To almost zero live fanfare, PRIDE Middleweight champion Wanderlei Silva emerged from his ringside seat at “UFC 61: Bitter Rivals”, stepped inside the Octagon, and announced “I want to fuck Chuck Liddell.”

As the Mandalay Bay Events Centre sat silent – still seething from the perceived early stoppage in the Tito Ortiz vs Ken Shamrock contest - and as Silva corrected his pigeon-English to “fight Chuck Liddell”, the collective jaws of the MMA community thudded on the ground; not only was this Silva vs Liddell, this was PRIDE vs UFC.

But to those in the know, the announcement of this mouth-watering match-up only served to raise concerns over the future of the Japanese company. Just days after UFC 61, MMA expert Dave Meltzer confirmed that “the word on the street in Japan is that PRIDE is done”, and at the time, that seemed like the only fathomable reason why PRIDE would allow their Middleweight champion to make money for their American counterpart.

In the realm of entertainment, however, things are rarely what they seem. Dana White may have beamed at the prospect of holding Silva vs Liddell on a UFC card, but despite what has been a desperate few months for PRIDE’s CEO Nobuyuki Sakakibara, it now seems that it is the Japanese who will be having the last laugh.

The long and convoluted story concerns Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE), the parent company of PRIDE. In April of this year, the company – and Sakakibara personally – was hit by allegations printed in magazine Weekly Gendai – which is said to have a similar level of readership to Time Magazine in the USA – about the Yakuza’s involvement in DSE’s affairs. The articles were based on the testament of Seiya Kawamata, a self-confessed former mob leader, who now lives outside of Japan for fear of assassination.

Kawamata claims that he was pursued by the Yakuza and Sakakibara after he signed (current PRIDE Heavyweight Champion) Fedor Emelianenko to work on “Inoki Bom Ba Ye”, a third fighting event designed to compete for TV ratings with PRIDE and K-1 shows on New Year’s Eve 2003.

“They came to my hotel on New Year’s Eve,” said Kawamata. “They said that regardless of whether DSE had a contract with Fedor or not, I would have to get the approval of DSE before I could use any fighter who had appeared in a PRIDE event. If I didn’t sign this contract, they said that all sorts of things could happen at Bom Ba Ye that night.” Kawamata also claims that he was told by a Yakuza leader “We run PRIDE. We can’t go out into the public and that’s why we use Sakakibara as the figurehead.”

Emelianenko’s match at Inoki Bom Ba Ye went ahead as planned, despite the alleged Yakuza threat. But within three days, Kawamata had fled Japan, and was not seen in the country for two years. Many had assumed that he was dead.

For his part, Sakakibara strenuously denied that he, or PRIDE, have any connections with criminal underworld. In a statement released on the PRIDE website on 3^rd May, he confirmed that he was suing Kawamata and Weekly Gendai, and ominously noted that a “negative wind has been violently set against PRIDE and I, and supported by the influential power of this popular magazine, it is sufficient enough to quickly wipe out a small company such as ours if not handled carefully.”

Whilst Sakakibara’s claim that PRIDE is a “small company” was laughable, his concerns that they would be hurt by the scandal were very, very real. And indeed, his worst fears were realised when on 5^th June, Fuji TV – which broadcasts PRIDE nationally in Japan - presented him with papers outlining the termination of their contract. Although Fuji refused to comment on the exact reasons for the split, it was obvious that the Weekly Gendai controversy was enough for the station – from which DSE earns millions in rights fees – to remove all references to PRIDE from its programming. This included not broadcasting the already-taped “Bushido Survival” show, which had taken place just one day earlier.

Although the ramifications of Fuji’s actions were understood, in that PRIDE now had no national television to advertise their pay-per-views, and few sponsors were interested in a company without television time, the level of Fuji’s input into PRIDE became all too apparent on 1^st July, when the company held “Critical Countdown Absolute”, the 2^nd round of the Open Weight tournament. Whilst the event was considered a sporting success, the event’s production had little “big time” feel. There were no light shows, no holograms, and even the pre-fight interview packages looked drastically sub-standard. The effects of Fuji TV’s decision could not have been more pronounced.

In the days after the show, sensing a depression in PRIDE’s fanbase, Sakakibara began to make moves. He announced a deal to air twice-weekly television shows in Russia, and finalised a long-talked about American debut, on 21^st October in Las Vegas. It was far from the first time that an international show had been planned – dating back to the days of the late Naoto Morishita as President of DSE – but now, desperate over PRIDE’s domestic future, Sakakibara felt that the company had little choice but to pursue its potential international audience.

And just one week later , Wanderlei Silva stood in a UFC ring, staring down Light Heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell. In the audience with Silva was Sakakibara, and promoting a show in Las Vegas was not the only trick up his sleeve.

Fast-forward six weeks, and despite Dana White’s announcement, and the fan hype, Silva vs Liddell is off. Although the confusing truth is that it was never on.

Silva’s appearance was in fact, all along, “worked” by Sakakibara. On his end of the bargain, there was never any intention of holding an inter-promotional bout with Liddell, and no contract was signed when White made his gleeful, live pay-per-view announcement. The whole scene was contrived by Sakakibara to promote the aforementioned PRIDE debut in Las Vegas, and since only hardcore American MMA fans keep in touch with PRIDE, he decided to create the ruse of Silva vs Liddell, just to put his company on the American map.

“UFC was under the impression that PRIDE was going to sell them Silva’s contract,” said Dave Meltzer. “So win or lose, they had Wanderlei Silva – there was no risk. Apparently, PRIDE worked UFC into thinking that it was a done deal, but it was all simply to get Silva exposure on what was believed to have been UFC’s biggest show of the year, before PRIDE ran it’s Las Vegas debut.”

As a means of further capitalising on UFC’s popularity, the main event for the Las Vegas show – dubbed “The Real Deal” - was announced as Fedor Emelianenko vs Mark Coleman, with Mauricio "Shogun” Rua facing Kevin Randleman on the undercard. Although both Coleman and Randleman are PRIDE veterans, they are also known to American fans as former UFC Heavyweight champions.

Whatever can be said about their tactics, PRIDE has now publicised itself to more people via UFC, that it could ever have done on its own, and Sakakibara’s plan has worked to utter perfection. While there is zero chance of “The Real Deal” coming close to any of the UFC’s pay-per-view buy-rates in 2006, PRIDE will be eager to show American fans that they are the superior MMA brand.

Benjamin Disraeli once noted that “desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius”. Nobuyuki Sakakibara was indeed desperate; only time will tell if his publicity stunt was genius.