Not every fight on a MMA card features an important matchup. There are some fights that are made for the pure enjoyment of watching two entertaining guys face off inside a cage. However, these bouts are often the most exciting bouts on the card. With a…
Not every fight on a MMA card features an important matchup. There are some fights that are made for the pure enjoyment of watching two entertaining guys face off inside a cage.
However, these bouts are often the most exciting bouts on the card. With a high-profile fight where a fighter may play it safe if up on the scorecards, a bout between two journeymen features two guys with nothing to lose.
Like an animal backed into a corner, these fighters don’t hold anything back and scrap for their livelihood.
Not every fighter will go on to win titles or have a Hall of Fame career. The people on this list certainly have or had the talent to win a title; some even had achieved great things in their career. At this point in their careers, most, if not all of these fighters are considered journeymen.
Matching them up may not mean a whole lot as far as rankings go, but they sure would be fun to watch.
In 2007 Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, purchased Pride Fighting Championships.The plan was simple—take control of their biggest rival and run the organization themselves. They’d corner the market on MMA by owning the two biggest promotions…
In 2007 Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, purchased Pride Fighting Championships.
The plan was simple—take control of their biggest rival and run the organization themselves. They’d corner the market on MMA by owning the two biggest promotions at the same time.
But there was a problem.
The previous owners had ties to the Yakuza. When this information became public, the company began to lose sponsors, television deals and public acceptance. The company began hemorrhaging money which lead to the eventual sale.
When Zuffa bought Pride, they bought Pride’s problems too.
With no Japanese company willing to sponsor the promotion, it was hard to get the money together for a show. When no channel would air anything they put together, it became impossible.
Pride was eventually folded into the UFC in October 2007, marking the death of the organization and one of the worst investments that Zuffa ever made.
Now, in 2012, people still talk about Pride and how great the organization was. There are still discussions about how the company shouldn’t have been folded and how it never should have been sold.
There are even people who think that the end of Pride meant the end of MMA’s greatest era.
Those people are living in the past.
Pride has been dead for nearly five years. In that time, the UFC has exploded, putting on more fights, more shows and jumping to one of the biggest broadcasting networks in the world.
It’s safe to say MMA is doing just fine.
To those who still claim Pride is the best, take a look at Japanese MMA today. Dream (or Zombie Pride to some) is still alive, but barely, as are Pancrase and Shooto, while Sengoku died quietly last year.
If Pride hadn’t sold and folded into the UFC, it wouldn’t have fared well. It would have slowly crumbled without sponsors or just flat out ceased to exist with its talents spread randomly throughout the world.
Zuffa’s purchase was a fitting end for the organization. It gave its fighters a chance to continue on and keep fighting. It also brought the biggest names in MMA together and let them finally meet.
While Pride will be remembered by MMA fans for a long time, it is time to stop being nostalgic. It is time to accept the truth and move on.
Alistair Overeem and Fedor Emelianenko held a reunion of sorts inside two MMA arenas, albeit one day and one continent apart on December 30 and 31, at the expense of Brock Lesnar and Satoshi Ishii, respectively. The Pride Fighting Championship heavywei…
Alistair Overeem and Fedor Emelianenko held a reunion of sorts inside two MMA arenas, albeit one day and one continent apart on December 30 and 31, at the expense of Brock Lesnar and Satoshi Ishii, respectively.
The Pride Fighting Championship heavyweight veterans—with Overeem’s career surging toward a UFC title while former king and still The Last Emperor Emelianenko struggles on after a steep decline—carried the torch of their defunct MMA promotion (now owned by the UFC’s mother company Zuffa) into their year-end main event fights.
And with the torch still burning bright, they razed their respective opponents to the ground, both in the very first round. Eerily, they finished their adversaries within almost the same amount of time: Alistair at 2:26 and Fedor at 2:34 for a mere eight-second difference.
The Pride FC vets made canvass-osculators of the 2000 NCAA wrestling champion Lesnar and the 2008 Beijing Olympics gold medalist Ishii just before 2011 kissed goodbye.
Here are the transpacific reports from Sherdog.com:
Alistair Overeem vs. Brock Lesnar, UFC 141, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Lesnar bounces on his toes to begin (the first round) as Overeem crouches and approaches with caution. Lesnar wades inside and ducks under an overhand right. Overeem hops away from a Lesnar single leg but he’s cut above his right eye.
Stepping in, Overeem lands a solid knee to the body, then shoves him into the fence. More knees up the gut land on Lesnar and the ex-UFC champ is composed but moving backward. Lesnar is throwing single left crosses and gets jacked with another big knee. A kick to the liver sends Lesnar to the floor, covering up.
Overeem stands over his crouching, covering opponent, socking Lesnar with heavy right hands until ref Yamasaki steps in. The TKO finish comes officially at 2:26 of round one.
Fedor Emelianenko vs. Satoshi Ishii, Dream’s “Genki Desu Ka! New Year! 2011,” Saitama, Japan. A stiff left hand and an incomplete takedown attempt off of a caught kick were all Ishii had before eating a crushing right straight and hook that sent him straight backward like a freshly chopped tree.
With Ishii crumpled against the ropes, referee Yuji Shimada stepped in for the stoppage as the stoic heavyweight great loomed above, showing no inclination to even follow up.
The stoppage could not have come at a more perfect time, as “The Last Emperor” knocked out Ishii just one minute shy of the stroke of midnight, punctuating an otherwise rough 2011 and saving event frontman Antonio Inoki’s New Year’s Eve countdown to close out the show.
Overeem and Emelianenko enter 2012 riding the crest of victory. It remains to be seen if their auspicious year-end will lead to Overeem successfully snatching the UFC heavyweight championship belt, or Emelianenko clawing back into the top 10 of the world heavyweight rankings (it’s debatable on which is the more quixotic quest).
The departed soul of Naoto Morishita, former president of Pride FC’s mother company Dream Stage Entertainment, must be very proud—even prouder than Dana White.
In its heyday, the PRIDE Fighting Championships was arguably the greatest mixed martial arts promotion, rivaling that of the UFC.Many legendary figures in our sport have been cultivated under the PRIDE banner, gaining worldwide recognition thanks to th…
In its heyday, the PRIDE Fighting Championships was arguably the greatest mixed martial arts promotion, rivaling that of the UFC.
Many legendary figures in our sport have been cultivated under the PRIDE banner, gaining worldwide recognition thanks to the platform that the organization provided.
One of the many platforms to stardom that PRIDE offered was their touted Grand Prix tournaments, which yielded many notable champions over the years that remain relevant in mixed martial arts today.
The holiday season always reminds me of the glory days of Japanese MMA and the much-hyped New Years Eve events that the Pride FC organization always used to hold. The days of Pride are long gone, but the memories of that unique era with pyro-show …
The holiday season always reminds me of the glory days of Japanese MMA and the much-hyped New Years Eve events that the Pride FC organization always used to hold. The days of Pride are long gone, but the memories of that unique era with pyro-show openings and fighter introductions remain.
In human nature, variety is the spice of life and with the modern era of weight classes and individual event fight card’s there is one thing that Pride delivered that I truly miss most of all, The Tournament.
Pride held eight tournaments in it’s history and they delivered some of the toughest, most compelling mixed martial arts matches we have ever seen. Here is my power ranking of Pride tournaments.
Though the Pride Fighting Championships have been long gone, the mixed martial arts world has ever been impacted by the legacy that the now defunct promotion has left behind.The organization has produced some of the biggest stars in the industry today,…
Though the Pride Fighting Championships have been long gone, the mixed martial arts world has ever been impacted by the legacy that the now defunct promotion has left behind.
The organization has produced some of the biggest stars in the industry today, including former champions Wanderlei Silva, Dan Henderson, and Quinton Jackson among others.
It was these same leading men that were delved in some of the more memorable bouts in Pride history, often favoring head severing knockouts that have since gone down as some of the most aesthetically pleasing finishes in MMA history.
In 2007 Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, purchased Pride Fighting Championships.