Rizin bombs on NYE on Fuji TV

UFC haters: "Omg japan is so amazing. They're so respectful towards the art of MMA."

Actual Japanese MMA fans: "We just want to see 52 year old grandma pro wrestlers and Bob Sapp"
 
Hate to hear this, but @Lionel Mandrake is right. Freakshows and spectacles are the keys to the audience's hearts.

With those as the draws, they can get better exposure on potential aces like Nasukawa.

Some other thoughts about this event:
  • RIZIN and Bellator both had the same problem last year: we're waiting for something big to happen, but the ball never drops. It seems like they're both still in the beginner stage of "please wait while we develop something."

  • Cro Cop / Kohsaka was a joke match-up. I understand they wanted to give Filipovic a squash match, but what a fucking waste of a Cro Cop bout. They should've dangled the carrot in front of Chuck Liddell, and set up a nostalgic "UFC vs. PRIDE" megafight between Cro Cop / Liddell to lure both the old PRIDE fans in Japan, as well as the American audience.

  • RIZIN still needs to fix its international distribution. The paywall is a major barrier to getting international fans, and is also being bypassed with the referral codes. So I'm not sure why RIZIN would be sacrificing its own global exposure to build the non-paying userbase of (I assume) someone else's streaming service. My guess is RIZIN is making five figures max per event from this distribution arrangement.

  • Kubota losing is disastrous. This was supposed to be a big coming out party for her, but getting handled by unknown Asakura already is a bad omen of things to come. The proper strategy to have built her after this tournament was to lure over established American names (IE: Angela Magana), and have Kubota destroy them to create the perception that she was the best WSW fighter in the world. That's one less ace to build around.

  • The big fight they should be building towards is Horiguchi-Nasukawa, on the hopes that Nasukawa destroys Horiguchi for a huge passing of the torch moment, to build Nasukawa as the RIZIN ace. Horiguchi unfortunately isn't the superstar RIZIN needs, but Nasukawa is.

  • They should re-book Garcia-Kandori ASAP. Disappointed they shook hands and killed some of the nuclear heat the feud had.

  • They should also get Jazzy Alpha Female back since she's failed her WWE medicals.

  • Manel Kape is a star in the making, and excuse my French, but him versus Nasukawa next would be just nearly terrific.

  • King Reina is a bust.

  • Yachi and Nozawa-Auclair are potential stars if they protect them.

  • Gomi should fight Kid Yamamoto or Shinya Aoki as a headliner next if RIZIN can get them.

  • Nothing else stood out.

Kanna Asakura is definitely not an unknown.
Before RIZIN, she fought in Pancrase, Shooto, DEEP, and Vale Tudo Japan.
(http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Kanna-Asakura-176903)

She's a wrestling prodigy and has been one of the best young prospects in Japanese WMMA for a while. I think she was 15 or 16 in her first MMA match. She's 20 now.

If you watched Kanna's previous matches, you'd know that she should have been the favorite over RENA.
RENA was the favorite based on hype and popularity. We hadn't seen any ground game from her in any of her fights until now.
Once it hit the ground, it was all Asakura. That should have been expected.
 
  • Cro Cop / Kohsaka was a joke match-up. I understand they wanted to give Filipovic a squash match, but what a fucking waste of a Cro Cop bout. They should've dangled the carrot in front of Chuck Liddell, and set up a nostalgic "UFC vs. PRIDE" megafight between Cro Cop / Liddell to lure both the old PRIDE fans in Japan, as well as the American audience.
  • Kubota losing is disastrous. This was supposed to be a big coming out party for her, but getting handled by unknown Asakura already is a bad omen of things to come. The proper strategy to have built her after this tournament was to lure over established American names (IE: Angela Magana), and have Kubota destroy them to create the perception that she was the best WSW fighter in the world. That's one less ace to build around
  • The big fight they should be building towards is Horiguchi-Nasukawa, on the hopes that Nasukawa destroys Horiguchi for a huge passing of the torch moment, to build Nasukawa as the RIZIN ace. Horiguchi unfortunately isn't the superstar RIZIN needs, but Nasukawa is.
  • King Reina is a bust.
  • Yachi and Nozawa-Auclair are potential stars if they protect them.
  • According to Cro Cop it was basically desperation with TK because the possible Fedor rematch fell through and others turned it down. I don't think they really care to give Cro Cop squashes at this point, especially one with minimum drawing power like TK. Chuck would lack just as much competitiveness as TK at this point.

  • I don't think it's really disastrous. They have been building Kanna up as well and that was one of the peaks of the event. RENA is a star regardless and is still a strong talent to build around, ditching that would be dumb.

  • Would have to be under kickboxing or mixed rules. Putting Tenshin in a MMA bout against Horiguchi at this point would be careless. They need to work something out with K-1 and KNOCK OUT to get the Takeru fight, that's by far the biggest fight for Tenshin.

  • I don't see how. She has made a decent name for herself in only 1 year as a pro and arguably beat one of the top fighters in her division. She just needs to make sure she makes the improvements to her game, maybe take some time off to develop.

  • No need to protect Yachi, he's already one of the best Lightweights in Japan. Shinju should get reasonable match ups, she has only been training for MMA for about 2 years and just debuted as a pro this year.
 
Hi guys do you know anywhere you can find a replay of the stream (preferably without paying wink wink). PM if you know, thanks.
 
Hi guys do you know anywhere you can find a replay of the stream (preferably without paying wink wink). PM if you know, thanks.

Every fight is on YouTube pretty much, dont know about any full event streams
 
Hard reality is that MMA is a super niche product.
 
UFC haters: "Omg japan is so amazing. They're so respectful towards the art of MMA."

Actual Japanese MMA fans: "We just want to see 52 year old grandma pro wrestlers and Bob Sapp"
...

Only buffoons who buy into the UFC’s Bruce Lee is the grandfather of UFC and who drool over Shogun PRIDE fights and ignore Butterbean vs. Zuluzinho would post a response like that, so I wouldn’t exactly call them UFC haters...
 
Rizin is relying on nostalgic attractions (Cro Cop),ancient fighters who refuse to put down their sword (TK, Fujita, Aerts, LeBanner), and very little under contract that has a future as a draw with maybe the exception of Tenshin.
I thought opposite. That Rizin was relying on in prime future stars under contract (Tenshin, Rena, Yachi, Kape, Horiguchi etc.) and were just using the legends like CroCop and Gomi on the undercard to suppourt them. I thought Rizin did a terrific job building its product. Made a fan out of me.
 
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Last I heard he got a role on a Japanese tv series as a bear
Yeah, drama adaptation of a manga about a gay dad or something. I'd be surprised if we see him back this year, if ever
 
Wonder if they made anything significant from fite.tv.

I can't imagine much... but I bought it.
 
Yeah, drama adaptation of a manga about a gay dad or something. I'd be surprised if we see him back this year, if ever

That sucks, that guy had lots of potential. Probably one of the most athletic guys to get into MMA.
 
Wonder if they made anything significant from fite.tv.

I can't imagine much... but I bought it.
Turns out i bought both shows without realizing it. I thought the FITE TV app was using the credits i earned, but iTunes used my credit card to purchase the shows. Didn't realize it until yesterday.

Anyway, both shows were great.
 
Yeah, it was totally worth it. Happy to support.
 
Going by the information we have currently, it is false to say that the event bombed ratings-wise: compared to last year, the ratings were pretty much unchanged (the peaks were lower while the averages of the non-peak segments were slightly higher which almost totally evens out against last year's ratings). This in addition to the fact that they spent substantially less on fighter pay compared to 2016 doesnt sound alarming.

However, we do not yet know how the other stations performed (at least I dont). Especially the NHK music variety program that dominates every year had an exceptionally strong main attraction this time, so we cant pass final judgement on these ratings until we know how they performed relative to the other major NYE events.

We can however already call this event a huge missed opportunity: Like many posters have already pointed out, relying only on legit MMA hasnt and will never work on NYE.

This card did equal to its predecessor without any freak fights. Had they gotten 1 or 2 spectacle fights going, ratings would have been substantially higher and the event would have been a sure lock for their most succesful ever. Also, past NYE ratings have shown that a large enough portion of casuals who tune in for the spectacle superfights "bleed into" the following segments, which usually yields at least a few new "true" fans.

RIZINs real error lies in the fact that they are fully aware of this and did try to set up 2 spectacle fights with Gabi vs Kandori and Sapp vs Aliakbari (when Sapp arrived in Japan for his NYE shitfests he said in an interview that he was negotiating with RIZIN about his farewell fight, confirming the already strong rumors going around), but bungled both of them: instead of letting Kandori vs Gabi go on and either work the fight completely or perform a "soft work" like instructing Gabi not to strike against Kandori, they canceled the entire thing, and instead of giving in to Sapp's financial demands they tried to lowball him and got outbid, which probably cost them both a ton of ratings and Aliakbari (on his twitter Aliakbari first said he had a fight scheduled in RIZIN for NYE, then after talks with Sapp ended it took like 5 days for him to announce his departure towards ACB).

Even the Kandori fight alone would have let this event outperform all their previous NYE events. They made two pretty strange and pretty significant strategic mistakes for which there is really no explanation - it's not like they dont know what works on NYE. In the end, Sakakibara dropped the ball on this one, and we can only hope that they dont do anything reckless with the course the promotion, because I agree with the general opinion of this being one of RIZINs best ever events.
 
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