Why did MMA/Kickboxing lose popularity in Japan?

Lack of a hero. The model doesn't require a japanese person to win all the time but at minimum needs to to have a local contender. K-1 in Japan made their money from non PPV television and giant ticket sales. Without local talent, it is hard to get a buzz for people to go purchase a ticket. Kyotaro/Nagashima didn't really catch and they couldn't make it far in the tournaments.

ONE to a certain extent is still following that model. Their champions follow a criteria of in house within their gym evolve or from a certain country they want to market to(they don't even live there). I think very few of their champions actually train in the country they are supposedly representing.
 
MMA supporting community in Japan was built among Ultraman generation (those who were born in mid 50s - mid 70s) and they grew out of it by the arrival of new century.

Since fetal weaponry were strictly banned, they developed a collective parallel wonderland where every possible fightfight hypothesis was routinely discussed. "Kickass" was the biggest concern for male population from this Ultraman generation.

Late 70s to early half of 80s was the hardest era when Japan was an extension of "basketball diaries" episodes. After communist student's violence slowly left the country, it was replaced by uncontrollable street fights and teen gang conflicts. "Who is the toughest man?" "What's the most effective martial arts?" They would talk on and on while having no military functions.

Ultraman generation's overgrown dreamers realized that they were wasting their precious time when Bob Sapp, an untrained NFL dropout destroyed seasoned martial art champions one by one in a dominating performance.
The death of bosozoku and the waning popularity of puroresu spelled the end of jmma.
 
Ultraman generation's overgrown dreamers realized that they were wasting their precious time when Bob Sapp, an untrained NFL dropout destroyed seasoned martial art champions one by one in a dominating performance.
wank Hideo Tokoro Masakazu Imanari dream.gif
 
If anyone is out there searching for the best that the sport of MMA has to offer their going to find the UFC. So if Japanese have this complex of having to be best they now know they aren't in MMA.

Might be able to play this to their advantage. Japanese would be better in the smaller weight classes and those classes tend to be cheaper. They could try and buy up people from the smaller classes.
 
So what do you think it will take to make MMA big in Japan again and do you think that will happen?
Someone build a time machine and go back to the early days of PRIDE after DSE bought the promotion from KRS and beg and plead with Sakakibara to not get involved with the Yakuza.

And no that's not going to happen.
 
this is interesting. it seems east asians are prone to mystiscism when it comes to fighting. just look at how the samurai have been elevated to too godlike status when realistically knights would wreck any samurai.
Hell, the Spartan beat both the Ninja and Samurai on Deadliest Warrior . . .
 
I'll try to explain about Ultraman generation viewers.

They are Japanese male nerds born between mid 50s to mid 70s. They are too young to remember the original Godzilla or Rikidozan and too old to relate themselves to McGregor. They grew up watching bunch of superhero VS monster TV drama epitomized by Ultraman and Kamen Rider that were made into multiple series of production and got re-aired numerous times until 1980s.

Akira Maeda (b. 1959), founder of UWF/RINGS/OUTSIDER was asked about what changed his life to become a fighter. Maeda said "when I was in the 3rd grade, I saw Ultraman being beat up by Zetton. That's the night I decided to take up a martial art to fight Zetton." (I heard the average age American kids learn Santa Claus doesn't exist is about 9 - 10. So don't doubt Maeda's intellectual growth here. He's kinda guy who uses quotes of Paul verlaine and laozi in the speech.)

ikuhisa Minowa (b. 1976) quit PANCRASE in 2003 telling his boas "I was born to be muscle man." (muscle man is a very popular cartoon novel televised nationwide in 1980s. It's often dubbed as "the last superhero" story. )

Many famous mma stars in America say they started training martial arts because they got bullied in school. I believe that's still no1 reason today.

In Japan what motivated them to fight is dream of becoming a superhero like Ultraman. It's a dream based on imagination not reality.

Yuki Nakai (b. 1971) stated in the interview this year "boys from our generation grew interests in prowrestling typically during 4-6 grades because we couldn't handle our psychological damage by knowing Ultraman is a fictious character. We wanted prowrestlers to replace superheroes so we could retain our fantasy world. "

I think nakai said it well.


(Ultraman defeated by Zetton)
 
Really though you look at Pride and K-1 and they were not built on Japanese dominance, Sakuraba was not at the top of the sport after 2001 and Yoshida was never at the top of the sport yet Pride did consistently well for years. Really the backbone of Pride and K-1 were guys like Wanderlei, Crocop, Fedor, Nog, etc and Hug, Hoost, Aerts, etc and MMA loosing so much talent so quickly had a big effect. A native fighter could get an extra boost on casual interest but they weren't the ones supporting the entire thing.

Part of the problem there I would say is that MMA in Japan wasn't run to get maximum profit as a niche sport, it was dependant on massive TV audiences and crowds with the best paid fighters depending on cashing in on their very high level of exposure doing endorsements/adverts. The UFC even at its most popular is still much more of a niche sport in the US but PPV and premium TV deals mean its a niche sport with money.

Personally I suspect as well that a lot of the issue with Pride was that it was locked in a PR war with FEG, the negative stories happened shortly after Pride beat FEG on NYE for the first time and I wouldn't be supprised if the magazine running them had some links to them on the media group they worked with. A lot of in fighting ended up with FEG being king of the ashes before succumbing to its own dodgy dealing.

People quickly forget that Sakuraba was the first to destroy Royce Gracie and Gracie mystique. That is what elevated him in the Japanese public eye and the MMA world. Royce was undefeated till Sakuraba beat him in 90 minutes.
 
People quickly forget that Sakuraba was the first to destroy Royce Gracie and Gracie mystique. That is what elevated him in the Japanese public eye and the MMA world. Royce was undefeated till Sakuraba beat him in 90 minutes.

I doubt anyone here has forgotten that but Sakuraba's run as a dominant force in Pride ended in 2001, he definitely helped break the sport to a wider public but his decline did not sink it.

I think a big issue with Japanese talent as well is that actually its NOT easy to fighters to switch sports to MMA or kickboxing. Sports like Judo and Karate have very strong insular cultures to them with fighters tending to stick to them long term, very different to say wrestling in the US.
 
I doubt anyone here has forgotten that but Sakuraba's run as a dominant force in Pride ended in 2001, he definitely helped break the sport to a wider public but his decline did not sink it.

I think a big issue with Japanese talent as well is that actually its NOT easy to fighters to switch sports to MMA or kickboxing. Sports like Judo and Karate have very strong insular cultures to them with fighters tending to stick to them long term, very different to say wrestling in the US.

I believe that there is a huge generation of MMA fans who only saw Sak on the decline getting smashed by people if even that. And very few MMA fans were watching the sport or alive when the Gracies had this aura of invincibility and couldn't lose.
 
What's interesting is that Japan, which, overall, is one of the most successful countries in the history of amateur wrestling, has also seen a pretty big decline in that sport in terms of their international prestige.
 
As much as sherdog likes to suck the Japanese fans collective dick over their supposed maturity, all they really care about is the spectacle. MMA was just another spectacle for them that they eventually got tired of. You can't support the growth of a sport like that.
 
What's interesting is that Japan, which, overall, is one of the most successful countries in the history of amateur wrestling, has also seen a pretty big decline in that sport in terms of their international prestige.
for men yes, for women no
 
What's interesting is that Japan, which, overall, is one of the most successful countries in the history of amateur wrestling, has also seen a pretty big decline in that sport in terms of their international prestige.

Really? They were #2 on the overall medal table last year, #1 the year before that, and #2 at the Olympics the year before.

Obviously most of those medals are from their women, but their men were only ever constantly successful in the lightest weights, and they continue to be. In 2017 they won gold in the lightest weight category in all 3 styles. If anything they've been doing better lately than in the 90s or 2000s.
 
Really? They were #2 on the overall medal table last year, #1 the year before that, and #2 at the Olympics the year before.

Obviously most of those medals are from their women, but their men were only ever constantly successful in the lightest weights, and they continue to be. In 2017 they won gold in the lightest weight category in all 3 styles. If anything they've been doing better lately than in the 90s or 2000s.
So why do Japanese women do so well but not the men?
 
So why do Japanese women do so well but not the men?

Firstly I'd say their men do as well as (or maybe even better than) anyone in the lighter weight classes (also until the 90s there was as low as a 48kg class for men, great for Japanese and North Koreans, but today 57kg is the lightest), that's the same in other combat sports like boxing where they have lots of champions but only in the tiny weights (eg Naoya Inoue is probably the best boxer in the world right now). They're great, but there aren't enough big people in their country to regularly produce outstanding talents at the upper weights to win more medals and compete for the overall #1 spot.

Just check out the list of current world boxing champs, scroll down to the lighter weights and Japan flags start taking over:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_world_boxing_champions

and for women, the same thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_female_world_boxing_champions

As for their women wrestlers, I don't know other than their programme was a step ahead of the rest to begin with, and they've been able to keep it that way. I guess a case of success breeding success - they start younger (azn tiger parents and disiprine) and work harder because they have to reach a more competitive top (there are quite a lot of families/sisters from wrestling families in their teams for example who have probably been doing it since birth).
It's also notable even there, that since women's wrestling joined the olympics (2004), Japan never won the world championship or olympics in the highest weight category (last time they did was 2003 - coincdence? probably not).

Another thing is a lot of the best men's wrestling countries are from highly conservative/muslim areas - the caucasus and middle east (Dagestan, Chechnya, Iran; also Turkey and Azerbaijan, but they do produce decent women's teams (though Azerbaijan mostly 'buys' east european girls for their team lol)) which have no or nearly no female athletes. Those areas are extremely dominant in the men's side of things but absent from competing against Japanese females. Russia has been struggling with its women's team for a while (there are almost no ethnic Russian freestyle wrestlers on their men's team since the end of the USSR, but they have to depend on them for their women's team since caucasus-ians ain't bout dat life for their wimmin). Women's sport is kind of a western
 
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NJPW (new Japan pro wrestling) has gained significant popularity since the decline of JMMA.

Many foreigners go to Japan to attend NJPW events. It does sound like they are taking fight business in the direction to pick up where PRIDE left off.

I heard that Cain Velasquez is close to signing with them.

When people are fed up with dreams crafted & sold by NJPW, they might come back to martial arts again.
 
Probably cause there aren’t too many top Japanese fighters left.

It’s no coincidence that popularity was at all time high when Sakuraba was beating all the Gracies.

Ppl will lose interest when they don’t see themselves in the sport dominated by foreigners
 
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