One way in which Pride is more “antisocial” than UFC is with referee stoppages. Watching Pride, I sometimes shivered and yelled at my screen for the ref to STOP THE FIGHT. I take no pleasure in watching a bloody, defenseless, motionless man-doll being repeatedly slammed in the face.

I haven’t watched ufc since the late 40’s, except for maybe a dozen select fights on utube. I really don’t miss watching UFC; which will have to get rid of at least three of the following… cage, Rogain, Dana, Goldy to be watchable again IMO.

UFC could care less about decorated athletes, they fired the only medalist they had in Lindland. Pure quantity over quality.

I will be watching Ruas vs Smith next monday on IFL.

And I’ll utube kimbo mercer because it has a certain level of intrigue.

Say what you will about their ages, these four decorated fighters have the key ingredient “character” which is missing from the ufc.

Hmm, ok. Well, how do you explain:
- Their color commentator is a complete BJJ mark who has way too much enthusiasm for zombies and whizzers.
- The UFC has champs like Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, Sean Sherk and Matt Hughes utilizing wrestling as their primary skill.
- Doesn’t On the Mat with Marc Laimon, doesn’t that count for something?

“UFC is about who has the most tattoos and can be the biggest asshole. They play up the streetfighting thing as much as any other promotion”

UFC 69 featured a Leonard Garcia and Roger Huerta post-fight lovefest while Ortiz and Evans was glancing at each other sideways. Granted the cameras weren’t aware of the confrontation, but to their credit the UFC never tried to get cameras on Ortiz or Evans afterwards.

Back to PRIDE, look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqqR-y-CPE and can you tell me was there a need to air this with the dramatic drum hits?

A fairer man could say the UFC and PRIDE are not so different in the end.

I am well aware of Pride’s connection to pro-wrestling, but as an organization they had much, much higher level of atheletes and respect for the fighters and the fights themselves, without the need for over-promotion and fake storylines. Pride had world class atheletes from every corner of the globe and the sporting world. Multiple gold and silver medalists in judo and wrestling, world class champion kickboxers. They had actual internationl talent, which the UFC has not had in significant amounts since very very recently.

The bottom line is, I really cant blame these writers for shitting on the UFC, because they present MMA as a striking-only, brawling “dirty boxing,” american-centric slugfest, rather than the world class sport it is. The announcers are vastly under-qualified and the president of the whole organization cant utter a single sentence without at least two uses of the word FUCK. The UFC promotes in the terms of the old UFC, no matter how far they think theyve come. They cater to a low-brow, beer guzzling, relatively uneducated (mma-and otherwise) crowd. Pride just promoted their fights as pure sport and fun fights (otherwise known as freakshows). UFC is about who has the most tattoos and can be the biggest asshole. They play up the streetfighting thing as much as any other promotion, with Sean Gannon and the TUF incident. Plus dana white acting like a wannabe toughguy thug. Its pathetic.

I dont know what “shit” Pride pulled in japan other than promoting some “freakshow” matches that really didnt hurt anyone or the sport. People feel the need to focus on those few freakshow fights while they ignore the several absolutely stacked grand prixs and fight cards that featured truly top level world class atheletes with no cage or toughguy gimmicks.

UFC has always catered to the low brow streetfight watching crowd and continues to do so. Thats what I call an absurd level of shit.

I’m not insulting PRIDE, which I was a fan of before I got into modern UFC. I’m just thinking we need to stay as grounded in reality as possible before the legacy of PRIDE turns into a melodramatic cult.”

Grounded as possible?? What are you talking about?? I said bullshit beefs/grudge matches. Wand vs. Rampage was not bullshit, it was the top 2 fighters in the weight class. I was referring to useless fights like Tito vs Shamrock or the announcer starting the fight with “And the friendship is over….” (a la Chuck vs. Tito). Pride never did shit like that. Before every single UFC fight, they have a montage of the fighters shit talking. Plus what is the problem with butterbean and Giant Silva? Their existence in Pride does not refute anything I said. Sure, they are funny looking, but both are actual athletes and they competed with no frills attached (other then the fact that they happen to be funny looking). Pride had the top athletes fighting without fake shit talking…which the UFC is notorious for encouraging, and no fake bad-blood hype and “i’ll kick his ass” propaganda. Sure, they had giants and guys you think are “freakshows”, but that didnt make it less then pure sport entertainment.

Pride went with much more of the pure, world-class sport angle then the UFC or any other promotion ever has. Thats a fact. You completely missed the point of my post.

At the end of the day lots of MMA fans are knucklheads and the higher class of MMA fans, who’ve trained or whatever, should just accept that and also accept that some marketing is bound to be targeted towards them. Anyway, Kimbo is Kimbo… he’s just a personality… it’s not like he’s going out beating up random people so I don’t really care if they use this to promote stuff. I think Lee Murray and more specifically the ass kissing he gets off the average MMA fan douchebag does MMA far more of a disservice than this. It’s not like anyone’s saying Kimbo is going to be a force – this is just a spectacle, just like his backyard brawls.