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By Zach Arnold

Quietly after his dominating win over Jens Pulver in front of 12,000 fans at Arco Arena in Sacramento, Urijah Faber soon found his name being mentioned in the Japanese press. It was no coincidence that K-1 was behind the name-dropping, as Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto (their 145-pound MMA superstar) was claiming that he wanted to fight Faber soon.

Japanese promotions, especially K-1, tend to telegraph the messages they send through various media channels. The message here was loud and clear – we want to book the two best 145 pound fighters in the world against each other.

For many reasons, booking Faber and Yamamoto in a big-money match is as an intriguing story as you can get for hardcore MMA fans. A couple of years ago, there was a great debate online as to which is the best 145 pound fighter in the world. These days, there isn’t much of a debate because the consensus is that Faber is the king of his weight class.

So, what would happen if the two actually fought each other in the ring?

Let’s take a look at both the pros and cons of booking this fight, along with some potential roadblocks in the way that could stop the booking from happening.

The pros

They are the best fighters in their respective weight class and will likely produce a fight-of-the-year type match-up.

The hardcore fans won’t be complaining about this match-up and both men would likely put on the fight of their lives, pleasing casual spectators who would appreciate seeing a world-class caliber war on their television set.

Both guys are very handsome and would have no trouble attracting the attention of female fans.

Before you dismiss this point, remember that K-1 is in the TV business and Masato played a very big role in the success of the company’s World MAX events. The female demographic means a lot to them, to Tokyo Broadcasting System, and to their sponsors. Faber vs. Yamamoto would be an easy sell to the ladies.

If the fight is going to happen, it should happen in Japan because it will mean a lot more there than it will in the States.

If the fight is booked in the US, Yamamoto will not get the fight purse that his management team will likely be seeking for. Plus, Kid is an unknown quantity to your casual American MMA fan. The fight is useless to book in America.

In Japan, however, you know that Yamamoto is a household name. The key is to build up interest in Faber. If that can be done, then K-1 could have a big-money match-up on their hands. At least they could control some of the outsider factors in marketing this match in Japan as opposed to the complete crapshoot that it would be elsewhere.

Purse-wise, it would likely be a cheap fight to produce.

We know that Kid Yamamoto would want to get paid a lot of money for this fight, but Faber is a different story. His fight purses in WEC have been relatively small and K-1 could certainly afford to pay him in the lower 6-figures range for the fight. We’re not talking about a multi-million dollar fight to book here, after all.

The cons

Nobody in Japan knows who Urijah Faber is, and it would be up to K-1 to actually spend time building the guy’s name value up.

K-1 has a strange habit of booking their top Japanese stars against no-name gaijin talent in Japan for high-profile TV bouts. It’s strange because you would think that a promotion that is as TV-savvy as K-1 would know how to market gaijin better, but the track record indicates a lot of shakiness in this department. Looking at K-1 to promote Faber reliability is not always a safe bet to make.

WEC has no name recognition in Japan, so it’s not as if Yamamoto fighting WEC’s top star is going to give him a credibility rub amongst the casual fans.

One of the gimmicks over the years in Japanese pro-wrestling was to send young Japanese talent overseas to work in the States or to work for a big-name foreign company, then come back home and declare that they are now officially a star, and then take over the world of Japan. In the case of Kid Yamamoto, there is little or no rub for him whatsoever in fighting the ‘ace’ of WEC. You know and I know that WEC is a quality promotion, but does your average Japanese fight fan know what WEC is? Again, you would be relying on K-1 to do the marketing dirty work here, and who knows how that would turn out?

K-1 gets little or nothing out of the fight because Faber is not under contract to them and if he wins the fight, he’s the ‘ace’ for Zuffa’s second-tier promotion.

This is the bigger issue that could ultimately kill the chances of this fight from ever happening. If Faber beats Yamamoto in Japan, what’s the incentive for him to come back and fight again? There really isn’t any other incentive, including financial considerations. If K-1 is supposed to be the big dog on the Japanese fight scene, how would it look for them if the ‘ace’ of Zuffa’s second-tier MMA promotion came to their home turf and clowned one of their top babyfaces? The risk-reward ratio would have to be very carefully considered here.

Make no mistake about it – Faber vs. Yamamoto is as appealing of a fight as you can possibly get. However, there are so many risks involved in K-1 booking this match that it strikes me as curious that they would want to go there in the first place. I want to see the fight happen and you likely want to see the fight happen, too, so I don’t think any of us will be complaining if K-1 & WEC can reach an agreement to make this fight happen in the near future.