For those of you who don’t know me over the past year I have become a big fan of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), what some of you here in Amerika only know as UFC. The MMA organization that got me into MMA was a Japanese company called Pride Fighting Championships. There is a big debate in the MMA world which organization was the better of the 2. Each has their premier fighters and fans of both swear they could kick the shit out of the other. Me, I was a fan of MMA so I like elements of each company but the feud was fun read about in MMA blogs and forums.
Just after I got into MMA the rumors started appearing that Pride was in financial trouble and then last month they sold their assets to the owners of the UFC. The merger was predicted to finally create 2 stable companies with great rosters of fighters to square off in super fights. The marketing spin was comparing this to the merger of the AFC and the NFC into the NFL and all MMA fans were stoked.
The reality of the situation is that many of Pride’s top fighters left pride to sign big contracts with the UFC during the negotiation phase. Recently an ex Pride fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson kicked the shit out of their reigning light heavyweight (LWH) champion Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell a few minutes into the first round. Up until that point Pride fighters fighting in the UFC had not fared so well. A specific example is the complete KTFO of Mirko “Crocop” Filopovic, an ex Pride heavyweight and total bad ass kickboxer from Croatia, by a Brazilian nobody. The irony of this KO is that Crocop was brutally taken out by his own most fearsome weapon, a head kick.
Well the deal has finally been completed and Pride is now the property of the UFC owners and they can now work on signing new contracts with Pride stars and getting Pride rolling again and the UFC/Pride super fights scheduled. One of them is coming up in October when new UFC LWH champ Quinton “Rampage” Jackson takes on Pride LWH and Welterweight champ (yes 2 belts) Dan Henderson for the unification of the LHW belts. I can’t wait. If you would like to learn more about some of the MMA fighters that got me into this sport here is a top 10 favorite list to check out.
- Feder Emelianenko
- Maurico “Shogun: Rua
- Mirco “Crocop” Filopovic
- Wanderlie “The Axe Murderer” Silva
- Dennis Kang
- Paulo Filho
- Takanori Gomi
- Shinya Aoki
- Josh Barnett
- Mark Hunt
This is just a sample of the many MMA fighters out there. They come in all shapes and sizes and they have many different styles. I look forward to the battles between Pride and UFC that are sure to come now that both companies are owned by the same people.