Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Here at Wrestling Chronicle.com we rarely have the ability to break news. What we provide is a comprehensive guide to everything you’ll need to know as far as news stories from all the major sources, and then we’ll give you commentary, investigation, speculation, hard opinions, and perspective from there. Often we’ll draw from Dave Meltzer, Wade Keller, Zach Arnold, Sherdog.com, Mike Johnson, and others to illustrate the news, with credit going fully to them. From there, we’ll take over with our own coverage. It’s one stop shopping here at pwchronicle.com.

So much has happened this week with huge implications in Pro Wrestling, Mixed Martial Arts, and both, that I’m not sure where to even begin. Here’s an update on the biggest stories of the week, UFC attempting to buy Pride, and the fallout of a Sports Illustrated Article on wrestlers buying steroids and HGH over the Internet. Here’s what you need to know:

The FightOpinion.com is an excellent site operated by Zach Arnold. You can find his updates in our RSS feeds on the right side of our main page. I first became aware of Zach as a reporter and opinion maker in the late nineties from his coverage of the Japanese Wrestling scene. Since there was so much crossover between wrestling and MMA in Japan dating back really to the 1980s with UWF, and later UWFI, Pancrase, and several other groups, became part of the landscape reported on with wrestling. PRIDE Fighting Championships completely cemented this fact in 1997 with it’s inception, quickly taking over as the industry leader in MMA and also regularly using Pro Wrestlers and wrestling promotional tactics. This didn’t make sense to me in 1999, when I first saw Dave Meltzer covering both MMA and Wrestling, but it’s made so much more sense ever since. Zach is rather brass and to the point, and might come across as rude, but I’ll say it’s a compliment to him that he’s not afraid to offend when it comes to reporting on a story.

Before I begin, for those completely unaware of PRIDE FC, here is Wikipedia’s history of the company.

Here’s his coverage earlier this week (while this was still rumor he reported on it) on The Fertitta Brothers (owners of UFC) trying to finalize buying PRIDE (For years the major group in Japan).

Then came word PRIDE’s operator was telling his staff a deal in principle had been reached. This was reported later that night (Thursday night) by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer. Here is Zach’s report (with a link to Meltzer’s) with speculation on the validity.

A major component of this story was PRIDE’s bumbling of trying to run shows in the U.S. market. They finally did, running two shows in the last five months, through U.S. promoter Ed Fishman. Then, they abruptly fired Fishman after he went public with wanting to buy the troubled company (for a reported 65 million dollars USD). Here is that coverage.

Fishman was interviewed this week by one of the leading online websites for professional MMA coverage, Sherdog.com. Sherdog is run by John Gross, who is less brass then Arnold, and who is more anti-Pro wrestling then Arnold, who comes from that reporting background. Gross and Sherdog have somewhat butted heads professionally with Zach Arnold and FightOpinion over ethics and direction of MMA, but without being slanderous. Gross chose to wait for more confirmation and added less speculation before reporting the story of the possible sale. Links follow:

Fishman interview on Sherdog Radio (may have to be a member, and I recommend doing so)

Sherdog’s report on PRIDE President Sakakibara telling his staff of impending sale

Excellent article by Sherdog.com’s Steven Martinez on the pieces of the UFC-PRIDE deal falling into place as of yesterday

The latest Sherdog Radio with an update on the purchase. Excellent radio production and podcast. I recommend finding it on I-Tunes through the Sherdog.com site and adding it to your podcasts.

Finally, here is the link the Zach Arnold’s long-awaited interview of Ed Fishman about his lawsuit and the possible PRIDE sale on his FightOpinion Radio.com. It’s starts 13 minutes in and gives you all the background you need for these stories. Also, find this downloadable on the site or on I-Tunes.

Finally, Dave Meltzer is reporting that Tuesday night in the U.S. (so Wednesday in Japan) PRIDE has called a press conference and it is believed an announcement will be made at that time. Also, here is Japanese media reaction, again via Zach Arnold

As for Vince McMahon and the WWE. Well, I’ll have some more articles and thoughts on this in the coming week. We’ll have Mania coverage coming up. Our own Brian Hansley has said he’ll be doing a column to make his case on the viewpoint that the whole steroid “scandal” is blown out of proportion, so as usual you can never say the staff here takes a fully unified front. I look forward to reading his work.

Here’s some wonderful notes from the Pro Wrestling Torch (Wade Keller and his staff are up there with Dave Meltzer in there true information and coverage) regarding ESPN’s delightful coverage of this story

Adam Copeland (Edge) responds via Myspace to HGH allegations

After Edge gave his wonderful denial, or whatever you call it (which included the telling slip of saying he was offended for not being told beforehand about a steroid question years back on Canadian TV), Shane Helms chimed in with his denial

As if those paying close attention didn’t have enough reason to hate the person that Vince McMahon is (His on-air character being old and dated is something else entirely), he gave us this gem of a story, telling reporters asking about steroids was “In poor taste”

Ivan Trembow, who is a well respected MMA editorialist through his blog we’ll post a link sometime this week) tops off the week with a great open letter to Vince, published by the Torch, which I think I’ll call the wrap up to the week that was. Read here