Their impression of Yarennoka!, revealing future plans, potential Fedor's opponents and more
1. Whose idea was it originally to organize the Yarennoka! event?
Vadim: We had the idea a long time ago. Fedor is Pride champion who has fought in Japan forever. In 2007 Pride was purchased by one American company following which Pride died.
In October I got call from ex-Pride staff representative who told me there was an opportunity of organizing an event in Japan. Shortly thereafter we came to agreement that we’d hold an event called ‘M-1 Yarennoka!’ which would embody farewell to Pride.
Sergei: Yarennoka in Japanese means “Let’s do this” or “Can we do it?”. Actually we had this question in mind while arranging things. As far as I’m concerned we succeeded.
2. What problems did you come across while organizing this event?
Vadim: We had a bunch of problems as it was the first time we made an event of this caliber. Lack of time for instance. Also they gave us a smaller arena than we expected because there was not enough time to conduct a full-scale campaign advertising the upcoming event. So we decided to not take the risk. The arena could seat only 22’000 spectators but there were about 27’000 in attendance, the arena was pretty much overcrowded. It was simply impossible to dismantle the arena in one day.
Sergei: For the next event we’ll get the building which would seat 40’000 people. We are confident there still will be lack of free seats. It was the case the last time as a lot of potential viewers couldn’t get a ticket.
Link Please, anything but a Choi/Fedor rematch... WTH are they thinking,