Last week, Pride Fighting Championships had their American debut in Las Vegas. Pride FC is a Mixed Martial Arts organization from Japan that boasts a lineup of fighters arguably superior to those of other MMA groups. Their heavyweight champion for example,
Fedor Emelianenko, is considered the best MMA fighter ever by most fight commentators. They are famous for their
operatic production values, regularly filling out 30-60,000 seat arenas in Japan.
However, many in MMA circles assert that their product is
"too foreign" for the US, and that they need to
"Americanize" their product for the mass market. Is this true? Given the popularity of
video games,
Anime and
Manga in the US, they might not have to change all that much.
posted by ishmael
on Oct 25, 2006 -
68 comments
