ESPN Mixed Martial Arts

Six months after it was announced that Dream Stage Entertainment had sold control of the PRIDE Fighting Championships to UFC owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, Japanese news web sites on Thursday reported that all current PRIDE employees were notified by Jamie Pollack, the Zuffa lawyer in charge of overseeing the operations of the PRIDE office, that they had been terminated.

According to Japanese combat sports site God Bless The Ring, an anonymous PRIDE employee stated that on Oct. 3, Pollack informed the 20 employees of the PRIDE office that a conference call would be held the following day.

During the Oct. 4 call, Pollack reportedly instructed employees to immediately turn over their personal computers and cell phones and exit the building. He also told the employees, according to the anonymous staffer, that he would not answer any personal questions or queries from the staff, and that if they had any issues that they wished to address, they should e-mail him. The entire conference call lasted 10 minutes.

The official termination documents of the PRIDE office employees are expected to be executed by American lawyers on Nov. 4.

God Bless The Ring also stated that its staff, along with representatives from no less than three other sports outlets, arrived at the PRIDE office to report on the story at approximately 3 p.m. GBR reported that on arrival, they discovered that access to the third floor of the office building -- the floor that housed the PRIDE offices -- had been restricted.

The Yomiuri Shibun newspaper added that the act was in part motivated by the fact that this past May, all the contracts of PRIDE's Japanese competitors would lapse, leading to them becoming unsigned free agents anyhow.

Perhaps the cruelest irony of the Japanese media accounts was noted by GBR, which reported that the comments of another unnamed PRIDE employee, who said that many staff members had been working on a special proposal intended to celebrate PRIDE's 10th anniversary on Oct. 11.

Sakurai establishes second gym in Sugamo

With the downfall of PRIDE, many fighters are going through a transition period, including Hayato Sakurai. "Mach" has made the most of his time away from the ring and opened a new gym.

On Sept. 30 Sakurai welcomed guests to Mach Dojo Sugamo Branch in Sugamo, Tokyo. The gym officially opened on Oct. 2 and Sakurai has since begun training in the facility for his Oct. 28 Shoot Boxing bout alongside the gym's boxing trainer, Hiroaki Chishima, and standout kickboxer and K-1 MAX veteran Naoki Samukawa. Samukawa, who competed in amateur Shooto several years ago, is a former teammate of Sakurai at GUTSMAN Shooto Dojo.

Sakurai's original Mach Dojo, located in Ibaraki, opened in October 2001 and has produced multiple talents that compete in pro Shooto and DEEP, such as Tomonari Taniguchi, Hiroshi Nakano and Kunio Nakajima.

Sakurai said he opened the new facility in hopes of attracting students from a young ageHe also wanted a gym to train in for when he was in Tokyo. He revealed that even with his Shoot Boxing bout approaching later this month, he expected to fight in MMA once before the year was out.

New Nagano Dojo makes two for Toikatsu

Sakurai isn't the only fighter opening his second gym.

Japanese 145-pound standout Katsuya Toida, who already operates his Wajyutsu Keisyukai Toikatsu Dojo out of Nakano, Tokyo, has opened a new gym in Nagano City, Nagano, aptly named Wajyutsu Keisyukai Toikatsu Nagano Dojo.

The gym, which operates out of the Miyatamura Bushido Hall, will be open for instruction only on Mondays. Helping Toida will be karate and kickboxing competitor Yasuhiko Taguchi.

The gym is the 13th official Wajyutsu Keisyukai network gym. Building on their other four flagship facilities (Tokyo Headquarters, A-3 GODS, RJW, Tiger Place), WK added TEAM VAMOS, Team Knuckle and Wajyutsu Keisyukai Yamaguchi to the official WK banner in August.

Toida, who is coming off a win over Gustavo Franca this past July in HEAT, will take on former Shooto world champion Takeshi Inoue for the vacant Shooto Pacific Rim 143-pound title on Nov. 8. The bout will be part of Sustain's BACK TO OUR ROOTS 06 supercard at Yoyogi National Stadium 2nd Gymnasium.

ZST's future with a zest for past

ZST 14 is this Sunday, and the foremost RINGS' offshoot is looking to turn over a new leaf while paying homage to the old school.

ZST's weekend card at Differ Ariake represents a turning point. As the torch-bearing promotion of the RINGS Fighting Network in Japan, ZST's championship format in the past has relied on tournaments rather than regularly defended titles.

In 2004 Marcus Aurelio rose to prominence, winning the ZST 154 Grand Prix, and Lithuanian dynamo Remigijus Morkevicius had his breakout performance in winning the 143-pound Grand Prix in 2005. While ZST did institute a GT-F grappling title for star Hideo Tokoro, even ZST's grappling division largely focused on the annual GT-F tournament.

Sunday's event will be headlined by a bout between Yojiro Uchimura and Masashi Takeda to determine ZST's first 165-pound champion, marking the promotion's shift toward divisional titles.

Uchimura and Takeda are no strangers to one another. In the kind of bizarre plotline that could only unfold in ZST, the fighters met last December in the 165-pound ZST Genesis League final, where Taketa submitted Uchimura via armbar to become ZST's top welterweight rookie. More interestingly, in June, the two were teammates for one of ZST's signature tag team grappling matches, facing off against Naoyuki Kotani and Takeda. The team lost when Kotani submitted Takeda via armbar.

While ZST shows some progression in its title picture, the card will also feature a bout under ZST's new RX rules between Hirotaku Kawato and notorious HERO'S referee Yoshinori Umeki. Umeki was the official during the scandal-inciting Yoshihiro Akiyama-Kazushi Sakuraba bout last New Year's Eve.

The RX rule system, which features competitors wearing shin guards, allows for rope escapes of submission attempts and does not allow closed-fist strikes to the head. Overall the system is fairly similar to the original rules of Pancrase upon the promotion's inception in 1993.

In one of ZST's aforementioned trademark bouts, the ever-eccentric Takumi Yano will team up with Kenzi Daikanyama to take on Daisuke Yokoyama and Tetsuya Yamada in a tag team grappling affair set for a single fifteen-minute round.

Jordan Breen covers mixed martial arts in Japan for Sherdog.com.