Nobuyuki Sakakibara on “The Human Drama” of Rizin NYE 2023
Nobuyuki Sakakibara is the former Pride and current Rizin figurehead. Rizin 45 looms ever closer and continues the rich tradition of combat sports transpiring on New Year’s Eve in Japan.
Sakakibara appeared on Bowks Talking Bouts to touch on several subjects. Excerpts from our chat are below.
Nobuyuki Sakakibara
This is a very exciting event coming up here as I alluded to in the introduction. I love the way you talk about the New Year’s Eve card. How it serves as that combat sports Super Bowl in a sense. That means of really satisfying all of the major narratives throughout the calendar year.
I mean we have bantamweight and flyweight title fights happening in the main and co-main events respectively. Juan Archuleta defends his 135-pound belt against Kai Asakura and Kyoji Horiguchi rematches Makoto Shinryu for the vacant flyweight crown. What are some of the big narratives that you’re looking at here? What are the stories that are reaching their crescendo at the end of the year for Rizin 45?
“Yeah, so the narrative of the story of this New Year’s Eve event, the story what we want to tell is that combat sports is for everybody, and the fight is for everybody. Why I’m saying this is because you know when you look around at all the fight content all over the world, it’s all about determining the best. The best of the best. It always has to be the best fighters fighting the best fighters to determine the best. But this approach this year, our approach is a little slightly different. Where we want to show the diversity of what we have in our combat sports scene.”
Rizin 45
Nobuyuki Sakakibara continued, “So we have our world-class athletes fighting for title fights. On the other hand, we have guys making their MMA debuts but what we can do is that we can make people care (about) each fighter and each fight because everybody fights for a reason. We like to tell the story on why these people fight. If you get the fans interested in why these people fight, it doesn’t have to be the best guys, you know. So, we have; anything for the first time making your MMA debut or kickboxing debut anything, it’s all emotional and it’s a memorable experience.”
“So, you know for this year, we’ve got 17 fights for this New Year’s Eve event. We have world-class title fights, we have MMA debuts, we’ve got mid-level fights, we have some kickboxing fights with open-finger gloves. We just want to deliver to what the fans want to see, and you know, we just want to show the diversity. That it doesn’t; we can make people care about fights that are not the best in the world.”
Nobuyuki Sakakibara Rizin 45
Yeah, I mean in a certain sense there is that amalgamation, that certain varied mix that everyone can enjoy. I mean certain fights at Rizin 45 just really illustrate what Rizin is in a lot of ways. In as far as it bares similar hallmarks to MMA of yesteryear but is also very forward-thinking in a certain sense.
I love the Seika Izawa matchup, just very representative of the present champion but also the future of the sport in a sense. I mean Miyuu Yamamoto; that Yamoto name carries so much weight on New Year’s Eve cards over the years. So just really love to see that. Can you speak to that sort of confluence of tipping the hat to Japanese MMA of yesteryear but also being very forward thinking at what the next kind of expression and form of entertainment is?
“So this is something I’ve learned throughout my experience even from the Pride days. That you know what we’re doing is that you know obviously, we’re creating fight content. The people get inspired or excited when they see a knockout, when they see something brutal, when they see a finish. That kind of messes, you know; it gives you the emotional rush. But we want to go beyond that and we really want to show the story behind each fighter.”
“The whole human drama that goes behind one athlete’s mind and why they fight. You want to deliver that story and we’ve been delivering that human drama through fighting content. So when you look at promoting fights this way like you want to add some essence to it to add, what to feature. So for a fighter, a title fight is a very important moment. MMA debut is a very important moment for a fighter. A retirement is always a very memorable moment for a fighter and that’s what the fans want to relate to.”
Rizin NYE 2023
Nobuyuki Sakakibara continued, “That’s what they want to see to get emotional. So we just want to add, we want to tell the story of each fighter, and the reason why they fight. By adding a few accents to it like a title fight or some kind of a rivalry. Maybe we can do a rule change to make it more interesting so that people would want to care more. So these are the things that we’ve been, you know; we’ve learned throughout all my promoting days in Japan and that’s just kind of the base of what we all work off of.”
“So I think for this year, the lineup just shows it all. We got everything from title fights to MMA debuts to retirements. This event kind of shows what Japanese MMA is all about and you know it caters to various people. We have so many; a variety of fights that mean totally different things. That’s something that makes us unique from other promotions. Like the UFC, we’ll be able to show you some fights and narratives that the UFC won’t show you, ONE FC won’t show you. So that’s the kind of thing that we want to work off of.”
