January 9, 2006 Observer Newsletter: Pride & K1 New Year’s Eve shows, Superstar Billy Graham DVD recap

The New Year’s Eve tradition in Japan this year produced a lot of controversy, a few surprises and head-to-head battles which appear to have shown substance for once beating style among the masses.

Pride, on the strength of its Naoya Ogawa vs. Hidehiko Yoshida battle of 1992 judo medalists match, reversed the results of the past two years by beating K-1 in the head-to-head battle. Two weeks ago, that would have been expected, but with the addition of Masato, K-1 had one strong ratings draw after another on its schedule. Making the win even more surprising is that the Ogawa vs. Yoshida main event, on television, ended at 11 p.m., some 46 minutes before the scheduled finish of the show. Both shows, to allow for editing and counter programming, actually were taped a few hours before airing. 

Because of the time management issue, Pride on the Fuji Network ended up showing a second airing of the Takanori Gomi vs. Hayato Sakurai and Ogawa vs. Yoshida fights head-to-head with K-1’s main event, Kid Yamamoto vs. Genki Sudo on TBS. Even weirder, is they had not yet aired Alexander Emelianenko vs. Pawel Nastula (a good fight, but anti-climactic after the main event) nor Dan Henderson vs. Murilo Bustamante welterweight title match (which was edited down to one minute of a 20:00 fight), nor round two of Wanderlei Silva vs. Ricardo Arona (a grudge match and one of the biggest matches of the night). Even though it appeared there was less interest (and that was undeniable in North America as it regarded the two shows) going in, the combined head-to-head rating, and total audience watching both shows was slightly up. There was an aggregate 31.8% of the Japanese homes watching the two shows head to head on 12/31 between 9 and 11 p.m, up from 30.9% last year.

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