The next bout between Josh Barnett and Rene Rouze brought a little more controversy to the mix. Barnett won by knockout in round one, stood on the ropes and stopped short of his signature throat-slash move. Afterwards, Rouze and his trainer Peter Aerts complained that Rouze was outside the ring and unable to defend himself. To be fair, they may have a point, because that’s what the replay shows. Aerts threatened a protest, but expressed doubt it would have any impact.
For Barnett’s part, he continued to score points with the Japanese media and fans by speaking a little Japanese during the press conference. Take it from us, a little Japanese goes a long way here. But too much is bad. Don’t ask us why.
Shortly after Barnett’s victory, we saw a crowd gathering opposite the press area, and Barnett, Penn, Goodridge and Erikson were right in the middle of it. We saw cameras flashing. We saw TV crews, and a bunch of people handing out release forms, which Goodridge and Erikson immediately signed.
“Cool,” we thought, as we bolted over to see what the commotion was about. Must be a major celebrity. Who could it be? Was it a movie star? Musician? What was the deal? Not quite. It was Jack Osborne and a crew of knuckleheads from MTV, in town for the MTV Japan Awards.
“I need a pen! I need a pen!” one of the geniuses yelled. Scanning the crowd of fighters- which again included BJ Penn and Gary Goodridge- a craggly-looking, stuck in the 70’s MTV producer one photographer described as a “an older version of Crocodile Dundee” barked into his cell phone, “We have no idea who these people are, let’s get out of here.”
And the MTV award for biggest bonehead goes to…MTV. Think there’s a K-1 bandwagon forming out there?
