Bound at the Hip : Satoshi Ishii and Japanese MMA

With the death of Pride the Japanese mma market was left with Dream and Sengoku to provide top mma bouts on their own soil. Many hoped that the organizations could make enough money to last but they knew that they needed a star to sell to the public. With virtually all of Pride's star's in the UFC or other american organizations FEG was left to produce a new star.

Enter Satoshi Ishii, the gold medalist judo olympian who was already a star in Japan. He decided in 2009 that he would enter the world of mma and hopefully become the biggest star in Japan. It was extremely possible as well. This time 2 years ago at the end of the year Dynamite show Ishii made his pro debut against Hidehiko Yoshida. Over 26 million people tuned in to watch the bout and unfortunately for the future of Japanese mixed martial art's, Ishii lost a unanimous decision.

To make matters worse, Ishii ended up alienating the press and even though he has not lost since then, going 4-0 in 2010, his bouts are lackluster and dull at times. Things got ugly a couple days ago when Ishii was heavily booed by the very crowd that loved him only two years ago. In a fight he won, it doesn't matter, not when you were supposed to be the future of the sport like Ishii was.

Things have only gotten worse for FEG as well, 2 years ago when Ishii debuted the show was the 2nd most watched event in Japan that year. This year's Dynamite event came in with a 0.9 rating which is very bad for the FEG company. They claimed to have sold over 28,000 tickets but who knows how many of those were not comp's. The company that hoped to make Ishii their star is remaining afloat, for now, but it looks like the ship will eventually sink. When that happens no one know's what will happen to the Japanese mma market. At the time being Satoshi Ishii may go down as being the biggest bust in Japanese MMA history.