That’s how the cookie crumbles

After almost 24 hours on the move, I’m finally back home to Denmark. I’ve had plenty of time to think about the Pride GP finals and its outcome. Although Brazilian fans are certainly disappointed with the performances of Wanderlei Silva and Minotauro Nogueira, we cannot overlook how amazing Mr. Mirko Filipovic was on the night he celebrated his 32nd birthday. He simply did not make any mistakes and stuck to his gameplan from the beginning. Really impressive.

Interestingly, in my point of view wrong gameplans played a big part in the defeats of Nogueira and Wanderlei in their semifinal bouts.

Accomplished

“(…) Once both are up again, Cro Cop returns to his usual counter-strike game. He kicks Wand’s ribs. Wand keeps going forward. Mirko hits the ribs again. Wand seems not to be affected by it but he lowers his guard a bit. The next kick hits Wand’s head. It looks like a missile that was fired accurately and leaves a mark. A cut the size of a fist on the right side of Wand’s head. The Brazilian laid down unconscious. He was saved by the referee that prevented Cro Cop from continuing his attack. That was the shocking end of Wand’s adventure among the heavyweights. (…)”

The excerpt above was taken from “Cro Cop’s Redemption,” the report of Pride OW GP finals that, as promised, is already posted at GRACIEMAG.com.

As you may know (otherwise, read prior posts), we sent special reporter JP to Japan, to cover this event. While he was there searching for exclusive material, four people from our crew (myself, Marcelo Dunlop, Rafael Werneck and Raphael Nogueira) watched the event in a restaurant in Brazil and wrote the article (in truth, it’s twice longer than what is posted at Graciemag.com) nearly in a real time.

After the action finished, we e-mailed the article to JP, who, before sleep in a Shinjuku’s hotel in the very same night, added his exclusive stuff and corrected every word he thought was not accurate. The article was illustrated by exceptional photos of Susumu Nagao (in my opinion, the best MMA photographer in the world) and went to press at Monday (the day after).

NOCAUTE Magazine (below is its cover) is already printed, in Sao Paulo, and in the way to the newstands. Want to challenge our speed? ;)

Epilogue: On late Monday, Ivan Trindade translated the main part of the article to English. Yesterday, JP, back in Denmark, revised, and it’s available for free to our International readers at GRACIEMAG.com. Now, JP is working in a special piece for upcoming GRACIE Magazine Iternational’s issue. Of course, that new article will not be about the action and the results, but what’s behind all this. Wait and see.

Hangover

JP is a machine and already wrote and sent the interviews and the whole article for upcoming NOCAUTE magazine’s issue. Tomorrow, we also will feature some of this work at GRACIEMAG.com (of course translated to English — again, NOCAUTE is only published in Portuguese, so most of you will not be able to read it printed in the actual magazine).

Cro Cop arrives. Finally.

Cro Cop, since the beginning, was impressive. I mean, not since the beginning of the actions today… Since he started fighting MMA. However, he had problems always he was close to a major achievement. He lost to Minotauro, Fedor when he had the chances to fight for Pride heavyweight title. GRACIE Magazine profiled him earlier this year as “Mr. Almost There”.

Today he arrived. He was perfect, and got into the place where he belongs to — among the best heavyweight fighters in the world. His KO over Silva was astonished and so was his victory over Barnett to conquer Pride Open Weight Gran Prix. He was calm, effective, and very, very powerful. After some stand up knockdowns, Cro Cop punished Barnett from the top (inside Barnett’s close guard), and the “Baby Face”, having his face´s right side destroyed, gave up. It was 6h20 am here in Brazil, exactly 12 hours behind Japan´s time when the show was over.

Silva and Nog want(ed) to clash

While JP is in Saitama Super Arena reporting, we are here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, watching Pride OW GP finals live in a barbecue restaurant located in Leblon. It´s around 5am now and a couple of hundred people, most of them fighters and some coaches and practicers are awake here, everybody of course upset with the way the Brazilians lost.

Before the action started, Murilo Bustamante was saying loud: “I´m cheering with all my power to Wanderlei”. He is a head coach, a fighter and one of the owners of Brazilian Top Team, Silva’s Chute Boxe classical rival.

Nobody Sleeps! Nobody Sleeps!

It’s 6:30am in a huge Tokyo internet house. Although 80% of the people around me are dozing heavily in their chairs – only God knows what they’ve been up to -, I’m fully awake and already in countdown mode. I remember my friend Alexandre “Soca”, who in extreme situations would turn to his buddies and warn them: “Ninguem dorme! Ninguem dorme!” [something like "Nobody Sleeps! Nobody Sleeps!]

Five hours from now I will join the Brazilian Top Team gang at the Tokyo Hilton and take the bus ride to Saitama Prefecture, where the 2006 Pride GP finals will take place at the classic Super Arena venue. 40.000+ fans are being expected in an evening that will certainly make it into MMA history books.

Where are we heading?

This is my fifth time in Japan. The last time I was here, it was for K-1 Dynamite in Nagoya a couple of years ago. As I drift through Tokyo in 2006, I can’t help but notice how much the MMA scene has evolved. I think most of you will agree with me that the sport is going through another boom, but what’s really caught my eye here is how many tough Japanese fighters there are nowadays.

Earlier in the week I spent a day at Gracie Barra Tokyo, and I was very surprised with what I saw. Those guys were training Jiu-Jitsu with a focus on MMA, and literally all of them were doing pretty good – both standing and on the ground! It was a very intense training session, and at times I felt like someone would have a knee popped or something, but the reality is that they were clearly up-to-date with modern MMA. Brown belt instructor “Macaco” Ueno has been doing a good job and I see a bright future for guys like Nagai, Kid and Peq, three very talented and dedicated students.

Pride fighters in Shibuya department store

At 6pm tonight, DSE held a brief promotion of their upcoming Pride GP finals right in the young heart of Tokyo. The district of Shibuya is your typical postcard of modern Japan: neon lights everywhere, packed streets, noisy shops and lots of trendy Japanese teenagers in search of a good time.

Nobuhiko Takada was there along with Pride’s ring and stadium announcers. Immediately a crowd surrounded the open area in front of Shibuya’s famous 109 building. Lots of people screaming, lots of mobile phone cameras flashing, but to be honest with you I didn’t get to see many hardcore fans there. When Minotauro, Barnett, Wand and CroCop showed up, the place kinda went hysterical. That’s when I decided to pull out my cam to snap a few shots for our blog. To my surprise, my digital camera was busted, its screen cracked badly. Damn it!

Quitting is not an option!

Boy, have I been unlucky over the past couple of days! I’ve got so much cool stuff to post on the blog, but sometimes I feel like the infamous “Murphy’s Law” is being tested on me. I apologise to my readers for not updating the site as often as I’d have liked, but a series of mishappenings have kept me away from this cyber version of my Tokyo Drift days. It’s time to get busy though, so let me get down to it…

Today I went to a Shooto show in a small arena inside the Tokyo Dome. 11 fights on the card featuring mostly Japanese athletes. The main event was won by the little Mamoru with his wild afro hairstyle. He quickly dismantled a Lithuanian fighter in the first round, winning by referee stoppage after a striking blitz that left the European fighter in deep sh… yeah, you get the idea.

Nakai, Yoshida and Tokoro pick Minotauro to win GP

Today I went all over Tokyo, from gyms and schools to martial arts shops. I had the opportunity to meet some known faces of the Jiu-Jitsu and MMA worlds. The first stop was at Paraestra Dojo, where Yuki Nakai leads one of Japan’s top Jiu-Jitsu and Grappling academies. In a candid conversation on the tiny mat area of his dojo, he gave me his picks for the Pride GP finals: Nogueira versus Silva, in a Brazilian final. “I believe Nogueira will win”, he said.