Pride was one of the most amazing organizations in the history of sports—but its memory won’t last.
Before you attempt to bury me in the comments or blow up my Twitter, hear me out.
Pride was incredible. It had great fighters—the world’s best in several weight classes—a great atmosphere, great fans and great rules that were conducive to exciting, breathtaking, memorable fights.
But the organization’s biggest weakness was the UFC’s biggest strength—management.
Dana White and the Fertitta Brothers ran a better ship, one that ultimately didn’t sink. Zuffa would eventually purchase Pride and destroy it in 2007.
However, Pride’s death couldn’t stop its legions of fans from extolling the virtues of the defunct organization, nor could it stop the legacies of the various Pride legends from being remembered and cherished.
No, Pride’s death couldn’t stop these things, but there were other things that could, and that will.
First, the UFC remembers those who are good to it and those who aren’t.
Frank Shamrock and Pat Miletich are former UFC champions, yet they’re rarely mentioned, if at all, in UFC broadcasts and have yet to be included in the UFC Hall of Fame due to various disputes with the UFC.
Thus, any Pride fighter who didn’t make nice with the UFC won’t ever be recognized as important in the grand scheme of the sport’s history. This truth primarily applies to former Pride heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko.
Emelianenko never signed with the UFC, and UFC president Dana White and Emelianenko’s manager Vadim Finkelstein have taken verbal jabs at each other publicly. Therefore, it’s safe to say that when the UFC dominates the MMA world and controls the sport’s history, the legend of Fedor Emelianenko will sadly be reduced to a footnote.
Second, MMA is a growing sport. New fans are joining the ranks each day. While some might view this as a positive, cynics would say that the influx of new fans means an influx of people ignorant to the history and intricacies of MMA.
These new fans won’t have the historical grounding that older fans do. They know not MMA but only UFC.
Also, they’re unfortunate to have never seen Pride in action; they will only know of it by YouTube highlight reels and stories from other fans.
As the sport continues to grow, the fans of the “FOX generation” will continue to grow more and more distant from Pride until the time comes when Pride itself isn’t the paragon sigil of MMA’s “good old days.” Instead, it’ll be a long dead promotion discussed only by curmudgeonly Internet folk—a sad end to one of MMA’s greatest promotions.
Third, since Pride is dead, the dirt and the shady dealings can come out. Several figures such as UFC and Pride star Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Fedor Emelianenko’s former Manager Miro Mijatovic and UFC pioneers and Pride fighters Gary Goodridge and Guy Mezger have all come forward since Pride’s death and revealed numerous seedy details about the beloved organization.
It’s a sad thing to admit, but it’s true. When all of these facts are combined, they add up to one thing: The marginalization of Pride in the history of MMA and perhaps even a large part of the MMA fandom forgetting Pride.
Clear your mind of all nostalgia and selective memory and think about it. The current crop of recent MMA fans believed that Brock Lesnar was a badass “viking” and that Kimbo Slice was a legitimate competitor.
Think about that for a second, and then, ask yourself this, would it really be that much of a stretch to believe that those same people—and the people who will come into the sport after them, even further removed from Pride’s heyday—have zero feelings for Pride and will ultimately discard the promotion’s legacy?
Sad fragility of MMA history! What legends and masterpieces of fighting will remain forever buried beneath the memories of Kimbo’s beard and Brock Lesnar’s chest tattoo; how many distinguished competitor’s legacies will lie in the ash heap of history—broke and broken.
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