Low-level management guys standing in a row with their heads bowed. Kenny foaming at the mouth is enough to scare the s- out of anybody. He could eat your head if he felt like it. Have you ever seen Kenny mad? It was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. I was going, 'This can't be good.' He was furious. That was the key to me that they could use that barrier to their advantage.īraverman: Kenny went out of his mind. Now, a lot of these guys could speak perfect English. Any time we'd have negotiations with them, they would always do all of their business through an interpreter. The best way I can illustrate that is, as a film crew we'd have to sit and have negotiations with these guys. Hyams: I think that any advantage they could use, they would use.

The officials knew nothing about a side agreement like that. Pride spent whatever they had to spend on those shows.Īnd then a decision would be made and that there would be no overtime. Japanese business is completely byzantine. In Japan, this costs this, but it doesn't really cost that because I have a deal with so-and-so.

producer: It's impossible to tell what things cost. It's like right when you come on to a psychedelic drug, right when you peak. It was high up, it was wide, it was like being in an underground city, like a biosphere. I had never been in an arena like that, which was so spacious. Stephen Quadros, play-by-play announcer: Going to the Tokyo Dome for the first time, I was just in awe. (A December UFC event held in Japan later that year hosted 1,414.) The production also attracted special guests of a different sort.

Yakuza pride