If there’s one thing from Pride that nobody can hate on, it was the rules.
The Pride rules were conducive to making great fights. In addition, they weren’t easy to exploit—a feat which some say the current unified rules of MMA (the ones that the UFC adopts) can’t boast of accomplishing.
The argument against the unified rules goes like this:
First, allowing elbows on the ground enables fighters with strong takedowns and top games (read: wrestlers) to take a fighter down, “lay” in his opponent’s guard, and pepper his opponent with little elbow strikes to avoid being stood up by the referee.
Second, the judging criteria favors those who stall, “run” or otherwise avoid fighting rather than those who fight. However, this is debatable seeing as Leonard Garcia—famous for his brawling style in which he constantly moves forwards while throwing punches—has been gifted several decisions even though he wasn’t terribly effective with his strikes.
Then again, you can just as easily cite a contrary example—Carlos Condit vs. Nick Diaz. Condit wasn’t the one moving forward and didn’t control the center of the cage yet he earned the decision.
The point unified rules critics try to make is that the judging criteria is poorly worded and inconsistent and they’re right.
Third, the lack of yellow-cards that warn a fighter and deduct a fighter’s pay for stalling promote stalling and timid point-fighting since now there’s no downside to doing it; a win is a win.
Controversial MMA fighter Nick Diaz summed up the sentiments of unified rules haters in an interview with Ariel Helwani (fast forward to about 5:00 to hear the rant).
So, are the critics right?
Well, even if they are, there’s not much that can be done about it, unfortunately.
The rules are determined by the athletic commissions, not the UFC itself. But, for argument’s sake, let’s just pretend that the UFC could just adopt whatever rules they wanted. If they could, should they adopt the Pride rules?
Some of them.
Yellow cards, removing elbows on the ground, and allowing knees to the head of a downed opponent (or at least changing the rules to no longer consider a fighter with one fingertip on the ground as “downed”) would all be helpful.
Yellow cards would force action, removing elbows would in theory help BJJ players (although removing any technique harms the purity of MMA), and knees to the head of a downed opponent would help strikers fend off wrestlers, and would also aid wrestlers in finishing fighters they took down if they got to certain positions (see: Mark Coleman vs. Igor Vovchanchyn).
However, there’s a problem. Before the UFC’s first event on FOX, UFC president Dana White accurately described the presence of the UFC in the whole of American society:
We live in this little bubble. I live in a world of armbars and rear-naked chokes and triangle chokes and ground-and-pound and all that stuff, but there’s millions and millions of people who have never even heard of any of that and don’t know anything about the UFC. As big as the UFC may seem, it’s not. We’re so far from mainstream still, and now we’ve been given the opportunity to do it.
What would those millions and millions of people who have never seen the sport think if they saw some poor fighter’s head being stomped in or soccer-kicked? Even knees to the head of a grounded opponent might repel them and bring back the negative “bloodsport” image the UFC has tried so hard to rid itself and the sport of.
Thus, Pride rules will likely never see the light of day in modern American mixed martial arts. Society is too squeamish, the sport’s image too fragile, and the athletic commissions too impotent—a perfect storm of obstacles that will keep MMA—the one true sport—from reaching it’s full excitement value and potential.
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