Dream Parent Company Partners With Chinese Investors, Declares "War Against UFC"

Fighting and Entertainment Group (FEG), parent company of Dream and K-1, held a press conference in Tokyo on Friday to announce a newly-formed partnership with Chinese investment group Puji Capital. Denying rumors of a possible sale, FEG officials say they will continue to run day-to-day operations while Puji works to raise funds and expand FEG's brands internationally. The deal could reportedly net the struggling promotion upwards of $200 million USD.

MMA Fighting's Daniel Herbertson reports:

K-1 President Sadaharu Tanikawa stressed that FEG had not been sold and in fact it will now be setting its sights much higher.

"This is a declaration of war against the WWE and UFC. From Asia, we will take the world," Tanikawa stated.

"When K-1 and PRIDE were competing against each other, 80% of the martial arts market was in Japan. It is now the opposite and Japan is only 20%. We were worried that Japan would be left behind if we let this continue, it is unacceptable. We needed to change our business model... We've let Dana White get a lead on us. Before (Shinya) Aoki beats (Gilbert) Melendez, we must win as promoters."

Tanikawa's "declaration of war" feels like fairly transparent promotional bluster -- especially since Puji's Michael Chen would go on to describe the American market as "too developed and not lucrative" enough to delve into during the same press conference -- but the acknowledgment that FEG had been operating on a losing business model is a step in the right direction.

As Zach Arnold notes, the Puji money should help FEG offer its fighters more competitive purses, but this is a plan we'll need to observe in action for some time before fully understanding how (or if) it can truly succeed.

UPDATE: Nightmare of Battle reports on the reaction from FEG's foremost Japanese competitor, Sengoku:

SRC PR & Director Mukai tweeted on the 16th (after the FEG global domination press conference): “We’ll always take the “kenjitsu (steady, sound) kenzen (health)” (slowly but surely I guess) route.

It’ll be interesting to see how FEG’s aggressive route will go compared to WVR’s building slowly (almost) from scratch route.

The companies also released this graphic today, which vaguely outlines the plan for expansion:



For obvious reasons, FEG and Puji will first look to tackle the Asia/Oceania market. Officials said that they're interested in bringing MMA to South Korea on an annual basis, but also noted that the country's GDP is not as high as Japan's. (Dream was forced to cancel a planned South Korean show this past spring, reportedly due to lack of available stars and slow ticket sales.) Hong Kong, meanwhile, has a higher GDP than that of Japan, but even less interest when it comes to MMA.

Source: http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/7/16/15 ... tners-with

DREAM is a complete joke. They can't even finalize a card until the week of their event, they air at 1am in the morning on HDNet, don't even pay their talent half of the time and resort to using freak show fights to maintain decent ratings... and yet they think they have a chance against the UFC?

Give me a break. By the time DREAM puts on a single, half-assed event, the UFC has already produced 2-3 events. DREAM isn't going anywhere.

I like DREAM and the dream events a lot. And as far as I understand they are refering to the Asian market first of all, China being the new market for MMA where UFC are trying to create something it seems. And that the war will be about those viewers, basicly. They are in a similar timezone (dont have to worry about the 1 o clock problem you mentioned) and they probably aprechiate the way DREAM do their events more then the UFC PPV style with very quick action and lots of ads. I absolutely dont think DREAM will have a shot to beat ufc on the international market, but I do think they have somewhat of an advantage in Asia. It was also mentioned in the article above that they are expected to pay their fighters better now with the new Chinese partners. That might make it more interesting for some better fighters to fight in DREAM wich can make it interesting.

Smells like Affliction & Co...

- Brought in a ton of money
- Huge hopes & promises
- Huge fighter pay checks
- Lack of stars
- No ability to consistently put on good shows
- Declaring war on UFC

= Epic fail/crash/burn/Affliction & Co

... when Japan declares war on US, it ends with a nuclear bomb for Japan...

History you guys!

So much for Josh Rossen and his the fall of Dream theory. I couldn't be happeir i find Dream to be most entertaining

I miss Dream. They had circus fights and really good fighters as well. They will never compete with the UFC again, However they had more entertaining fights. With head kicks/knees to ground opponent and so on.

I wish you the best of luck my Chinese friends!

Gilbert Melendez singlehandedly colonized Japanese MMA months ago

Chine has tons of billionaires, also it has huge urban population with good standard and it's opening toward "modern" influences more and more so success is probable for both UFC and Dream.
I believe that wider audience is yet to be introduced to MMA. Rock and roll arrived in China less then 15 years ago.
In longer run it could bring financial gains to the industry with free to air events with lots of stars. There are smarter people in the business but this would be common sense from fan perspective.

History also tells us that eventually the Japanese and Chinese will come and buy everything in USA and now own most of the country, (including the bombs lol)

It looks like they already won the war... see for yourselves http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt