Thanks to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)’s new partnership with FOX, mixed martial arts may see its biggest North American popularity boom ever in 2012. Up until now, the best UFC fights have been showcased on pay-per-view events, but now many will be shown for free on the Fox Network.
Manga is the only reason I ever became interested in the UFC, so I’d love to see its popularity lead to a MMA manga getting licensed.
It’s been tried before. Gutsoon! Entertainment, which began in 2002 but completely folded by 2004, published chapters of Baki the Grappler in its Raijin Comics anthology. In 2005, Viz licensed a manga called Tough, but had to cancel it after six volumes due to low sales.
Over the next few weeks I hope to go over the best mixed martial arts manga, and ultimately present the title I think would do best if published in North America.
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I have the entire run of Raijin Comics. That magazine was way ahead of it’s time. I can’t help but imagine it would thrive digitally as an app for phones and tablets. It had so much good stuff.
I would love to buy Baki and Tough manga. I have their anime counterparts. Funimation needs to remaster and re-release Baki and while we’re on the subject of competitive fighting manga, Hajime no Ippo needs a license rescue.
With UFC as popular as it is, those three series would do a lot better today than they did years ago. They just have to be marketed to that crowd instead of traditional U.S. anime fans. (That is why sports anime and manga fails.)