a rating is Yoshihiro Akiyama, and the promotion recently admitted that he’s a free agent. With the prospects of drawing a terrible rating on NYE on the horizon for K-1, the promotion is in desperate need of a spark plug or two. They may have found their men.

Sharon Robb in The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that K-1 is interested in booking Kimbo Slice vs. Seth Petruzelli in a re-match for the promotion’s NYE event on Tokyo Broadcasting System. Kimbo is the absolutely, totally perfect fit for K-1. He fits every stereotype that the Japanese public has about a big, scary black man and has his own unique charisma. Unlike Pro Elite on CBS, K-1 will be able to get away with pushing more racially-based stereotypes in regards to Kimbo on Japanese television. Don’t think for a second that Kimbo’s YouTube brawling clips won’t be blasted onto national TV and the angle of Kimbo being a backyard brawler and porn star bodyguard won’t be pushed to the hilt. Some of the executives that worked at PRIDE are now working for DREAM and they have had good experience at pushing another famous black star in MMA, Quinton Jackson. When Jackson debuted for PRIDE in the early part of this decade against Kazushi Sakuraba, PRIDE marketed Jackson as a ‘homeless fighter’ who lived on a bus and talked to pigeons while wearing a chain. A lot of Japanese fight fans actually believed this was true. Bob Sapp, who K-1 heavily pushed five years ago against Akebono on NYE, portrayed every negative black stereotype you could think of (including eating a banana at a zoo to do a heat-up angle for a match against Manabu Nakanishi in New Japan at the Tokyo Dome). In other words, Kimbo Slice will fit in beautifully into the K-1 marketing scheme. He may not be a great fighter, but the Japanese love scary foreigners who look tough. Kimbo Slice is the type of freak-show attraction that could certainly help K-1 pop a good rating on NYE.

The longer-term new draw that K-1 has acquired, however, is 2008 Olympic gold-medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii. According to Daily Sports in Japan, Ishii will be paid 500 million yen and his fight contract also contains ‘escalator’ clauses which could increase Ishii’s fight money based on how well he draws for big MMA events that he is a headliner of. The wirepuller behind Ishii’s signing with K-1 is Naoya Ogawa, who made a fortune in Japan several years ago. It was Ogawa who was involved in the richest MMA fight ever booked (versus Hidehiko Yoshida) several years ago for PRIDE. With the signing of Ishii by K-1, the door is open to the possibility of Ogawa returning to action. An Ogawa/Ishii match would create some very big interest, and would ironically open the door for Antonio Inoki to get back into the MMA industry. Ogawa and Inoki both share the same power source — Tatsuo Kawamura, who is a long-time player in Japan’s entertainment business. K-1 boss Kazuyoshi Ishii has done plenty of business before with Inoki, so it should not be a big surprise if we see some wrestlers from Inoki’s IGF promotion end up working for K-1 on NYE.

Ishii will likely enter the MMA scene at the young age of 22, after he gets some training in Seattle (Matt Hume). Another possible encounter for Ishii would be a fight against Kazushi Sakuraba. They could even set it up as an ‘exhibition match’ for Ishii’s TV debut, which would be the safest play of all. The key for maintaining Ishii’s value as a top star is to protect him and K-1 will certainly do that.

There are a lot of possibilities at play for K-1 with both Kimbo Slice & Satoshi Ishii under their banner. Given Kimbo Slice’s currently options in the fight business, K-1 is by far his best player. Ishii cashed his golden ticket to become a millionaire in the fight business. Whether or not both men can capitalize on these opportunities remains to be seen, but K-1 finally has some hope and can see some light at the end of the tunnel. They have both literally and figuratively bought themselves some time for survival. That’s a good thing for the Japanese MMA business.