Steam Workshop::Pride Fighting Championships

Created by CarlCX

It's Kazushi Sakuraba, aka The Gracie Hunter, aka The IQ Wrestler, aka The Living Legend, aka Your and Everyone Else's Favorite Fighter. Still quite possibly the most fun grappler to watch there has ever been. Stats, moves, logic and four attires (Pride 20...

Wanderlei Silva

Created by CarlCX

What do you write about Wanderlei Silva that hasn't already been written? 20 years of fighting, IVC champion, Pride champion, one-time Pride GP champion, two-time Pride GP semifinalist, UFC title contender, victories across three weight classes, victories ...

Fedor Emelianenko

Created by CarlCX

Well, it took awhile, but we got here: It's time to talk about Fedor Emelianenko. Indisputably one of the greatest fighters of all time, probably one of the most important fighters of all time, and somehow, simultaneously one of the biggest What Ifs of all...

Mirko Filipovic

Created by CarlCX

Mirko Filipovic was a cop in Croatia. Because of this, he was nicknamed Cro Cop. Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride: Final Conflict Absolute vs Wanderlei / UFC 70 vs Gonzaga / Rizin 2016 WGP vs Aliakbari / K-1 World Grand Prix Final 1999 vs Hoos...

Dan Henderson

Created by CarlCX

Before MMA, Dan "Hendo" Henderson was a lifelong wrestler and most particularly a Greco-Roman wrestler, for which he won three national championships and represented America at the Olympics twice. His MMA career actually started with the formation of an al...

Mauricio Rua

Created by CarlCX

No team is more solidly identified with Pride than Chute Boxe. The Brazilian academy dominated mixed martial arts for more than a decade: Macaco Patino was the terror of mid-90s vale tudo, Wanderlei Silva reigned over Pride as its scariest fighter, and eve...

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

Created by CarlCX

Antonio Rodrigo Minotauro Nogueira, the PrideFC legend and the original unbeatable heavyweight before, y'know, Fedor happened. Moveset, parameters, stats and four attires (Pride Final Conflict 2003 vs Cro Cop / Rings King of Kings 99 vs Hendo / UFC 81 vs T...

Antonio Rogerio Nogueira

Created by CarlCX

The Nogueira brothers are one of the most unfair things to happen to mixed martial arts: A pair of identical Brazilian twins, both outstanding boxers and grapplers, both virtually indestructible and inexhaustible in their prime, both #2 in their respective...

Quinton Jackson

Created by CarlCX

I mean, it's Rampage. What can you say? Quinton Jackson is one of the biggest and most-accomplished fighters in MMA history. He was fighting for the KOTC heavyweight championship in 2000 within six months of his debut, he held the KOTC light-heavyweight ti...

Takanori Gomi

Created by CarlCX

Takanori Gomi didn't want to be a fighter. Gomi's childhood dream was to play baseball. He started pitching as a child, he was quite good at it, and only boxed and wrestled because his second-greatest fandom was vale tudo. His fighting career started out o...

Mark Coleman

Created by CarlCX

The Godfather of Ground and Pound, the titular Hammer of the Hammer House, Mark Coleman. One of the most decorated wrestlers in MMA history: Olympic competitor, two-time UFC tournament winner, inaugural UFC heavyweight champion, Pride 2000 Openweight Grand...

Heath Herring

Created by CarlCX

The Texas Crazy Horse. Heath Herring was one of my early favorite fighters--this big, colorful heavyweight who fought incredibly aggressively, was far faster than men his size are supposed to be and crushed then-greats like Tom Erikson and Mark Kerr. He wa...

Alistair Overeem

Created by CarlCX

Oh, Alistair Overeem. The Demolition Man is simultaneously one of the most incredible examples of MMA success there has ever been and one of the most polarizing figures in the sport, as notable for his massive accomplishments as his controversies. It's tim...

Ikuhisa Minowa

Created by CarlCX

Ikuhisa Minowa is one of the hardest fighters in the world to summarize. He's the jobber who became a star, the living joke who turned into a superhero. He's a 5'9" middleweight who won the only superheavyweight tournament in major MMA history. He is so un...

Nobuhiko Takada

Created by CarlCX

The Heisei King, Saikyo, the General, That Dude Who Drummed In A Diaper: Nobuhiko Takada, the pride of Japan. One of the most important figures in MMA history. He fought Rickson Gracie, he fought Mirko Cro-Cop, and he definitely, totally, 100% legit beat M...

Akira Shoji

Created by CarlCX

It's Mr. Pride himself, Akira Shoji, quite possibly the gutsiest fighter of all time. His stats aren't much to write home about, but he's aggressive and will armbar you if you let him. Stats, moveset, logic and four attires (Pride GP / Pride 1 / Pride 34 /...

Hidehiko Yoshida

Created by CarlCX

There are a lot of repeating tropes in these profiles: The celebrity fighter, the fighter with no formal training but a former martial background, the fighter who gets overly favortable matchups, the fighter who gets brutalized by the Pride meat grinder, t...

Mark Hunt

Created by CarlCX

Mark Hunt was not supposed to succeed. He, his brothers and sister were victims of horrific acts of child abuse and every community that should have safeguarded him, from his church to his friends to his own mother, looked the other way. As a traumatized c...

Murilo Bustamante

Created by CarlCX

The history of the middleweight division is so dominated by a few giant, monolithic figures--Anderson, Wanderlei, Henderson, Sakuraba--that even its great fighters, its Rich Franklins and Kazuo Misakis, get lost in the shuffle. Murilo Bustamante is barely ...

Kazuo Misaki

Created by CarlCX

I found Pride through an enclave of somewhat elitist internet MMA fans--the kind of subgroup that get so disenchanted with the stupid dysfunctions, disagreements and favorites of the general public that they form a group with their own stupid dysfunctions,...

Denis Kang

Created by CarlCX

There's a particular agony in almost being the best. Denis Kang was a man of many spaces. He was born into France's Saint Pierre and Miquelon, moved into Spain's Canary Islands as an infant, and finally relocated to Canada's Vancouver as a child. His marti...

Kazuyuki Fujita

Created by CarlCX

The other wrestler who did way better at fighting than anyone expected, Ol' Ironhead himself, Kazuyuki Fujita. Really likes arm triangles, hits surprisingly hard, and there's about a 50/50 chance if you punch him in the head you will spontaneously break ev...

Josh Barnett

Created by CarlCX

Heavyweights, more than any other weight division, tend to be bad. It's not that heavyweight fighters are by nature bad, it's that there are a lot of factors working against the talent pool. Japan and Brazil, the birthplaces of MMA, on average produced les...

Yuki Kondo

Created by CarlCX

This one's been long overdue. It's our final Pride debutante of 2003, one of Japan's greatest fighters ever and a massively underappreciated pioneer of the sport: Yuki Kondo. Unlike most of his mid-90s peers, rather than judo or karate, Kondo started his l...

Hayato Sakurai

Created by CarlCX

It took years for mainstream mixed martial arts to embrace lower weightclasses. The UFC was active for five years before they crowned their first champion at 170 pounds in 1998; Pride lasted even longer, not promoting an officially-recognized lightweight f...

Gary Goodridge

Created by CarlCX

Big Daddy Gary Goodridge, the original scariest dude in the sport. Moveset, logic and four attires (Pride 2000 GP / Pride 1 with the funky blue kneepads / UFC 8 / K-1). Trinidad and Tobago wasn't an origin option, unfortunately. I also wanted to name his f...

Kiyoshi Tamura

Created by CarlCX

Kiyoshi Tamura is one of the best fighters Japan ever produced. Kiyoshi Tamura is a professional wrestler, and a large chunk of his MMA career of record is a lie. Kiyoshi Tamura is one of the unluckiest men in the sport, and never reached his true potentia...

Allan Goes

Created by CarlCX

Allan Goes is, without question, one of the best grapplers to compete in MMA. He was a martial artist when he was a toddler, he was a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu black belt at 18, he was (reportedly) 200-1 by 19 and an 8-time world BJJ champion, he was part of the or...

Vitor Belfort

Created by CarlCX

The Phenom, the champion, the Lion who is also the Dinosaur: It's Vitor Belfort. A legend with incredible longevity, one of the scariest strikers MMA has ever seen, a dude who had a black belt in jiu-jitsu but decided he'd rather punch you to death anyway....

Igor Vovchanchyn

Created by CarlCX

Ice Cold Igor Vovchanchyn, the Ukranian monster who knocked out forty-one men and scared the crap out of millions more. There used to be a rumor that his little town of Zesky had a bell at the town squre that people would ring when he got upset so they'd k...

Ricardo Arona

Created by CarlCX

Ricardo Arona is a decorated grappler and fighter, a man with victories over multiple world champions, a Pride tournament finalist, a world-class jiu-jitsu artist. But I remember him as the center of innumerable mid-2000s MMA arguments on the internet. THE...

Paulo Filho

Created by CarlCX

Paulo Filho. I've been both waiting for and dreading this one. This entry is going to be long, because I'm going to tell you two stories today. The first story is about an up-and-coming grappler named Paulo Fernando de Souza Leite Filho who took himself fr...

Royce Gracie

Created by CarlCX

The original king of mixed martial arts, the engine that ran the Gracie Train, the reason most people know what an armbar is: Royce Gracie. Moveset, skils, logic and four attires (Pride 2000 GP / UFC 60 / UFC 1 / That one weird fight with Akebono where he ...

Sergei Kharitonov

Created by CarlCX

One of the most prevalent fights in the mid-2000s MMA internet was which divisions were best within which promotions. With fighters like Matt Hughes the UFC tended to dominate the welterweight conversation, and middleweight was the most contentious--Liddel...

Murilo Rua

Created by CarlCX

Shogun Rua was the heir apparent to the Chute Boxe legacy, a seamlessly talented wrecking machine who thrashed his way through virtually everybody he met in Pride. He was a star. But he would not have become that star were it not for his older brother Muri...

Alexander Emelianenko

Created by CarlCX

Not gonna lie, I've been dreading this one. Let's talk about Alexander Emelianenko. When Fedor rose to the top of Pride, he brought his younger brother Alex with him. A boxer and grappler who'd never fought professionally in his life, Alex made an immediat...

Kazuhiro Nakamura

Created by CarlCX

One of the more notorious problems with Japanese MMA was its willingness to repeatedly throw its national stars to the wolves, and one of the biggest victims but greatest stars of this mindset was Kazuhiro Nakamura. Most fighters make their MMA debut again...

Kevin Randleman

Created by CarlCX

One of the most-feared camps of early mixed martial arts was Team Hammer House. An Ohio-based collective of overly-muscular wrestlers, for a brief moment in time, they ran the MMA world--Mark Coleman as the UFC and Pride champion, Kevin Randleman picking u...

Akihiro Gono

Created by CarlCX

I cannot tell you how hard it was not to dedicate one of these attires to Gono fighting in a leisure suit, sunglasses and a giant afro. Despite gaining most of his fame for his antics in Pride, Akihiro Gono is actually an unsung early figure in the world o...

Anderson Silva

Created by CarlCX

Every sport fights over who, exactly, is its greatest of all time. The GOAT conversation is always controversial and contentious, and unsurprisingly tends to favor the dominant competitor from whatever time period it was the arguer first got into said spor...

Bob Sapp

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #21: We've come a long way on the jobber file, and while the tales will continue, today we have reached the top of the mountain. At one point, he was the biggest draw in all of mixed martial arts. Now, he's indisputably the ...

James Thompson

Created by CarlCX

Where American MMA leagues have attempted to swing towards legitimacy or at least the appearance thereof, their Japanese counterparts have always reveled in the freakshow fight. Pancrase had pro-wrestlers faking matches, K-1 had Akebono Taro fighting some ...

Charles Bennett

Created by CarlCX

It's often difficult to divorce certain fighters from the struggles of their personal lives and the more unfortunate things they did within them. Some fighters struggle with their demons throughout their careers. Some fight them for their entire lives. Cha...

Ryo Chonan

Created by CarlCX

Career accomplishments can be double-edged swords. It's very easy to be defined, positively or negatively, by a single moment in time: Matt Serra's upset of Georges St-Pierre, Gabriel Gonzaga's high kick on Cro Cop, Michael Bisping's late-replacement victo...

Chuck Liddell

Created by CarlCX

There isn't a single fighter move evocative of MMA itself than "The Iceman" himself, Chuck Liddell. When the UFC made its do-or-die grasp at the mainstream they had a stable of fan-friendly champions, but no one got the love Chuck did: A tattooed, mohawked...

Shungo Oyama

Created by CarlCX

Early in the Pride project I was asked if Shungo Oyama would be part of the MMA jobber file. He fits, categorically: He's a long-tenured fighter who had a losing record for virtually his entire career. I don't think that's fair to him, though: He's more of...

Enson Inoue

Created by CarlCX

Yamato Damashii himself, Enson Inoue, the man who tapped out Randy Couture, trained KID Yamamoto and almost got fistmurdered by Igor Vovchanchyn. I tried to set him up to be somewhat realistically programmed, in that he's actually good at submissions and c...

Semmy Schilt

Created by CarlCX

The phrase "pound for pound" is used in combat sports to philosophically even an inescapably uneven world. It's a tacit admission that not all weight classes and not all fighters are created equal. Some fighters are born out of the game, or are born disabl...

Daijiro Matsui

Created by CarlCX

Daijiro Matsui was one of my favorites back in the day, and gun to my head, I'm not sure I could provide a truly adequate explanation why. He's not really...good. He's one of the toughest men in the sport, and he's by no means bad; he was never an easy out...

Don Frye

Created by CarlCX

As a training partner of multiple-time UFC champion Dan Severn, Don Frye started his career in the deep end: He made his debut at the one-night UFC 8 tournament and steamrolled the field, including the also-debuting Gary Goodridge, winning three matches in...

Yoshihiro Takayama

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #13: Most of the time, when I write someone into of the jobber file, despite my respect for them there's an unavoidably implied insult. There is no insult here. Yoshihiro Takayama would be the first to tell you he was not a ...

Paulo Cesar Silva

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #36: The phrase "freakshow fight" is an integral part of the mixed martial arts lexicon, but it's not always correctly used. People use it to describe fights with slight skill mismatches, or fights where one competitor is no...

Hans Nijman

Created by CarlCX

The Bulldog, Hans Nijman, Dutch kickboxer, RINGS veteran, Pride GP contestant and alleged secret mob criminal. Stats reflect his not being a particularly successful modern fighter, but he's a part of history, dammit. Moveset, stats, logic and four attires ...

Yoshihisa Yamamoto

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file #14: It's time for maybe the luckiest man in the meat grinder. Yoshihisa Yamamoto was a teenaged judoka and one of the original veterans of Fighting Network RINGS--the early, 1991 pro-wrestling version--who stuck around for i...

Dokonjonosuke Mishima

Created by CarlCX

After the failure of the Pride: The Best series, Pride cannibalized their feeder league and took it in a different direction with Pride: Bushido--a sub-imprint that carried some of The Best's philosophical allegiance to regional talent, but focused primari...

Carlos Newton

Created by CarlCX

The Ronin himself, Carlos Newton: Canadian BJJ champion, Pankration champion, UFC champion, Dragon Ball fanatic. Still one of the most entertaining fighters in history; his match vs Sakuraba is a grappling classic. Don't ask him about powerbombs. He's stil...

Hirotaka Yokoi

Created by CarlCX

With the plethora of wrestler-as-fighter sob stories in MMA, it's easy to forget the success stories that kept people trying to strike gold in the pro-wrestling hills. Hirotaka Yokoi wasn't just a success story, he was one of the most fun grapplers in the ...

Alexander Otsuka

Created by CarlCX

Alexander Otsuka, the former pro-wrestler known as The Diet Butcher. They really wanted him to be Sakuraba #2 before he turned out tbe way, way less better at fighting, but he was entertaining as heck so it worked out in the end. Moveset, parameters, logic...

Fabricio Werdum

Created by CarlCX

Fabricio Werdum's career happened because he got embarrassed in front of a girl. Really. Fabricio Werdum started grappling as a teenager because his then-girlfriend's ex put him in a triangle choke. The history of combat sports owes an incredible debt to y...

Mark Kerr

Created by CarlCX

The Smashing Machine, Mark Kerr: UFC, PrideFC and Vale Tudo legend, one-time consensus #1 heavyweight, MMA's first cautionary tale. Moveset, logic and four attires included (Pride 2000 GP / UFC 17 / Vale Tudo Championships / King Mo Retirement Match). Be w...

Mario Sperry

Created by CarlCX

It's surprisingly hard to place Mario Sperry in the annals of mixed martial arts. He's one of the most important people in the sport's history--not so much for his fighting as his allegiances, but we'll get back to that in a minute--and he put up a stellar...

Gilbert Yvel

Created by CarlCX

Gilbert Yvel is maybe MMA's most profound combination of inspirational and infuriating. The fact that his career existed at all is a testament to him: He was an orphan in the most criminally-inclined neighborhood of Amsterdam and only fell into MMA because...

Henry Miller

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #39: Last November, I wrote an ode to Giant Silva, the 7'2" wrestler and fighter, in which I dubbed him the platonic ideal of the freakshow fighter--a fighter whose one and only skill was his stature. While that's still true...

Masaaki Satake

Created by CarlCX

Masaaki Satake, the Pride 2000 GP entrant, Seido-Kaikan champion karateka, Thai boxing and K-1 champion, and MMA fighter with, uh, slightly less success, but he was still awesome. Moveset, logic, stats and four attires (Pride GP / Pride 15 / K-1 GP / K-1 I...

Dan Severn

Created by CarlCX

Dan "The Beast" Severn, the man who would have been the king of early MMA were it not for the tiny handful of people who just barely outclassed him. 100+ fights, two black belts, three Olympic alternate slots, four MMA world championships, five pro-wrestli...

Osamu Kawahara

Created by CarlCX

Okay, this was a tough one. Osamu Kawahara, the former sumo Tachihikari: Pride GP contestant, shoot-style wrestler and 0-4 mixed martial artist whose career lasted a grand total of 433 seconds. The man fought El Canek in a real fight. And lost. Badly. This...

Ebenezer Fontes Braga

Created by CarlCX

Ebenezer Fontes Braga, Luta Livre's representative at the Pride 2000 GP, the man who was nicknamed Pitbull before literally everyone else in MMA decided it was a good idea. Stats, moveset, logic, four attires (Pride 2000 GP / UFC Ultimate Brazil / IVC 1 / ...

Valentijn Overeem

Created by CarlCX

Between his years in Pride, K-1, Strikeforce and the UFC, Alistair Overeem has become such a storied MMA personality that it's easy to forget he started his career as the lesser Overeem--his older brother Valentijn was, once upon a time, the hot prospect w...

Oleg Taktarov

Created by CarlCX

Before there was Fedor, there was Oleg Taktarov, the terrifying Russian heavyweight Sambo specialist who was ALMOST the best in the world, but just not quite. If it weren't for Dan Severn, he'd be a three-time UFC tournament champion. He did manage to parl...

Sanae Kikuta

Created by CarlCX

The Newaza King, the Grabaka Commander, the Wandering Fighter--it's Sanae KIkuta, an unheralded legend of MMA. He's one of those figures who just never quite put it together on the big stage, losing under the pressure in situations he really should have wo...

Daiju Takase

Created by CarlCX

I really wanted to use his much cooler nickname, "The Grappler King from the Shadows," but it was too long. Daiju Takase is another of those MMA oddities--a skilled grappler, eclectic personality and veteran of Pancrase, Pride and the UFC alike--who lost t...

Mu-Bae Choi

Created by CarlCX

Wikipedia, in its endless array of lists, has a page specifically for South Korean mixed martial artists. There are only eighteen people listed, and only four are heavyweights. Three are Joe Son, the 0-4 criminal, Min-Soo Kim, who is 3-7 and once got knock...

Alex Stiebling

Created by CarlCX

National pride has always been a core component of mixed martial arts. Every country felt some pride in their fighting--if ever you want to hate yourself go look up some mid-2000s Stormfront posts about how much national pride they felt for Matt Hughes and...

Hiromitsu Kanehara

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #31: Oh, man, this one hurts. Hiromitsu Kanehara being on the jobber file hurts. It's not inaccurate, but it's also not entirely fair. He's one of the toughest men in mixed martial arts, he's one of the longest-tenured men i...

Branko Cikatic

Created by CarlCX

Remember that Croatian heavyweight kickboxing phenomenon who crossed over to achieve MMA stardom and international celebrity? This...probably isn't actually who you're thinking of, but boy, did he try. It's Branko Cikatic, The Croatian Tiger: Lifelong mart...

Naoya Ogawa

Created by CarlCX

Naoya Ogawa is a great case study in not knowing where a gimmick ends and a person begins. Ogawa was one of the fastest-rising competitors in the history of judo, amassing multiple national and world championships and ultimately an Olympic silver medal, bu...

Luiz Firmino

Created by CarlCX

Combat sports tend to be ruthlessly forgetful towards fighters best described as Really Good. Everyone remembers The Best, as they blaze trails along the frontier of the sport and set examples for the future. Everyone remembers The Worst, as they provide t...

Kimo Leopoldo

Created by CarlCX

The original scariest LOOKING dude in MMA, Kimo Leopoldo. Most people don't know Kimo was actually a successful, promising juco wrestler before his legs fell apart. He turned to MMA after meeting Joe Son, which...uh...man, we're gonna talk about Joe Son la...

Marcus Aurelio

Created by CarlCX

Championships have always been a tricky thing in combat sports. The ostensible and obvious purpose of a combat sport is determining which of its practitioners is the best. Two people enter, one person leaves, repeat until there's only one person left, and ...

Guy Mezger

Created by CarlCX

The pride of the Lion's Den (do you get it), Guy Mezger, who was ostensibly nicknamed The Sandman but having watched him in his prime I don't think anyone ever really called him that. He was one of the first truly well-rounded fighters, he had absolutely i...

Maurice Smith

Created by CarlCX

The early UFC was meant to teach the world the new paradigm of martial arts: Grapplers beat strikers. Mo Smith, a kickboxer and Bruce Lee-inspired student of karate, taekwondo and wing chun, was the first case of traditional martial arts reasserting their ...

Makoto Takimoto

Created by CarlCX

Olympic medalists are a prized acquisition in combat sports. Matt Lindland, Hidehiko Yoshida, Henry Cejudo, Ronda Rousey, Satoshi Ishii--their companies promoted their Olympic accomplishments with massive amounts of marketing and the fighters have carried ...

Vernon White

Created by CarlCX

Vernon "Tiger" White is another of those combat sports figures that don't quite get the respect they deserve. He's remembered primarily for his losses to more notable fighters, but his career was one of shocking reach and longevity--from the inaugural Panc...

Bob Schrijber

Created by CarlCX

And now, one of the weirder stories of MMA: Dirty Bob Schrijber. A genuinely talented kickboxer and martial artist who trains successful fighters to this day, a champion in multiple countries and sports--but also a dude who was semingly allergic to rules, ...

Jens Pulver

Created by CarlCX

Combat sport participants, more often than not, come from distressed backgrounds. Most people fortunate enough to have happy, healthy, well-cared-for upbringings don't relish the idea of a future built around getting punched in the face. Many fighters trac...

Marco Ruas

Created by CarlCX

Marco Ruas gave himself the nickname "The King of the Streets," and I will leave judgment on that statement to you. Master of six martial arts, lover of leg kicks and heel hooks, UFC tournament champion and vale tudo pioneer. Also he lost to Alexander Otsu...

Amar Suloev

Created by CarlCX

This is going to be another weird one. Amar Suloev is one of the best Russian fighters in mixed martial arts history, a vicious, aggressive striker with a background in combat sambo that led to his having a kneebar variant named after him. He won three wor...

Rickson Gracie

Created by CarlCX

He's scary, he's mysterious, he's 400-0--no, really, just ask him, he'll tell you. Rickson Gracie, the man whom Pride would not exist without, and depending on who you ask, either the greatest grappler in MMA history or just someone who very carefully chos...

Rodrigo Gracie

Created by CarlCX

With the advent of the UFC Gracie Jiu-Jitsu experienced a meteoric rise in prominence, going from a successful but primarily regional Brazilian martial art to the fastest-growing grappling art in modern history in the space of just five years. That kind of...

Ryan Gracie

Created by CarlCX

The phrase "he's a Gracie" has always conjured up a very specific archetype: The tenacious, technical grappler, patient jiu-jitsu tacticians who fight with almost disconcerting calm and look for opportunities to snatch an arm or a neck. This is why the deb...

Renzo Gracie

Created by CarlCX

By far the most fun of the Gracies to talk to (ask him about nutsacks!), it's Renzo Gracie, world-renowned grappler, multiple-time ADCC champion and relatively successful mixed martial artist. Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride 10 vs Sakuraba / ...

Royler Gracie

Created by CarlCX

Finish your Gracie family collection! It's a shame: Royler Gracie is legit one of the best grapplers in history--two-time pan-ams champ, three-time ADCC champ, four-time WJJ champ--but he's pretty much only known for being the first victim on Sakuraba's Gr...

Ralph Gracie

Created by CarlCX

Full and preemptive disclosure: I was a student at Ralph Gracie's BJJ academy. I try to be reasonable when I write these, but I may be extra-biased here, so take a grain of salt. Deserved or no, the reputation of the Gracie family has always been one of ca...

Daniel Gracie

Created by CarlCX

Daniel Gracie is the most successful non-Gracie Gracie, and that is one of my favorite sentences. Technically Daniel Simões, he took the far more prominent name of Daniel Gracie in reflection of the cousins who raised him, Ralph, Renzo, Ryan and Charles, a...

Crosley Gracie

Created by CarlCX

The Gracie surname carries a terrible weight. Being a Gracie in the world of combat sports means fighting not just your opponent, but the combined weight of the Gracie reputation, good and bad, from the foundational performances of Royce and Rickson to the...

Ken Shamrock

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #wait wait I'm kidding come back oh god I mean, it's Ken Shamrock. Even more than Wanderlei Silva, I'm really not sure what you can add to the Ken Shamrock conversation. He's one of the most important figures in the history ...

Dean Lister

Created by CarlCX

One of the best features of martial arts is its ability to help practitioners come to terms with their problems. Dean "The Boogeyman" Lister was a military brat, forced to move constantly through South and North America alike to follow his father's service...

Kazuo Takahashi

Created by CarlCX

MMA was not always a universal term. Its adoption is fairly modern, and only truly set in during the UFC's mainstream breakthrough--beforehand, when people talked about MMA, they would say vale tudo, or no-holds-barred, or shootfighting, or pankration. The...

Stefan Leko

Created by CarlCX

In our journey through the history of Pride we've talked at length about the troubled, on-again off-again working relationship between Pride and its competition over in K-1, and how the two would every once in awhile exchange talent--but almost always the ...

Dan Bobish

Created by CarlCX

A month ago, when writing about Ron Waterman, I said the superheavyweight division in MMA has always been a freakshow, a barely-there division inhabited by non-fighters and ruled, for the most part, by people who realistically shouldn't have been superheav...

Kenichi Yamamoto

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #30: The toughest thing about the jobbers of the MMA is how many of them almost broke out and became stars. Bob Sapp almost decapitated Minotauro Nogueira, Steve White almost knocked out Yushin Okami, Shungo Oyama almost pun...

Frank Trigg

Created by CarlCX

Frank Trigg is a rare multi-time victim of the Getting Finished In Cool Ways curse. Trigg's career spanned thirty fights across three separate decades, saw him win two world championships at two different weight classes, and included victories--often domin...

Chris Brennan

Created by CarlCX

The wild west of early MMA is sprinkeld with a handful of amazing American grapplers--people who studied grappling before grappling got hip, and consequently handed out stranglings across the world of regional mixed martial arts but couldn't quite compete ...

Ricardo Morais

Created by CarlCX

Ricardo Morais is not an inexperienced or unaccomplished fighter. The 6'8" teacher-proclaimed Mutant trained BJJ under Renzo Gracie before starting his MMA career, which began in the first Absolute FIghting Championship Tournament--which, to be clear, was ...

Fabiano Iha

Created by CarlCX

I've been spending a lot of time in these blurbs doing purple prose about the glory of journeymen, and the fighters who fought everywhere, and the lengthy histories of the forgotten. Fabiano Iha is not really any of those. His career only really lasted fou...

Kazuhiro Hamanaka

Created by CarlCX

Kazushi Sakuraba was the gold standard of wrestlers-as-fighters in Japan. The transition failed far, far more often than it succeeded, and most of its successes were modest at best--but no matter how many times wrestlers tried and failed at mixed martial a...

Tra Telligman

Created by CarlCX

Tra Telligman, man. Tra Telligman was one of the toughest dudes the sport ever saw. Let's get the elephant out of the room: When Tra was about eighteen months old he was nearly killed by a car, resulting in the loss of most of the right side of his chest, ...

Francisco Bueno

Created by CarlCX

There's a curse in MMA: If you get knocked out in an extremely cool way, it is remarkably hard for anything else you do to be remembered half as fondly. Francisco "Chico" Bueno is a Rickson Gracie student with multiple BJJ championships, five violent first...

Ryuta Sakurai

Created by CarlCX

Much is made of the big MMA organizations in Japan's history--Pride, HERO's, Shooto, Pancrase, RIZIN--but its mid-tier organizations have been just as important to the sport's continuing existence. Deep is one of the most successful and longest-lived of th...

Eiji Mitsuoka

Created by CarlCX

If you're a more recent MMA fan, you probably don't know that for a long time Japan was the only refuge for fighters in lighter weight classes. The UFC had trouble maintaining its lightweight division during its struggling, pre-mainstream years, leading to...

Tom Erikson

Created by CarlCX

"The Big Cat" Tom Erikson is one of the bigger what-ifs in early-period MMA. He was a very accomplished collegiate wrestler, and while MMA was by no means lacking in strong wrestlers, he was a particularly special one--tall, agile, aggressive, unafraid of ...

Wallid Ismail

Created by CarlCX

Wallid Ismail: The man who was hunting Gracies before Sakuraba made it sexy. Wallid is sort of an elemental spirit of anger, and he channeled that anger into his grappling: It was both ruthless and explosive, marked by making very few errors and violently ...

Antonio Schembri

Created by CarlCX

Certain fighters are defined by a single victory. Gabriel Gonzaga will never be bigger than beating Cro-Cop, Matt Serra will never outshine beating GSP. Nino Schembri and his fancy sideburns are right up there with them. Antonio Schembri--aka Nino, aka El ...

Ron Waterman

Created by CarlCX

Superheavyweight is the most underserved weight class in mixed martial arts. It was only ever really a thing during the pioneer age of the sport, before weight classes even existed: Since the adoption of weight classes, especially in America, superheavywei...

Jeremy Horn

Created by CarlCX

Jeremy "Gumby" Horn is one of the last of the original breed of MMA fighters--not the pioneers who invented the sport, but rather the teenagers who saw UFC 1, got inspired and decided to devote their lives to rough, self-taught road-warrior martial arts. A...

Yasuhito Namekawa

Created by CarlCX

Virtually all of the fighters who came out of the old half-work, half-shoot days of RINGS and U-Style wound up having losing careers--unsurprisingly a martial background of theatrical fighting tended not to translate to longterm mixed martial arts success-...

Johil de Oliveira

Created by CarlCX

Johil de Oliveira is an unsung MMA legend: A Luta Livre fighter who became one of the sport's first standouts at lighter weights, winning multiple vale tudo tournaments in Brazil and becoming the first man to beat Pele Landi-Jons, at the time one of the tw...

Daisuke Nakamura

Created by CarlCX

In the mass spectrum of professional wrestlers-turned-fighters there were few highlights, but an inversely proportional relaitonship between the likelihood of success and the weight of the wrestler. Daisuke Nakamura--a U-File shoot-style pro wrestler, trai...

Carl Malenko

Created by CarlCX

The final member of our original Pride contingent, the man of many surnames. Carl Ognibene was an amateur wrestler adopted into the Malenko grappling family (yes, that includes Dean) and let loose upon the world of Japanese professional wrestling. He never...

Ricco Rodriguez

Created by CarlCX

Ricco Rodriguez is the first real heartbreak for a surprising number of MMA fans--simultaneously one of the sport's best heavyweights and one of its biggest disappointments. A big, fast, technical heavyweight back in his prime, Ricco was an enormous threat...

Ricardo Almeida

Created by CarlCX

Full disclosure: I am totally biased because an acquaintance of mine is a Ricardo Almeida black belt. Question my judgment. Ricardo Almeida--aka Big Dog, and I apologize if any wrestling fans just shuddered involuntarily--is one of the less-sung but better...

Willie Peeters

Created by CarlCX

Willie Peeters spent virtually his whole career in the quasi-MMA world of Rings. Everyone knows the UFC and Pride, and a lot of folks know K-1 and shooto, but Fighting Network Rings, despite being one of the most important promotions in MMA history, isn't ...

Carlos Barreto

Created by CarlCX

Your opinion of Carlos Barreto's career will vary wildly based on how deeply you look into his record. He was by no means unsuccessful, sporting nine years of competition, a dominant record in his prime and two championships, but he's another of those figh...

Kazunari Murakami

Created by CarlCX

Kazunari Murakami is kind of an MMA footnote--a fighter who was almost historically relevant, but not quite. A longtime judoka and wrestler, he took part in the old, weird proto-MMA Lumax Cup tournaments and almost won one of them--enough success to propel...

Yusuke Imamura

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #17: When MMA promotions reach a certain size, they virtually always attempt to start, or adopt, a feeder league--a lesser, more regional organization, often working in partnership with even smaller organizations, to find an...

Assuerio Silva

Created by CarlCX

There were three MMA schools that defined Pride: Hammer House, which gave it its inaugural champion and greatest heels (even though it was just some punching bags in Mark Coleman's garage), the Takada Dojo, which gave it its two biggest national stars and ...

Tokimitsu Ishizawa

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #7: Hey, look at the time, it's Professional Wrestlers Who Were Out Of Their Depth o'clock again. Tokimitsu Ishizawa started wrestling in 1992 as your average junior-heavyweight stylist, but the infamous NJPW/UWFi feud (whic...

Katsuhisa Fujii

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #41: Over the course of the Pride project, I have told you many stories about professional wrestlers who turned to mixed martial arts. Katsuhisa Fujii--the man they call Shamoji, which I understand translates to "Gamecock" a...

Egan Inoue

Created by CarlCX

Enson was the first of the Inoue brothers to fight professionally, but Egan was the first to achieve combat sports stardom: In 1996 he became the first American to ever win a World Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championship, which is a pretty cool thing. He'd also b...

John Dixson

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, part 2: "Big" John Dixson, the oft-misspelled, oft-forgotten, never-unshirted pioneer of early mixed martial arts. There are a lot of cases of old-school fighters having early success and failing to adapt to changing times; ...

Pedro Otavio

Created by CarlCX

Pedro Otavio is a more interesting figure in MMA than he gets remembered for. He was a pioneer of the sport, fighting as early as 1995, he was at the first International Vale Tudo Championship, he was an early Pride veteran and, all in all, not a bad fight...

Anthony Macias

Created by CarlCX

Anthony Macias is another of those old-school road warriors of MMA: He fought professionally for 20 years, on and off, to a final record of 26-18, and the vast majority of his career was that of a regional fighter, taking place in small, sweaty arenas acro...

Yoshiaki Yatsu

Created by CarlCX

I've commented a few times on the tendency of Pride's matchmakers to put nationally prominent figures into meat grinder situations--taking people who were too old, too injured or simply too unprepared for the reality of combat sports and placing them again...

Jose Landi-Jons

Created by CarlCX

Before Pride and the UFC ensconced the concept of Mixed Martial Arts in the public consciousness, the new, scary sport was called Vale Tudo (or No Holds Barred, which was always cool) and the predominant images of its early days took place in sweaty Brazil...

Chalid Arrab

Created by CarlCX

When the first Bushido card aired, I remember hearing about a German boxer named DIE FAUST who knocked out everyone he faced, crossed over to MMA and kickboxing and was a terrifying striking machine out for revenge against Rodney Glunder, the man who was h...

Mike Bencic

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #34: There's an oddly long history of people getting fights with major promotions not because they thesmelves are noteworthy, but because they are attached to particularly noteworthy people, and in virtually every case they ...

Juan Mott

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file #4: Juan Mott. Juan Mott is...Juan Mott. There is a surprising dearth of things to say about Juan Mott. He was an early jiu-jitsu player who managed to get on the second-ever Pride and was promptly punched into dust by Akira ...

Egidijus Valavicius

Created by CarlCX

One of the defining characteristics of RINGS as an organization was its emphasis on international participation. In its initial pro-wrestling incarnation RINGS was broken up into nationally-based stables, be it the fierce Russian team of grapplers like Vol...

Jong Wang Kim

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #18: So, true story: I had never seen Jong Wang Kim's earliest Pancrase appearances, and when I looked up the video of his first recorded fight on Fight Pass while researching this character I found the ring announcer eagerl...

Gan McGee

Created by CarlCX

For all the major fight camps in MMA--your Chute Boxes, Miletich Fighting Systems and various Top Teams--there were a plethora of schools that never grew past the success of a single, signature fighter. Team Punishment never got bigger than TIto, the Takad...

Amir Rahnavardi

Created by CarlCX

The most underserved field in MMA is that of the journeyman--everyone has to be The Best or A Bum or A Gatekeeper, very few can just be a journeyman fighter. Amir Rahnavardi is the platonic ideal of the MMA journeyman. He trained, but not with anyone notab...

John Renken

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #6: This was an interesting one. John "The Saint" Renken is one of the longer-tenured and better-accomplished journeymen in the sport, with a career that spans nearly a decade and runs the gamut of early MMA--from HOOKnSHOOT...

Kazuki Okubo

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #33: Kazuki Okubo was one of the last U-File wrestlers to make it to Pride--oddly enough, he'd have his first Pride fight before his first U-STYLE match. He was never particularly well-known for either, unfortunately--a jobb...

Koji Kitao

Created by CarlCX

And then, there was one of the weirder hothead stories in combat sports history: Koji Kitao, the former yokozuna Futahaguro. He rose shockingly quickly in the world of sumo and fell shockingly quicklier, banned from the sport for life after (allegedly) ass...

Emmanuel Yarborough

Created by CarlCX

Our first dearly departed, Emmanuel "Manny" Yarborough. His career sits somehwere between an afterthought and a joke, but that's a quiet testament to just how hard MMA is: Manny was a two-time NCAA All-American, a Judo brown belt under the US Olympic team ...

Hugo Duarte

Created by CarlCX

Hugo Duarte's career is bookended by humiliation. His moments on top of the mountain came at the start of his MMA tenure, going 5-0 in vale tudo and becoming one of the hottest prospects in the sport at the time, half for being the star Luta Livre pupil of...

Satoshi Honma

Created by CarlCX

Satoshi Honma is another of those odd cases: An early MMA pioneer who fought in all four of the great organizations, challenged for one of their championships, and remains almost completely unknown and unrecognized. A lifelong karateka and grappler who sta...

Naoki Sano

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file: Naoki "Yuhi" Sano, an 80s NJPW wrestler who joined the UWF-i and Battlarts, and when Takada decided he and his fellow fake-real fighters should try being just plain real fighters Sano followed suit. It went...poorly. His car...

Masakazu Imanari

Created by CarlCX

There's an apocryphal story--and I stress apocryphal, I heard it from multiple grappling folks back in the day but it is decidedly unsourced--that Bellator and Strikeforce had tried to book Masakazu Imanari for fights in America only to be told by customs ...

Minoru Toyonaga

Created by CarlCX

Minoru Toyonaga is one of those figures in fighting history that was just sort of present. He didn't have any particular standout skills, he was just a tough, tenacious fighter in the mid-period of Pancrase who lost more than he won, and he made it onto th...

Jorge Patino

Created by CarlCX

I've used the word "journeyman" frequently in my bios. It's kind of a loaded, backhanded category to place a fighter in. If champions are the cream of the crop, contenders are the fighters at the top and gatekeepers are elite talents who just can't turn th...

Hiroyuki Abe

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #43: The sub-lightweight classes weren't really popularized in mixed martial arts until World Extreme Cagefighting made them visible in America, and the UFC's absorption of them laid the groundwork for Jose Aldo and Conor Mc...

Bazigit Atajev

Created by CarlCX

I've been waiting to get to this one. Bazigit Atajev is one of the most enigmatic fighters ever: A dynamic striker when most couldn't box, a talented grappler who rarely used it, a top heavyweight who vanished without a trace. There are very few fighters w...

Takahiro Oba

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #23: I swear, it's like Mad Libs at this point. Stop me if you've heard this one: Takahiro Oba was a shoot-style professional wrestler who was pushed into MMA by his management in BATTLARTS. He wasn't very good at it, made t...

Michiyoshi Ohara

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file #15: We've talked about the insane phenomenon that was Antonio Inoki forcing professional wrestlers to fight in mixed martial arts, and how tragic it was to see them get knocked out, and how otherwise marketable stars had mom...

Rulon Gardner

Created by CarlCX

World-class athletes, by their nature, have some level of luck. Many have had hard lives, but all have had the confluence of genetics, opportunity and talent that they capitalized on through hard work. It's difficult to envision a athlete at the top of the...

John Marsh

Created by CarlCX

Researching John Marsh has primarily made me feel confused. He's a mixture of the unexpected and the totally, almost absurdly normal. He doesn't have a tragic origin story or secret background, he was a young athlete and juco wrestler who pursued boxing be...

Shannon Ritch

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #10: I really wish this was the last jobber file entry, because Shannon "The Cannon" Ritch is not simply an MMA jobber, he is THE MMA jobber. At 56-83 (4) and still going, Shannon Ritch has the dubious honor of having the mo...

Herman Renting

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #9: This one doesn't even feel particularly fair, honestly. Herman Renting was one of the numerous students of the legendary Chris Dolman, and as with a number of said students he spent most of his career--nearly a decade--i...

Yushin Okami

Created by CarlCX

Yushin Okami is one of the great underappreciated names in the annals of MMA. He's one of the best middleweights in the sport--he's probably the best Japanese middleweight of all time, and for a division that includes Sakuraba, Misaki, Tamura and Chonan th...

Sokun Koh

Created by CarlCX

A number of fighters from the early Pride days pulled vanishing acts--people who were just trying MMA, people who flunked out and retired, people who disappeared into regional shows and never came back. Most of them weren't particularly great losses to the...

Takayuki Okada

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #8: Strap in, it's another sad one. Takayuki Okada was a fighter and wrestler whose career lasted just under three years. A high-school judoka, seidokaikan student and amateur Shooto competitor, Okada quickly developed frien...

Alberto Rodriguez

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #35: Here's a fun one: It's middling MMA fighter, divisive personality and international superstar Alberto Rodriguez. One day he would be the WWE world champion as Alberto del Rio, but long before those days he was the mixed...

Kestutis Smirnovas

Created by CarlCX

Pride, along with a score of other Japanese MMA organizations, had solid working relationships across Europe--with RINGS having notable offshoots in Holland and Lithuania, and Shooto eventually following suit. They served the same purpose the UFC's develop...

Sean Sherk

Created by CarlCX

The lighter weight classes were ill-served in the early days of mixed martial arts. Despite the technique-over-mass philosophy at the center of vale tudo, it was only the smaller organizations like Shooto and King of the Cage that tended to formalize weigh...

Igor Borisov

Created by CarlCX

Tonight, we have one of the more unfortunate stories of the early Pride days: Igor Borisov. Borisov was Pride's attempt at having an ersatz Oleg Taktarov (read as: Oleg cost too much money), and he appeared up to the task: He was a burly, frightening, phot...

Takashi Sugiura

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #21: I should really just rename this whole thing 'Professional Wrestlers Who Probably Shouldn't Have Fought' because I swear that's almost all of them, at this point. Once upon a time, Takashi Sugiura was going to be an oly...

Jan Nortje

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file #16: It's the very rare cross-sport jobber, the South African mauler, Jan "The Giant" Nortje. There's a long history of fighters whose primary fighting attribute was "I'm really, really big," but there's a strange phenomenon ...

Tadao Yasuda

Created by CarlCX

If you've been following my characters, you have already read several depressing stories about prominent Japanese professional wrestlers being more or less forced into MMA so they could take completely unnecessary beatings in the name of Inokian fighting s...

Ryuki Ueyama

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #38: It's been awhile since we did this song and dance, but like all good nostalgia we're revisiting it: It's Ryuki Ueyama, another in the grand army of U-File/U-Style wrestlers turned fighters. Or fighters turned wrestlers....

Bobby Southworth

Created by CarlCX

I've previously written about the curse of memorability: If what someone else does to you is cooler than anything you yourself did, you will be remembered only as the victim of that thing. Bobby Southworth is a victim of the lesser-known subrule: If someth...

Matt Skelton

Created by CarlCX

During their mutual time in the sun, Pride and K-1 had a contentious but beneficial working arrangement. Each wanted to prove their fighters were the best, each wanted to win bragging rights over the other, each wanted to use the other as a springboard for...

Mikhail Ilyukhin

Created by CarlCX

The people who transitioned from Fighting Network RINGS to mixed martial arts proper tended to have mixed results as fighters--the quasi-real state of early RINGS meant not having the same experience against stiff competition that people who came up in the...

Andrei Kopylov

Created by CarlCX

It's hard to predict what makes for famous gaijin figures in Japanese wrestling. There are a couple common factors--if you're huge, you're already halfway there--but there are no singular personality traits that make people catch on. Sometimes people want ...

Yuriy Kochkine

Created by CarlCX

The Russian Top Team produced some of the greatest talents in its era of mixed martial arts--most of them sambo and wrestling masters--but there was a strong striking base at its core, and Yuriy Kochkine is one of the primary reasons. Where the foundationa...

Yuki Ishikawa

Created by CarlCX

Yuki Ishikawa fought twice and it was pretty anticlimactic. There isn't a lot to talk about regarding his mixed martial arts career. So, instead, it's time for a history lesson. One of the biggest differences in the international hotbeds of MMA has always ...

Yuki Sasaki

Created by CarlCX

Competing in Pancrase had a strange effect on a lot of fighters: The very grappling-heavy focus of the house style tended to make its fighters try to focus more on their own grappling, even when it clashed with their martial background. Yuki Sasaki was a c...

Jadyson Costa

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #37: As a general rule, if your nickname is just the name of another, more notable fighter, it's statistically most likely you're going to have an unfortunate career. Chute Boxe had a number of talents it saw as the future o...

Mike Bourke

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #11: This may be an unfair thing to say, but generally-speaking, anytime you see the words "superheavyweight division" used in reference to an MMA fighter there's a strong likelihood they aren't very good. No major MMA compa...

Soa Palelei

Created by CarlCX

Certain fighters are very different on paper than in reality. On paper, Soa Palelei was a half-dozen different stereotypes of a brawler--a 6'4"Australian heavyweight nicknamed "The Hulk" who scored 82% of his wins by TKO and often wore a mohawk. In reality...

Larry Parker

Created by CarlCX

And then, in one of those nicknames that you could only really do in the mid-90s, there was Larry "The Violator" Parker. Parker was an early grappling standout and one of the stars of the old-school Uniified Shoot Wrestling Federation in Texas along with f...

Soichi Nishida

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file #3: I'm at a loss. Early Pride (early MMA, really) was littered with pro-wrestlers and sports celebrities, it was generally accepted that every once in awhile you'd have someone competing who wasn't exactly a fighter. Soichi ...

Nathan Jones

Created by CarlCX

So here's the dark secret about the first-ever Pride card: It was bad. There were seven fights on the card and most of them were terrible; a pro-wrestler vs a 3-5 jobber, Renzo and Akira Shoji going to a 30-minute draw, Kimo and Dan Severn going to a 30-mi...

Denis Sobolev

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #12: One of the oldest and yet most enduring questions of MMA is "why aren't there more people who do real martial arts like the ones in the movies," because martial arts are to some extent propaganda--every martial art is i...

Alex Andrade

Created by CarlCX

The Lion's Den was one of the first celebrated fight camps in MMA. Ken Shamrock, Guy Mezger and Vernon "Tiger" White all created a hardcore training environment that prided itself on explicit attempts to get people to quit--to pass a try-out you had to do ...

Kyosuke Sasaki

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #26: Good lord, but there were a lot of U-STYLE fighters in a short period of time. Yeesh. Today's entrant is Kyosuke Sasaki, another of the original U-STYLE shoot-wrestling rebels--the runner-up of the U-STYLE tournament to...

Achmed Labasanov

Created by CarlCX

There's this MMA meme about the Dagestani takeover of the UFC--Shamil Abdurakhimov, Omari Akhmedov, Sultan Aliev, Ali Bagautinov, Rustam Khabilov, Rashid Magomedov, Ruslan Magomedov, Islam Makhachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov all set up shop in the UFC in int...

Rodney Glunder

Created by CarlCX

Back in the old days, I was aware of two fighters named Rodney: Rodney Faverus and Rodney Glunder. It wasn't until four or so years later that I realized they were the same person. Rodney Glunder is another of those low-key, long-time veterans of mixed mar...

Tim Catalfo

Created by CarlCX

Tim Catalfo is quite possibly the only fighter in the history of mixed martial arts who is more famous for his facial hair than any of his fights. A champion amateur wrestler in 1980 and 1987, Catalfo spent most of his athletic prime as a midcard professio...

Yuji Hisamatsu

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file #29: I never got to watch Pancrase, back in the day--I had to go back and discover it, and the eclectic mixture of styles and personalities it provided, in retrospect. I had already seen folks like Kondo and Marquardt elsewhe...

Yoji Anjo

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #44: Yoji Anjo is one of the most important jobbers in the history of martial arts. It wasn't for his fighting: He competed in multiple major organizations but never won a match. It wasn't for his fame as a wrestler: He was ...

Aji Susilo

Created by CarlCX

When MMA first boomed in Japan it set off a wave of activity across the globe: South Korea's Spirit MC, Britain's Cage Rage and Brazil's Jungle Fight all started during Pride's emergence as the biggest mixed martial arts organization on the planet. While i...

Wataru Sakata

Created by CarlCX

Theoretically, most fighters and wrestlers are doomed. It's said that very few people enter into combat sports, scripted or unscripted, without their primary motivation, deep down, being the desire to be the best--and that means the vast majority will neve...

Rory Singer

Created by CarlCX

It's hard to overstate the role The Ultimate Fighter had in mixed martial arts' breakthrough into the mainstream. MMA had flirted with the spotlight before--its initial pay-per-view splash, its success in Japan, its brief moment as a punchline on Friends--...

Xue Do Won

Created by CarlCX

I'm not gonna lie: I've got almost nothing, here. Xue Do Won fought exactly one recorded, professional MMA fight, and it was at Pride: The Best Vol. 3 against Indonesian champion Aji Susilo. He put up an admirable contest, landed a score of body kicks and ...

Yoshinori Sasaki

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #19: Boy, we're really stretching, here. Pride employed a number of professional wrestlers as fighters, to varying levels of success and embarrassment. Their regional Pride: The Best shows were no exception. Unfortunately, w...

Fatih Kocamis

Created by CarlCX

The Netherlands-based kickboxing team Golden Glory rose to prominence in the 2010s on the back of standout stars like Semmy Schilt, Gokhan Saki, Marloes Coenen and Alistair Overeem, and after some legal difficulties it reconstiuted as Glory, the current de...

Tomohiko Hashimoto

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #24: I said there were dozens more, and I was not joking. Today, submitted for your approval, is the professional wrestler Tomohiko Hashimoto. Not every wrestler who participated in the Japanese MMA boom was driven by Antoni...

Tae Yoon Han

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #27: There was never a plethora of successful South Korean fighters in Japanese MMA, but there was always a demand for Korean jobbers. There were some historical pressures behind it--every country has some people who like se...

Yutaro Miyamoto

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #25: We're finally on the last of the Pride: The Best cards. The experiment was a bit of a failure--it helped discover a few fighters, most notably people like Eiji Mitsuoka, Yushin Okami and future Sakuraba-defeating Lithua...

Yoshinori Kawakami

Created by CarlCX

Kiyoshi Tamura's U-STYLE wrestling promotion, despite being short-lived--just a dozen shows and two pay-per-views--produced a surprising number of mixed martial artists across a surprising spectrum of talent. Some were expert technical grapplers who compet...

John Alessio

Created by CarlCX

The most underappreciated role in MMA is that of the gatekeeper. It's easy to love a champion and it's easy to love an underdog, but "gatekeeper" is essentially an insult, because fans have trouble investing in someone and seeing them repeatedly fail to ge...

Matt Foki

Created by CarlCX

This might be the weirdest biography in the whole of the Pride project. We've covered wrestlers and fighters, jobbers and champions, criminals and heroes, people who never left home and people who fought across the globe, people who started fighting at the...

Mal Foki

Created by CarlCX

This might be the weirdest biography in the whole of the Pride project. We've covered wrestlers and fighters, jobbers and champions, criminals and heroes, people who never left home and people who fought across the globe, people who started fighting at the...

Scott Bills

Created by CarlCX

This project has helped me develop a much deeper respect for the perseverance exhibited by so many fighters who never actually break out in any way--fighters who never get further than being well-traveled journeymen in regional MMA, fighters who lose more ...

Steve White

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #28: So, this is the reason that for all my complaints about the ubiquity of Japanese pro-wrestlers who failed at MMA, they're still vastly preferable: American jobbers tend to be so boring there's nothing to say about them....

Jason Suttie

Created by CarlCX

New Zealand has always been a surprising hotbed of kickboxing activity. Jason Suttie was patient zero for its emergence into the kickboxing world--the first New Zealander ever to compete in K-1. ...and that's kind of the entire topline of the story, honest...

Lloyd van Dams

Created by CarlCX

At the peak of their power, Pride and K-1 would occasionally cross-promote, pitting their fighters against one another. I've written before about how unbalanced the talent exchange was--Pride sent over more, K-1 sent over mostly dredgs, both stayed far awa...

Jerrel Venetiaan

Created by CarlCX

Jerrel Venetiaan--who has one of my favorite names in all of combat sports, trailing behind Rambaa Somdet--was another part of the biggest night in the Pride/K-1 war, the 2002 Shockwave/Dynamite show. Venetiaan wasn't actually a stranger to MMA--he came in...

Nobuaki Kakuda

Created by CarlCX

Nobuaki Kakuda is one of the most oddly important figures in Japanese combat sports history--but not for his fighting. He was a legitimately skilled fighter, a black belt in seidokaikan karate who competed against the likes of Andy Hug, Stan Longinidis, Za...

Hiroki Kurosawa

Created by CarlCX

Hiroki Kurosawa (1962-2017) was a renowned karateka--a direct student of the legendary Mas Oyama, a nine-time national/international tournament competitor and one-time Japanese national karate champion in his debut tournament in '84.. He was deeply respect...

Ralph White

Created by CarlCX

This is one of those cases where I'm just disappointingly unable to find anything. After researching on and off for a couple days, I can say exactly two things with any degree of certainty, both of which I already knew from watching the events back in the ...

Rony Sefo

Created by CarlCX

Welcome to one of those very rare moments where I don't really have much to say: It's professional kickboxer Rony "Slyman" Sefo. And you could realistically leave it at that. The most notable thing about Rony as a fighter is his family name--he's the young...

William vanRoosmalen

Created by CarlCX

On today's episode of When Pride Did Kickboxing Exhibitions For Some Reason, we have William van Roosmalen. There's very, very little tape left of most 80s/early 90s, non-K-1 kickboxing; organizations were spread out, many of their events didn't have parti...

Tasis Petridis

Created by CarlCX

Tasis Petridis, the boxing king of Melbourne; at risk of sounding like a broken record, he is, yet again, a case where the meat of someone's martial accomplishments happened before there was any recordkeeping worth a damn. He started fighting in the longpa...

George Randolph

Created by CarlCX

"Big" George Randolph was, once upon a time, a successful figure in the deeply competitive world of the 1999/2000-era regional superheavyweight combat sports scene. If you think that sentence is sarcastic, you are perceptive. He went 1-3 in K-1, 4-3 in MMA...

Fabio Mello

Created by CarlCX

Pride's lighter weight divisions weren't open all that long, in the grand scheme of things--the lightweight division wasn't officially incorporated until 2004 and Pride would close just three years later--but it pushed a broad swath of talent through its d...

Jukei Nakajima

Created by CarlCX

The final fight of Joe Son's ignominious MMA career happened at Pride: The Best, Vol 2: An opening match against a Japanese welterwieght named Jukei Nakajima. He was a 2-2 fighter, with all four fights coming in one night--the ingle-night, 16-man TItan FIg...

Yukiya Naito

Created by CarlCX

Not too long ago, I wrote about a fighter named Sokun Koh and how baffling it was to me that, as the rare example of a Japanese middleweight with a well-rounded game and a proven record of success during the Pride boom, he didn't get used and marketed as a...

Hidehisa Matsuda

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #22: The most frustrating part of this whole project is making dudes with no living fighting record. Hidehisa Matsuda was a short-lived shoot-style wrestler and fighter who wrestled for four years and fought five times, and ...

Tatsuya Iwasaki

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the MMA jobber file, #24: This is our last entry for the Pride/K-1 Shockwave/Dynamite 2002 supershow, and it's...really anticlimactic. Seriously. For all the hype both promotions put into their BIG CROSSOVER SUPERSHOW, the opening match not only...

Ken Orihashi

Created by CarlCX

We're onto Pride: The Best Vol. 2, and we're scraping pretty hard at the bottom of the historical awareness barrel: It's Ken Orihashi, one of a tiny handful of Pride fighters whose fights essentially don't exist. Despite being a professional fighter with a...

Bertrand Amoussou

Created by CarlCX

The other day I told you the story of Yasuaki "Rao" Miyazono, one half of the dark match at Pride: Bushido 3. Today we have the other half, the man who beat him, a surprisingly important figure in the politics of mixed martial arts and, I'm pretty sure, th...

Yukio Kawabe

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #42: Typing the word "Tamakairiki" repeatedly is surprisingly difficult. Pride's Bushido series was a showcase for some of the best talents the world have to offer. It featured their welterweight and lightweight competitors,...

Brady Fink

Created by CarlCX

Pride had an insatiable appetite for believable gaijin victims. They were an invaluable asset in building Japanese superstars--nothing was more of a crowd-pleaser than a smaller Japanese competitor smashing a big, scary-looking foreigner, even when those f...

Sergey Ignatov

Created by CarlCX

Pride had a tendency to throw fighters into completely unfair matchups. Fighters with only scraps of story would be thrown up against massively lopsided competition on a very regular basis. But Pride tended to ensure even their chum came with some sort of ...

Yasuaki Miyazono

Created by CarlCX

I wrote frequently during my Pride: The Best characters about how frustrating it was to write about fighters with almost no living record of their existence--amateurs who showed up once or twice, people my research couldn't turn up any solid information ab...

Jin O Kim

Created by CarlCX

Tales from the jobber file, #40: One of the worst things in sports--not just MMA, all sports--is the self-unaware fans that insist they could do the sport better than the person they see on television. I have had spirited arguments with people who looked a...

Aliev Makhmud

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #45: Over the course of its lifespan Pride made several attempts at courting international talent and connections. Some of these initiatives were tremendously successful, paid dividends for years, and surfaced promising youn...

Gilles Arsene

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #32: There have been a lot of really bad fighters in mixed martial arts, even in the main event. Pride itself saw folks like Kyle Sturgeon stinking up main events, K-1 Hero's had cards main-evented by Yoshinori Ikeda, Bellat...

Kyle Sturgeon

Created by CarlCX

Notes from the MMA jobber file, #5: It's the final member of the early Pride group, and we saved the best for last. Pride was built on the back of Nobuhiko Takada. As the only already-made Japanese star associated with the product, Pride felt its corporate...

Cory Peterson

Created by CarlCX

We're not going to be here long today and that's pretty fortunate, because I really don't want to spend much time talking about this dude for reasons I will make clear shortly: It's Cory "L.A. Giant" Peterson. There isn't really an origin story to Peterson...

Joe Son

Created by CarlCX

One of the most difficult things to address in the history of things you love is acknowledging that parts of that history will, inevitably, be played by people who don't deserve to be remembered. Joe Son is an indelible part of MMA history. He was the spor...

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