Going to Japan on NYE to see Pride was at the top of my bucket list. I was a broke college kid back then, so didn't have the funds. I tried to go to the Vegas ones, but friends flaked. Looking back I should have just winged it and gone solo.
Paltalk! Hell yeah, I remember listening to that at 3am a few times. They started having Pride on Directv around the first GP that Coleman won. However, many of the events did not air until weeks after it happened. Listening to an internet broadcast was the next best thing if you didn’t have the discipline to stay off the forums.
I remember that. It was embarrassing how angry orcas was at Fedor.
Crazy, almost like he was being paid by someone with an agenda to downplay fedor and exalt the ufc hw roster in some sort of ill concieved viral marketing campaign
PalTalk story: I forget why but we ended up kicking out someone from our audio feed. A person claiming to be Pride fighter Heath Herring texted us and asked to allow that person back - that said person was his cousin and he would appreciate if we let him back in. Heath was not on that particular card, nor was he in attendance, so we asked him to go to private audio to verify it was indeed him. "Heath" got on the mic and repeated his request. J-Rod, one of the original PrideCast members was a huge Heath fan and started gushing while talking to "Heath." We allowed his cousin back into the chat room and continued on with PrideCast.
Sometime after we stopped doing PrideCast, I used to go to the events live and interview some of the fighters. I got a chance to interview Heath Herring at his hotel room and during the course of the interview asked him about PrideCast. He had no idea what I was talking about so the person who we thought was Heath before, pulled one over on us.
Another gangster event: Maeda held one of his events in Osaka. He usually held them in Tokyo. However, he didn’t get the approval from the local gangsters in Osaka that also run their events in Osaka. There was word that one of the guys from the top gang was going to disrupt the event. I was at the event with Enson Inoue and he told me, when it happens, video tape everything on my phone. Around 1-2 hours in, there was a disturbance outside of the ring. One of the top guys was yelling at Maeda and trying to close the distance on him and throwing stuff into the ring. There were several people in between them. They eventually moved from outside the ring to one of the outside hallways. This area was restricted access to staff and fighters. I kept on filming while they were still yelling at each other and Enson was just standing there watching them too. A different gangster got upset and started telling people to move and stop filming. He saw me with my phone and starting coming closer to me, all the while getting more angry and yelling at me to stop filming. I told him that Enson told me to film everything. He responded by saying “Oh…Enson? OK” and just walked away, yelling at other people.
Enson, Maeda, and the top gangster eventually all went into a conference room together while everyone else, including me, waiting outside. I could hear more yelling and what sounded like stuff being thrown. After 20-30 mins they all came out and peace was made because Enson played mediator. Never a dull moment when Enson is around.
I goto all the Rizin events, best one being the one with Tenshin Vs Floyd on it. I was close enough that my friends saw me in the background on the NYE broadcast.
Hody - I went to Pride, K1, Deep, Shooto, Outsiders, Astra, and some other smaller gangster events. I still have some of the Pride and K1 photo books they handed out to the press and VIP seat holders. Pride and K1 was like a combo rock show and fighting event. It would go from getting so loud you couldn't hear the person next to you to dead silent, so much so, you could hear the cornermen giving their fighters instructions. It was an experience I will never forget.
I didn’t start going to the events live until we stopped doing PrideCast (Live amateur Pride color commentary VIA PalTalk).
I didnt have the only cable system that got PRIDE JAPAN live and that was satellite dish. So would have to wait a week for the replay and stay off the forums or else SPOILER threads ruined the event when you knew who won.
So I would drive 55 miles to my brothers business in San Francisco and utilize his Dish satellite to get the PRIDE JAPAN events live as they happened sometimes.
I saw the first GP final live only because it was originally not set to be broadcast here on ppv, right after i bought my airfare they announced the ppv
it was surreal
in retrospect i dont think the fights were that great, lots of super quiet time in the arena during almost all the matches but the event was super cool
