The Backstage Brawl That Shook Pride Fighting Championships

Cristiano Marcello remembers well one of the more infamous out-of-competition brawls in mixed martial arts history, for he was one of the participants.

The pieces were set in motion by Pride Fighting Championships matchmakers when actor and MMA debutant Ken Kaneko was booked opposite Charles Bennett at Pride Shockwave 2005 on New Year’s Eve at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan. Kaneko—who submitted to an armbar from Bennett in a little more than four minutes—had previously joined Japanese legend Kazushi Sakuraba for a training camp at the famed Chute Boxe academy in Brazil, where Marcello served as the Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach.

“It was the second time Sakuraba came to Brazil to have a fight camp,” Marcello told Sherdog.com. “As I recall, he and Sakuraba were there together for about two months. Kaneko was a very famous actor around this time, and Pride invited him to fight on their promotion. He was primarily an actor. He trained, sure, but we knew that he would have no chance against a professional fighter. Chute Boxe head coach Rudimar Fedrigo spoke to our manager, Koichi ‘Booker K’ Kawasaki, and decided that if Charles won his fight, I’d step up and challenge him. It’s what happened. He accepted.

“No one remembered that Charles and his team were assigned to the same locker room as us,” he added. “It wasn’t unusual to have people from other teams in the same locker room. To tell the truth, what happened between us was more related to the era we were living in. There was no previous animosity. It just so happened that we were sharing a locker room. We didn’t even remember it. When we arrived, he had already gone to fight, so we didn’t see him during our warmup. When he came back, that’s when we realized we were sharing the space.”

All it took was a look from Bennett and a nudge from longtime Marcello stablemate Wanderlei Silva to spark a confrontation.

“Charles had been watching TV,” Marcello said. “When he saw me, he nodded in my direction. I kept my eye on him. Meanwhile, Wanderlei and Rudimar told me he was disrespecting me by mean-mugging me. I decided to go talk to him. I asked why he kept staring at me, and since he has a macho attitude, he stood up and came at me. Then you saw what happened.”

A scuffle resulted in “Krazy Horse” being choked unconscious once Marcello lured him into the clutches of a triangle. Once Bennett regained his faculties, he set his sights on another target.

“When Bennett was woken up by Wanderlei, his immediate reflex was to punch Wanderlei,” Marcello said. “Wanderlei was knocked out.” Amazingly, once Silva came to, he went on to defend his Pride middleweight championship with a three-round split decision over Ricardo Arona in the co-main event. “As a team, we used [the incident] as fuel for Wanderlei to head into the fight and win the way he did. We’ve always had a strong and united family spirit. Wanderlei had to step into the ring and win that fight at any cost.”

Time passed. Fences mended. Gladiators went their separate ways. When Bennett and Marcello encountered one another again a decade later, no bad blood existed between them.

“By that time, I hadn’t seen him in over 10 years,” Marcello said. “We recognized each other and shook hands. What happened is part of our sport’s history. It’s behind us now. I have nothing against him. We’re both family men. We’ve evolved as human beings. What happened back then, from my end, is behind us now. I always think positively of him and root for him.

“The main thing is that it was a man-to-man scrap,” he added. “My team made up the majority of those who were present, but no one interfered. Two men resolved their differences in the way they saw best at that time. I have much respect for his attitude.”