PRIDE Fighting Championships has been gone half as long as it existed.
From 1997-2007, the pageantry of prizefighting coupled with its
brutality – soccer kicks, head stomps and one-night tournaments –
dominated Japan’s mixed-martial-arts landscape, serving as the Eastern
counterpart to the UFC’s Western cagefighting product.
When UFC 144 takes place in the country this weekend, fight historians will
search the octagon, set in Japan for the first time since April 2000,
for the ghost of PRIDE.