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WRESTLERS GARDNER AND GABER HOT COMMODITIES IN COMBAT SPORTS MARKET
Submitted by: E.Goldman/Boxing & Wrestling Editor
Posted On 12/31/2004
The following article was submitted on Nov. 28, 2004, to the RealProWrestling.com web site. The thinking then was that their new site would have been up by now, which unfortunately it is not. However, as many of you know, all of Real Pro Wrestling’s plans have been delayed by the fire Sunday, Dec. 26, that destroyed both their studios and offices as well as the home of Toby Willis, their co-founder and CEO.
Since this article deals with the debuts of wrestlers Rulon Gardner and Karam Gaber in mixed martial arts this New Year’s Eve, we are bringing it to you now before it gets outdated.
Also since this article was written, Karam Gaber and K-1 have come to terms for his fight. His opponent will be mixed martial arts veteran and former Japanese wrestling champion, Kazuyuki Fujita.
Note also that the article was written for an audience primarily from the world of wrestling.
Here in its entirety, and with my usual understated tone, of course, is the article.
NO HOLDS BARRED: WRESTLERS GARDNER AND GABER HOT COMMODITIES IN COMBAT SPORTS MARKET
by Eddie Goldman
WRESTLING, like a groggy bear arising from a good winter’s slumber, is finally ready to resume its role as one of the premier attractions in the wild kingdom of real, professional sports. For over 80 years what has been called professional wrestling has been largely the realm of hustlers, con men, charlatans, liars, and, more recently, steroid freaks, along with some ex-athletes who have generally mutated into becoming members of one or more of those other categories. Now the emergence of Real Pro Wrestling is set to end real wrestling’s Dark Ages, its involuntary hibernation, its banishment from the world of professional sports.
Even with the absence of a real professional league for so long, the sport of wrestling is so great, so compelling, so valorous, and so intense that its amateur level has still produced a cadre of world-renowned stars. Up until now wrestling greats like Dan Gable, Alexander Kareline, Rulon Gardner, Cael Sanderson, and the latest of wrestling’s stars to emerge, 2004 Olympic gold medalist Greco-Roman wrestler Karam Ibrahim of Egypt, better known as Karam Gaber, have had to find ways to earn a living in an amateur sport, or go outside the sport such as Kareline pursuing a career in politics and Gardner becoming a public speaker.
In the U.S. there was little room for the greats of amateur wrestling in the sports and entertainment worlds, which are dominated by geeks, nerds, thugs, and miscreants. Yet in the land where the professional combat sports is the most popular and accepted, the stars of amateur wrestling are being courted and signed with the vigor George Steinbrenner stalks each year’s class of baseball free agents. That country, of course, is Japan.
The combat sports are huge in Japan, in ways little known and even less understood by most in the U.S. Japan has a long tradition of being the home of many styles of martial arts, both in the striking and grappling arts. What has emerged in Japan in recent years as the most popular form of combat sports is the mixed martial arts, most notably promoted by organizations such as Pride and K-1. Unlike the U.S., the mixed martial arts is considered a component part of professional wrestling. Most of the fights put on by both Pride and K-1 have been legitimate, although they each have had their share of worked matches, i.e., staged bouts with predetermined finishes, as well as some very suspicious official rulings.
K-1 started out as mainly a standup fighting group, with its style really a variety of kickboxing. In recent years K-1 has added mixed martial arts matches, and gone head-to-head with Pride. That competition came to a crescendo last New Year’s Eve, when each group, along with another led by former pro wrestler Antonio Inoki (yes, the same guy who fought Muhammad Ali in 1976), presented live shows on national television directly opposite each other. What made this competition even more fierce is that traditionally in Japan on New Year’s Eve most people watch a music special which is the biggest television show of the year.
Last New Year’s Eve K-1 pulled out all the stops to become the top-rated combat sports show. Their main even featured American Bob Sapp, a failed NFL player who has become a huge cult favorite in Japan, against, ironically, another American, the former sumo wrestling Yokozuna (grand national champion) Akebono, in a K-1 rules fight. Predictably, Sapp quickly knocked out Akebono. Also predictably, K-1 knocked out Pride in the ratings war. The K-1 show got a rating of about 19.5, with the Sapp-Akebono fight getting an amazing rating of 42.5. Pride had to settle for a rating of 12.2, while the Inoki show just got a 5.1. A rating point means the percentage of homes with televisions watching that show.
To make a comparison to ratings in the U.S., according to Nielsen Media Research, the top-rated show for the week of Nov. 15-21, 2004, was CSI on CBS, with a rating of 19.2. Of course, cable and satellite are far smaller in Japan, and thus viewers there have a much smaller choice of channels from which to choose. But the huge rating for the Sapp-Akebono fight, and that it beat the annual music special when it was on, should give an indication of how widespread the popularity of combat sports are in Japan.
This year both Pride and K-1 are intensifying their ratings battle for their New Year’s Eve shows. They each need to produce something extra-special, more than intriguing, and particularly unique. So where do they both turn to bring in some new stars? Why, the world so greatly ignored by the geniuses who run the American sports and entertainment businesses, the world of wrestling.
Pride struck first. In one of the main events of their New Year’s Eve show, which will be held Friday, Dec. 31, at the Saitama Super Arena just outside Tokyo, making his mixed martial arts debut will be Rulon Gardner, the 2000 Olympic gold medalist Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestler, the 2001 world champion, the 2004 Olympic bronze medalist, and the only man ever to defeat the great Alexander Kareline in international competition. Gardner’s opponent will be another former gold medalist, Japan’s Hidehiko Yoshida, who won gold in 1992 in the sport of judo in the -81 kg/178.5 lb. weight class. Yoshida’s record in Pride is 4-1-1, with his only loss coming by decision to Pride’s middleweight champion, Vanderlei Silva. This show will be televised in the U.S. on tape-delay on pay-per-view on Sunday, Jan. 2, 2005.
Gardner is already well-known in Japan because of his victory over Kareline at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the gold medal finals. Kareline’s legendary mat exploits are particularly well-known in Japan. The three-time Olympic champion Kareline is from Novosibirsk in Siberia, which is in Asia. Kareline’s Asian background added to his popularity in Japan. Gardner’s prestige in Japan is thus particularly enhanced because he was the one and only wrestler to defeat Kareline.
Yoshida, nonetheless, will go into this fight with an advantage over Gardner because he has been fighting in Pride for just over two years, and Gardner has just begun to train in this style. But Gardner has started to train with a group of former wrestlers who have excelled in the mixed martial arts, based at the Team Quest Martial Arts Gym in Portland, Oregon. These include some familiar faces from Greco-Roman wrestling: Dan Henderson, Matt Lindland, and Randy Couture.
Gardner has also stated that he hopes his appearance in Pride will further enhance wrestling’s prestige.
‘Here’s another avenue that we can help expand the sport to have a bigger role now than compared to, ‘Oh yeah, they’re just wrestlers,’ ‘ he said in a phone interview from Tokyo just after his Pride debut was announced in October. He hopes that his fight will lead to more people saying, ‘ ‘Oh no, you guys are some bad dudes.’ Someone learned how to be a wrestler, learned how to be the best fighter or grappler in the world. I think that’s what we’re trying to show here.’
He also is pleased that his mixed martial arts debut will be against another fighter with primarily a grappling background. ‘My whole strategy going in is, we’re going to stay with a judo athlete. Here’s an Olympic judo champion, an Olympic wrestling champion. And they’re going to see which one’s fight strategy and technique comes out,’ he said.
Not to be outdone, after the announcement of Gardner’s signing with Pride, K-1 countered with a boast that they would bring in an even better combat sports athlete for their New Year’s Show this year. They then began talks with Egypt’s 2004 Olympic gold medalist wrestler Karam Gaber. He won the gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at 96 kg in spectacular fashion. Gaber won his semifinal match over former world champion Mehmet Ozal of Turkey by an 11-0 technical fall in just 1:09. Then in the finals, he scored another technical fall, this time by a score of 12-1 over Ramaz Nozadze of Georgia in 3:22.
As of this writing, negotiations between Gaber and K-1 are continuing over their proposal for him to make his K-1 debut on their Premium 2004 Dynamite show on Dec. 31 at the Osaka Dome. It also does not appear at this point that this show will be televised in the U.S.
Like Gardner, Gaber has never fought professionally in mixed martial arts. But the Japanese media is now filled with photos of Gaber training over there in this style. If he signs with K-1, how he will do, both in the ring and the ratings, remains to be seen. Although he was regarded by virtually all observers as the most exciting, skilled, and charismatic wrestler at the 2004 Athens Olympics, Gaber is not as well-known in Japan as Gardner is. Nevertheless, the 25-year-old Gaber is at the peak of his wrestling career, while the 33-year-old Gardner signaled his retirement from active wrestling at the Athens Games with the emotional and widely-reported ritual of leaving his shoes on the mat after his final match. Gaber has repeatedly stated that he plans to wrestle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
There are some important lessons for the wrestling world in general, and Real Pro Wrestling in particular, in this episode.
The sport of wrestling is just loaded with untapped talent which has the potential to take the world of sports by storm. That is better understood outside the United States, even as the professional sports world here sinks deeper in the mud of scandal, riots, greed, and disgrace. To utilize that fresh talent is why the Japanese mixed martial arts promotions chose to try to grab up wrestlers in their bitter ratings war.
Finally there is a group, Real Pro Wrestling, which can showcase for the world some of this same talent. But the emergence of Real Pro Wrestling at this time also means that it is being born into an environment where larger and better established companies like Pride and K-1 have had a history of starting bidding wars for the exclusive services of these world-class wrestlers.
That will be a challenge for Real Pro Wrestling. But when have you seen real wrestlers back down from a challenge?
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