Starring: Various Pride Fighters Directed By: Various Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC Label: Navarre Corporation Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: June 03, 2008 Running Time: 160 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Product Description: A legendary event in Japan PRIDE fighting matches the world's elite fighters in competitions of honor and art. Imagine Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner versus kick boxer Judo specialist versus wrestler. . .this is PRIDE Fighting. Each match is the culmination of years of training by these athletes the finest representatives of their martial art who not only compete for victory but also to defend their fighting style! From big-time knockouts to punishing submissions you don't want to miss the drama spectacle and excitement of PRIDE Fighting!Running Time: 77 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: SPORTS/GAMES/MIXED MARTIAL ARTS UPC: 787364818396 Manufacturer No: Carton Qty 30
Was anyone else extremely disappointed with this event? I'm a huge Pride fan, but this event is horrible. I did enjoy some of it, which is why I gave it 3 stars. But it probably deserves 2 stars. I'll explain. I was at the store trying to decide which Pride event I was going to buy. This DVD had 4 fights I was looking forward to, so I figured that would be good enough. But none of the fights were very good. James Thompson hits like a 270 pound girl in his fight against Don Frye, and Don Frye runs out of gas about 1 minute into the fight. Talk about unprepared, it's a 10 minute first round! To me that is disrespectful to the sport when a guy takes on a fight and he can only throw a few punches before he tires himself out.
Kazuyuki Fujita is one of my favorite fighters, but he's facing a guy named Jeff Monson who is obviously a great wrestler. I don't know anything about him, but you can tell by his body build that he is a wrestler. And I can't help but mention how ugly he is. Wow. Anyways, it is a boring fight. Sad to see Fujita get older, but I still love to watch him fight, even in a boring match like this. It's not that it was completely boring, but you could tell that Monson had no intention of standing up and facing Fujita's heavy hands, so he only tried to take him to the ground. But Fujita could have done more. Maybe I should have just said disappointing fight. That would have summed it up better.
Kazuhiro Nakamura is another one of my favorite fighters, but he doesn't fight. It says he does fight on the back of the DVD, but he doesn't. So now you can see why I was disappointed with this DVD.
The 4th fight I was looking forward to was Ricardo Arona vs Sokoudjou. Sokoudjou came out of nowhere in his first fight and knocked out Noguiera (Minotauro's brother, I think. I am always mixing those guys up). Sokoudjou's fight against Arona ends in similar fashion. I would really like to see Sokoudjou fight more, but I don't know where to see him. Get ready for a rant here, sorry. I don't know where to see any of my favorite fighters anymore. All of my favorite fighers are from Pride. Every time I see a UFC event there's all these bad fighters in the preliminary rounds. The overall quality of fighters is so much lower than Pride. In my opinion of course. I can't even watch the UFC. It's too depressing. I mean where are all of my favorite fighters? Fedor, Gomi, Crocop, Sakurai, Mark Hunt... The only way I can watch Fedor is in these Russian Sambo matches that people post on the net. and thank you so much to those people! He had a nice little fight with his brother not too long ago. Check it out. But there's something that's just not right when watching fedor fight in these Sambo matches. The audience usually has about 15-20 people. That's a little different than 40,000-50,000. he doesn't deserve this. Possibly the greatest fighter, ever, fighting in front of about 20 people.
If you are looking for good Pride Events, then there are plenty that you can get instead of this. All of the Shockwave events, the Bushido tournament and most of the other Bushido events, and of course the Pride volumes 1-5. Each volume has 5 Pride events. Events 1-30. a really great deal. Pride picked up slowly, but when it got going there was no way anyone could stop it. At least that's what I thought.
Shortest Pride Event? Pride 34 consisted of 8 fights all ending in the first round! Like the other reviewer, I don't get why they just didnt put all 8 matches in the main show instead of removing 2 and putting them in the special features. The 6 fight event equals a total of 52 minutes!(Wow thats short compared to the other Pride events) With the other 2 matches, it reached 71 minutes. I believe this has to be one of the shortest Pride events ever. Don't let it fool you though, the pace is set extremely high for every fight and we got to witness the biggest upset of the night and an all out brawl between Thompson and Frye. Reason I gave this dvd 3 stars is because it lacks everything the previous Pride dvd's had(exclude Shockwave 2006) like interviews, fighter entrance highlights and all that good stuff. Its still worth picking up if you are a diehard MMA fan.
Main Event Kazuyuki Fujita vs Jeff Monson
Other fights include Ricardo Arona vs Sokoudjou Makoto Mahimota vs. Zelg Galesic Gilbert Yvel vs. Akira Shoji Don "The Predator" Frye vs. James Thompson Shinya Aoki vs Brian Lo-A-Njoe
Extra fights include Yoshiro Nakao vs. Edson Drago Butterbean vs. Zuluzhino
Decent Event - The Mistakes Continue Again! Once again, we have a new PRIDE FC DVD released with numerous errors that should have been caught in the early stages of production. Check my review of PRIDE FC Shockwave 2006 to see those errors. Many of the same errors have happened once again as well as ones that are even worse.
The PRIDE 34 show itself is entertaining, but not one of the best ones out there. I wouldn't recommend the event to casual MMA fans, and would only expect hardcore MMA or PRIDE FC fans to pick this one up.
Now we come to the mistakes:
1. Once again, instead of just putting all 8 fights together, they put two of them away in the "Special Features" section of the DVD. It's not that big of a deal, but it's still a whole lot nicer to hit "Play Event" and watch all the fights instead of 6 of them. I still just don't understand the reason to remove matches to a different part of the DVD. They also list one of the two matches put in the "Special Features" on the Fightcard lineup on the back cover and insert. Why is one listed, but not the other?
2. They have miss-spelled TWO fighter's names this time. The first one is very obvious, and is on the back cover as well as the insert. Edson Drago has his name spelled correctly in the Fightcard lineup, but they miss-spell it as "Draggo" in the Special Features. I also believe they miss-spelled it the same way when playing the DVD. The second fighter to have his name miss-spelled is Zelg Galesic. They replace the "L" in his first name with an "I" on the back cover and the insert. It isn't very obvious as some L's can look like I's. His name is correct on the DVD.
3. Why are they listing a match that isn't on the card? Wagner De Conciecao Martins Vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura are listed on the back cover and insert, yet that fight was never on PRIDE 34. In fact, that fight has never happened. Wagner De Conciecao Martins is also known as Zuluzinho which is usually shortened to Zulu. Zulu faced Butterbean who's real name is Eric Esch. Zakuhiro Nakamura isn't on the card and doesn't go by any other names, so why is he listed as facing Zulu? Butterbean Vs. Zuluzinho is listed under the "Special Features" so why couldn't they get that correct on the Fightcard lineup?
NOTE: Kazuhiro Nakamura is also listed as an actor in Amazon's product listing for this item.
4. The insert seems to be where most of the mistakes occur. Most have been mentioned previously. This is where two of the most blatant errors occur. The first is a complete line of text. It's easier to just type it up as it appears.
"This is Shockwave 2006! Featuring top-rated fighters fedor emelianenko, Takanori Gomi, mauricio 'shogun' rua and the highly-anticipated rematch between josh barnett and antonio rodrigo nogueira."
Yes, you read that right! This is not Shockwave 2006, and none of those fighters are even on PRIDE 34. Did you noticed that the names are not capitalized?
5. The second blatant error on the insert is that they list a PRIDE Heavyweight Championship Bout between the champion, Kazuyuki Fujita and the challenger, Jeff Monson. Granted, these two men did fight in the main event, but it was not a PRIDE Heavyweight Championship bout and Kazuyuki Fujita is not the champion.
The big question is who is editing these DVDs? Seriously?! How can there be so many mistakes? I almost feel like these are intentionally done because mistakes like these don't happen twice. I can only hope that the release of PRIDE 33 in July will not have these mistakes as well, but the third time's a charm, right?
At least the event itself, the most important part of the DVD, is intact. That is why people will choose to buy this DVD, with or without the mistakes.
PRIDE's Swan Song? PRIDE 34: KAMIKAZE was PRIDE's bow-out as one of the premier MMA organizations in the world. Recently bought out by the rival UFC, its best fighters have been cherry-picked by that organization, its website is now a shill for UFC/WEC propaganda, and it may never host another event. However, during its glory days it was (for my money) the best mixed martial arts organization in the world, and while this was far from its best card, it featured some very entertaining bouts. The lineup was:
Yoshiro Nakao vs. Edson Drago Butterbean vs. Zuluzhino Makoto Mahimota vs. Zelg Galesic Gilbert Yvel vs. Akira Shoji Don "the Predator" Frye vs. James Thompson Shinya Aoki vs Brian Lo-A-Njoe Ricardo Arona vs Sokoudjou Kazuyuki Fujita vs Jeff Monson
Some people criticized the card as lacking in big names. Not sure what the hell they're talking about, because Gilbert Yvel, Don Frye, James Thompson, Ricardo Arona, Sokoudjou, Fujita and Monson are all either world-class or in the general vicinity thereof. It's true Frye, a former UFC champion, is long in the tooth, but he and fellow tough-b*stard Thompson conspired to put on the best fight of the night, a brutal slugfest that started during the staredown and went full-speed until the stoppage conclusion.
I hope PRIDE oneday manages to re-emerge in something resembling its old form, but if it doesn't, wars like the afformentioned Frye - Thompson and knockouts like the one that ended Arona - Sokoudjou will make me remember it fondly.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
