PRIDE FC was a Japanese company that was part of a larger sports/entertainment company. Rumors of Yakuza involvement had plagued them for years and the President hung himself under questionable circumstances. A Japanese newspaper reported on the Yakuza involvement and they lost their TV contract. Without their TV contract, they were unable to stay viable for very long. They eventually sold to Zuffa, the father company of the UFC. Promises to keep them intact and host an annual "World Series of MMA" with the top stars from PRIDE fighting the UFC stars fell flat and the UFC signed a few of their top stars, though losing out on many including Fedor Emelianenko. Zuffa still has all the video rights and those videos are available in many electronics/video stores.Urweirdsaysi wrote:I've never seen a Pride fight.
Is Pride still going on? If so, what station (If it is even on TV) does it air and when? o.o
While the UFC hosts their fights in a cage (the Octagon) and use 3 5 minutes rounds for none title fights and 5 5 minute rounds for title fights, PRIDE used a ring and had a 10 minute first round with two additional 5 minute rounds. Some of the rules were different too. PRIDE allowed knees and stomps to an opponent on the ground but did not allow elbows to a downed opponent. The UFC is modeled after the unified rules which do not allow knees or stomps to an opponent on the ground but allow for some elbows. The judging criteria was different as well.
Many MMA fans that watched both preferred the pageantry and higher production values of the PRIDE shows.
If you are going to pick up some videos of PRIDE, I would definitely recommend any involving the Grand Prix events. Particularly the Grand Prix semi-finals and finals which would take place the same night (so fighters would fight twice). My personal favorite is PRIDE FINAL CONFLICT 2005 which features the 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix (in PRIDE that is 205 lbs) semi-finals and finals as well as a match between Fedor and CroCop at the height of Cro Cop's popularity. PRIDE CRITICAL COUNTDOWN is also great, the quarterfinals from the MW GP tournament.
The FINAL CONFLICT videos are all the Tournament semi-finals and finals and the SHOCKWAVE shows were their biggest of the year. All of those are good.
) but I was kind of hoping Rashad would pull through with it. Both outstanding fighters, but the difference (IMO) was that Machida is just so unorthodox that you just can't prepare for him. Rashad basically had to go into the fight blind.