What Made PRIDE FC So Good?
Even if you are new to the MMA game, you have likely heard about the glory days of Pride Fighting Championships. We all have at least one friend who is always there to remind us of how good PRIDE was. And, they would often go further saying it was better than modern UFC.
Even though this stays open for a debate, Pride events were unique spectacles we won’t forget or ever see again.
What was Pride Fighting Championship?
Founded in 1997 in Japan, Pride Fighting Championships was one of the biggest MMA promotions. Its events were huge in the 2000s and were aired in over 40 countries all around the world. It was the home of the most talented fighters and its concept and vision of what MMA stands for was different.
In its existence, Pride FC held around 60 events, most of them at the famous Tokyo Dome in Japan. Some of the events included a live audience of over 90,000 people (71.000 is the official number), which still holds a record.
For over 10 years, Pride had been leading the MMA business and was bigger than UFC. Even in modern times, people still look back at Pride to be the golden age of purest MMA fighting we all miss badly.
But after many memorable events, insane violence at display, and billions of dollars, the Pride FC collapsed in 2007.
As you are going to see in this article, these events were special in many ways. People miss them mainly because Pride rules allowed most of the things that are banned in modern MMA. And people loved that!
No eye pokes
In Pride, there were no eye pokes simply because they used different types of MMA gloves. Even though this does not sound like a big thing, we can all agree eye pokes are one of the main problems in modern MMA.
In the UFC for instance, we can see eye pokes breaking the action in 50% of the matches and those can easily lead to the end of a match. They frustrate the fans, fighters, fight promoters, and even the referees.
Pride FC fighters fought wearing open finger gloves which were around 4–6 OZ in size. Their design was better because the glove covered the fingers as well. As a result, the fingers are curled back when in a neutral position. This prevented fighters from extending their fingers straight in a match and poke the eyes.
Pride was much better in this aspect even by the modern safety standards. Imagine watching your favorite UFC match without worrying about eye pokes breaking the action.
“Pride Grand Prix” format
Pride Grand Prix was an MMA tournament in which top fighters fought multiple times in a single night. When you look back at it now, the safety of these events might be under the question. But, there’s no MMA fan in the world who didn’t love Pride Grand Prix. I mean, that’s like seeing your favorite fighter fighting three times in a single night against top opponents. What kind of a person would not love that?
Pride held their first openweight Grand Prix in 2000 won by the American MMA legend, Mark Coleman. In the following years, Pride would hold six more Grand Prix and these events were huge.
Except for the inaugural, all Grand Prix matches consisted of two rounds with the first round being 10 minutes long. Fighters had two minutes of rest time before the second round, which was 5 minutes long.
Winning the Pride Grand Prix was the ultimate achievement of an MMA fighter at the time. This is because fighters needed to fight multiple times in less than four months, and up to three times on a single night. For instance, here is what Mauricio “Shogun” Rua had to go through to win the Pride Grand Prix in 2005:
- Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (TKO, Opening Round, 23 April)
- Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (Decisio, Quarterfinals, 26 June)
- Allistair Overeem (TKO, Semifinals, 28 August)
- Ricardo Arona (KO, Finals, 28 August)
The Entrances were spectacular
As said earlier, Pride events were all about entertaining the crowd. As a big part of the show, they used to put a lot of work into making fighters’ entrances wild and flashy. We had it all; from fireworks, hitting the ancient gong, dancers to various other special effects.
What’s more, some of its biggest fighters would enter the ring in their own way. Pride was there to fulfill all of their often bizarre wishes. Just recall the famous “Super Mario” entrance of Kazushi Sakuraba with mushrooms popping up on the big screen. And of course, Sakuraba himself dressed as a Super Mario. You won’t see that stuff ever again.
The other great example is Wanderlei Silva’s entrance at Pride Final Conflict in 2003. It’s one of the most intimidating things you will see in a while and the finest performance of the famous Pride announcer, Lenne Hardt. Be sure to check our list of “Best MMA Walkouts in History” for some more wild ones from Pride!
Japanese audience
Pride FC held most of its events in Japan. The Japanese culture is diverse from the western one, notably when it comes to martial arts. It is a part of their identity, and they are always very respectful. During the Pride matches, you could hear fighters taking deep breaths, it was that quiet.
In spite of over 90.000 people in the audience, the crowd was always dead silent. It was weird in some way to watch people fighting each other in such silence. But that only made the whole experience more intimidating.
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Above all, the Japanese crowd was always very respectful, and they treated each fighter as a hero. No matter if it was Fedor Emelianenko or some unknown fighter, the crowd would have much love for both winners and losers. In some way, there was strong and pure love between the fighters and fans, not as superficial as we see today.
Rules (Soccer kicks, head stomps)
As said earlier, Pride FC had its own set of rules which was way different from the Unified Rules of MMA. It had less number of weight classes and a unique scoring system we are going to explain later in this article.
But the biggest difference was in which techniques one could use in a fight. Pride FC allowed its fighters to use many techniques that would later become illegal.
Fighters could use notorious soccer kicks and head stomps. This meant that a fighter can kick the grounded opponent in the head using the same leg motion as when a soccer player is kicking the ball. These kicks looked brutal, and one of the masters in executing them was Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
Head stomps were nothing less brutal. In some way, stomping the grounded opponent was more dangerous than using soccer kicks. This is because the fighter who is lying on the ground must absorb the entire force. Not to mention how landing with the heel can do much more damage.
Even though these techniques may look brutal, they kept the action fluid. Fighters could land kicks or knees from any position without thinking whether their opponent’s knee or wrist is touching the ground.
What Pride didn’t allow were elbows. Fighters couldn’t use any type of elbows to strike. But, who cares about elbows when you can blast a grounded opponent with a vicious kick or a knee?
No Drug testing
Pride FC didn’t have strict rules when it comes to drug testing, neither they collaborated with some agencies like USADA. We are not saying all PRIDE fighters used performance enhancing drugs. But, the officials would not chase them around and force them to fill in the cup or provide blood samples. If anything, these “rules” were the same for all.
Further, we can’t provide any evidence that fighters were using steroids. Still, we can’t run away from the fact that some fighters were jacked monsters. For instance, if you compare their physique and how they performed in Pride and later in the UFC, you can see a clear difference.
We are not saying the lack of anti-doping testing was safe or better. But this had an impact on the quality of fights and overall entertainment. In some way, everybody had some type of benefit from the lack of PED testing.
Different scoring system
Most other promotions like the UFC or Bellator use a 10 point scoring system adopted from boxing. However, Pride FC never adopted “Unified rules of MMA” which meant they had their own scoring system. And once again, many people believe Pride was better in this aspect as well.
Pride FC judges didn’t score a fight round by round like modern judges are doing. They scored the fight based on its entirety and would give their final score once the fight was over. Also, they used different criteria to choose the winner (in this order):
- The effort made to score a KO or submission
- Damage
- Standing combinations and ground control
- Takedowns or takedown defense
- Aggressiveness
- Weight (if the weight difference between the fighters is 10kg or more)
We are not saying their scoring system was better. But it seems we saw fewer bad calls in Pride than in the promotions that use 10 point scoring system. But this stays open for debate.
First-round was 10-minutes long
One of the things people really liked about Pride was that the first round lasted 10 minutes. The second and third rounds were regular 5-minute rounds. And, fighters had 2 minutes to recover between the rounds which was twice as much as it is today.
As one would assume, having a ten minute first round was a game changer in many ways. First of all, fighters had more time to feel each other out, set up their timing, or find the rhythm. Second, they needed to be more methodical to maintain their energy levels and cardio for the later rounds.
And for last, BJJ fighters and wrestlers simply loved this rule. It gave them twice as much time to work on the ground, secure the position, or place submissions. They didn’t have to rush things like they usually do in five minute rounds.
And let’s not forget how exhausting it is for someone to be on the bottom for 10 minutes.
Open weight categories and freak shows
Pride FC consisted of four weight classes and those were men only. One weight class was openweight where there was no weight limit. This weight class was often a place in which you could see pure freak shows and various bizarre matchups.
These were the types of matches that would please even the weirdest minds. Pride literally had the ability to create any type of matchup without worrying about athletic associations. And the Japanese crowd didn’t have anything against them either.
One of the biggest freak show fights in Pride was the one between Emanuel Yarbrough who was a 600lbs monster and 169 lbs Daiju Takase at Pride 3 in 1998.
The other great matchup was between 325lbs Bob Sapp who took on 185lbs Kiyoshi Tamura. Can you imagine what was going through Tamura’s mind when he saw twice as big Sapp standing across the ring?
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