Event Title: Pride: Bushido 11
Event Date: 04 June 2006
Event Venue: Saitama Super Arena
Event Location: Saitama
Date submitted: 07 June 2006
Submitted by: InsideFighting.com
On paper, Pride Bushido's Survival 2006 Welterweight tournament, featuring it's 183lbs fighters, looked to be have one of the strongest and most competitive lineups of any tournament in recent memory.
True to form, no one had a free lunch this past Sunday and plenty of the tournament's most formidable fighters got eliminated in the first round including last year's Welterweight tournament finalist and loser via controversial decision to Dan Henderson, Murilo Bustamante who lost Sunday to Amar Suleov by decision.
However, fellow Brazilian Top Team member, Paulo Filho will advance after earning a decision victory over Gregory Bouchelaghem.
Paulo Filho looked like a man that had indeed been training with Rickson Gracie. Not because he dominated position on the ground and was a takedown and guard passing machine throughout his two rounds against Bouchelaghem, but rather because he still looked so disappointed after he was announced the winner by unanimous decision.
For the last few weeks some of the biggest news out of Brazil, Filho’s home and training center with the Brazilian Top Team, had been that Filho was being trained by Rickson Gracie.
For decades, and through multiple generations, Rickson has been considered the absolute best technician in the world by nearly all Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu blackbelts , with the exception of fighters coming from Carlson Gracie’s lineage, who would often site the also phenomenal Ricardo Liborio as the best jiu-jitsu fighter in the world.
Rickson, now in his mid to late forties had also been out of active competition for some time, with his last mixed martial arts fight occurring in May of 2000 and his last jiu-jitsu tournament matches occurring in the late eighties in Brazil before he moved to Southern California.
But for the better part of 2006, it had been rumored that family champion Rickson Gracie had been back in Brazil training hard, and in the last few weeks it was revealed that Filho had been training with Rickson in preparation for the Bushido Survival Welterweight tournament.
The details of that training had the Brazilian fight press in a lather because of what the young, and undefeated Filho, (who’s team affiliation, BTT, is recognized as the strongest and best collective of fighters directly linked to Carlson Gracie’s tutelage) had to say about Rickson.
A Jiu-Jitsu champion himself, Filho said he was astounded at how easily Rickson was able to handle him in training, and at how much he realized he needed to improve.
It was reported that these training sessions were not restricted to gi, or kimono practice, or to submission grappling alone, but that Rickson invited Filho to try and inflict damage on him with strikes on the ground.
Filho simply said that he was unable to do anything to Rickson in training and that he had no doubt that Rickson, our of competition for half a decade and well into middle age, could take on the best in the world of today’s current fighters.
After so humbling and educational an experience it was no wonder to see Filho apparently frustrated that he couldn’t put away his opponent and had to settle for a dominating unanimous decision.
Even still, Filho exhibited solid takedowns submission defense and ground positional dominance that should cause problems for anyone in the division, including champion Dan Henderson.
A Lightweight Mess
Speaking of Pride titles, and diverging momentarily from the welterweight division, Pride’s Lightweight title situation is a very frustrating one at the moment.
And no one is probably more frustrated after Sunday than Marcus Aurelio who lost a decision to Mitsuhiro Ishida at this weekend’s Bushido event.
It was obviously a huge letdown to the American Top Team standout after scoring one of the biggest surprise upsets just two months ago against the division’s dominant champion Takanori Gomi, choking him out in the first round of their non-title fight at Bushido 10.
First off, Pride should not have made the Gomi/Aurelio fight a non-title fight. There just was no good reason for that.
Champions have to defend against someone, and at the time Aurelio was just as good as anyone to challenge Gomi. They were in the same weight class, and Aurelio was on a two-fight winning streak in Pride.
Because it was a non-title match, and because Aurelio beat Gomi convincingly, the championship belt around Gomi’s waist lost a little bit of luster right off.
To correct that ugly situation, Pride could have made the next fight for both fighters be against one another, this time for the title, to settle things cleanly.
But instead, they had Aurelio fight a tough opponent just two months after his win over Gomi, while Gomi made television appearances on Fox Sports Network and Japanese MTV awards shows.
Now Aurelio has lost to Ishida, and Pride’s Lightweight division is 3 degrees away from clarity. Hopefully Pride can dig it’s way out of this messy situation in a way that is both entertaining to fans and makes sense.
East Vs. West
Alright, that was more than a moment’s diversion from Pride’s Welterweight division, but let us return to it with a last few notes of commentary.
It was good to see American Jason Black make his way all the way from the Midwest to Japan and get a victory for his efforts. It's just too bad that the fight was left off of the American broadcast. Surely the American audience would have enjoyed seeing one of the few Americans on the card win in exciting fashion.
Black was coming off a freak loss to Shonie Carter back in Illinois before manhandling Eoh Won Jin and winning by TKO in the first round of their fight.
Black has lost only once, had a draw with the very tough Antonio McKee, and coupled with his 20 victories in the last six years, has garnered a lot of regional respect.
Now, as an official Pride veteran who has won impressively, Black has the stage to prove himself globally. It will be interesting to see what he does with it.
Another welterweight who will be getting a lot more deserved attention is Denis Kang.
His win over Chute Box team standout Murilo "Ninja" Rua was the American Top Team representative’s 17th win in a row, and by far his biggest profile win to date.
Those familiar with Kang’s skills gave him more than a small shot of beating Rua before the fight, but most would probably not have predicted he would have put the muay thai practitioner and Pride veteran of three divisions down with punches.
Kang, however, was not suprised and insisted at the post-fight press conference that neither were any of his teammates.
“The people who train with me know how hard I hit. If I connect it’s over” said Kang.
“I was confident that my boxing ability was better than his” Kang went on.
“Yeah he’s training with Chute Box, but I’m training with American Top Team and that speaks for itself right there” he summed up.
While a potential feud brews between those two elite teams, Pride’s president admitted that he felt Kang would be the favorite for the rest of the tournament which continues with another round in August and then the final two rounds in November.
Feared american striker Phil Baroni had high expectations for himself following a KO victory over Yuki Kondo at Bushido 10.
Unfortunately for Baroni, the difficulties InsideFighting readers saw him go through at the Japanese Consualte in San Fransisco did not end there and continued in Japan as he lost a decision to Kazuo Misaki.
“I’m real upset. I let down a lot of people who helped me. I’m sick over it.” said Baroni donning dark sunglasses at the press conference after his fight.
“I thought I was going to win this tournament for sure. I think I was a little cocky. I think I took it for granted that I would beat Misaki but he fought a great fight and I take my hat off to him” Baroni concluded.
It’s a low moment for the New York Bad Ass, as Baroni once again falls short in a welterweight tournament. However, Baroni has made a name for himself in Japan and in Pride, beating some of the top ranked Japanese welterweights in the world, and he’s sure to be back soon.
The native Japanese talent in this tournament is a story unto itself, and some of the most dangerous and well-rounded fighters advancing to the next round of Bushido Survival will be Japanese.
Akihiro Gono, Ryo Chonan and Misaki have all proved that they should not be overlooked. And although it remains to be seen how well received the next rounds of the tournament will be by the American pay per view audience if it’s make-up is mostly foreign, Bushido is giving some of the many excellent Japanese fighters in the lighter divisions a chance to shine.
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