“We’re not settled yet, we don’t have time to settle because once you do, there is no innovation.”
Nobuyuki Sakakibara is a team player.
Longtime fans of mixed martial arts (MMA), dating back to the early 2000s will never forget the PRIDE Fighting Championship era. The Japan-based promotion built up to become such a beast at its heights that it rivaled Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as the best promotion on Earth.
At present, it’s a rarity to see collaborative efforts made between promoters. Specifically, two of the largest players in the world, UFC and ONE Championship, for example, have publically noted how working with others won’t be beneficial. Well, in ONE’s case, it’s been more a case of, “We’ll only work with UFC.” However, Sakakibara managed to cross-promote with UFC and Dana White during the PRIDE days before the company was ultimately bought, leading Sakakibara to his current role as RIZIN Fighting Federation President.
“Back from when we started RIZIN was not to become a rival of existing promotions like UFC, Bellator, KSW,” Sakakibara told MMA Mania on BROADENED HORIZIN. “Even in Japan there’s Shooto, Deep, Pancrase, and after being on the sidelines for seven years with a non-compete clause, it didn’t make sense for me to jump in and become another rival, just become another promotion. Even if I did, you could never beat the UFC because they’re already established. If you do the same thing as the UFC, you’ll never beat the UFC. So, the whole concept was to create a federation where all promotions can kind of work together and we can create this kind of mutual ground where all promotions can compete. That was the original idea we had.”
“We had to create something new to benefit the industry,” he continued. “I didn’t want to become a rival and start pulling each other’s legs because that would not benefit, that would hurt the industry, ultimately. We wanted to seek something that would benefit the industry as a whole and the federation format was something that we came up with so we stuck with that.”
RIZIN has been effective with its efforts in recent years, collaborating with all promotions that he mentioned aside from UFC to a direct degree. Invicta Fighting Championship has also exchanged fighters between promotions, but none have been as big of a collaborator as Bellator.
“At first, we reached out to several promoters all over the world to see if they would understand and cooperate,” Sakakibara said. “We got several fighters and people to cooperate. [Bellator President] Scott [Coker] has been there from day one. Scott was one of the first ones to say, ‘Okay, we understand, we’ll help you out.’ We had Martin [Lewandowski] from KSW, we had several other promoters jump on board and start what we did, and where we are at right now is the result of the years of trying and constantly challenging new stuff and trying to seek new things for this industry.
“I don’t want to settle under unified rulesets because it’s still a new sport,” he added. “We’re not settled yet, we don’t have time to settle because once you do, there is no innovation. You can’t create anything new once you’ve settled. So that challenging spirit is what’s been driving RIZIN for the past eight years and that’s why we want to work with people and that’s why we feel it’s important to co-promote with other promotions.”
After 44 numbered events and several side-show event types, RIZIN is going strong as the decade mark approaches. The willingness to try and make the biggest show possible, regardless of territorial boundaries, has provided some unforgettable memories in recent years between RIZIN and Bellator specifically.
However, the future is now in question with rumors swirling around Bellator’s future. The promotion only has one event booked for the rest of 2023 and Professional Fighters League (PFL) is the frontrunner to potentially absorb the promotion if it were to go anywhere. This affects RIZIN directly with a few fighters like its current Bantamweight titleholder, Juan Archuleta, who is a Bellator fighter. In the end, Sakakibara and company will continue going about business the same as they always have.
“For us, we always say the same thing,” Sakakibara said. “We are neutral to all promotions and our doors are always open. We want to cooperate with everybody. We can say this to UFC and Dana [White]. We can say this to Chatri [Sityodtong] and ONE. Let’s work together. If they feel we’re not worthy enough to work with, that’s fine. But our approach — same goes to PFL — will always be the same and if they feel like they can benefit from working with us and we can have a mutual working relationship, we’re all ears.
“That is the answer we’re gonna have with PFL. We already have a direct line that we can talk to PFL right now, but we also have other relationships so we’ll see. Bottom line, our way of approaching with other promoters will always be the same.”
RIZIN’s first trip for an international event takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan with RIZIN Landmark 7 next month (Sat., Nov. 4, 2023).
Watch the full episode in the video embedded above or listen on Spotify.