Why Pride will always be greater > than UFC

Pride will always be romanticized and overrated by certain people. Sort of like The Social Network.

 

Was that really the first and most relevant thing you could think of?

 

Pride was bigger in Japan because they didn't have 3 National Sports to compete with... I'm certain that in time the shows and events will be even bigger in The West. Without a doubt MMA is bigger now than it ever was in Brazil and across the World. It's the fastest growing sport in the World because The UFC brings it to every corner.

UFC 129.

Pride was Great, but nothing compares to what we have now. Fighters have evolved their skillset. No more strikers trying their hand in MMA... This group is well rounded, and because of this the sport is more competitive than ever. Not to mention 8 different weight classes and Women's MMA.... This time reminds me of the Golden Era of Boxing, The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.... Mixed Martial Arts every month, and sometimes weeks in a row. We could talk corruption and go tit for tat for another 5 pages, but fans of the Sport never had it so good.

 

It´s not growing in US anymore though, is it ?
The big jump of popularity in Brazil was 2 years ago, I think last year and right now the popularity of the sport is stabilized.
But like you said about Japan, in Brazil the only major sport is football, outside Football all the other sports are unpopular, F1 was popular one day but it´s not even close nowadays.
MMA is the second sport, but there is a huge gulf between Football and MMA....

 

Baseball, Sumo, Judo, Football, Karate...

Id say its the same here. It has it's fan base and from the amount of Brits posting in the UK section it's obviously not going anywhere.

But I think it's peak of interest was when it was shown on cable TV station Bravo from around 07-10, now its on ESPN and that cost extra to subscribe too

 

One of the cable channells (sportv) always showed it, and right now is pushing it constantly, more than usual. Showing Aldo and Anderson fights everytime, I think they noticed that it didn´t grown as expected......

 

Id like to see what happens if we ever get a British Champ. Obviously you Brazilians are spoilt when it comes to elite fighters.

But I think it's clear the Lesnar cross over appeal was huge for the UFC, as was Shamrock coming back and making a star out of Tito, and of Randy & Chuck by proxy

 

Yeah, would be interesting, I think it´ll happen sometime Stoo.

One thing I´m 100% sure....if Brazil didn´t have so many fighters, MMA would be an uknown sport around here without a doubt.

 

Same with Canadia/GSP, Sakuraba/Japan too fella. We havent had a true elite class fighter yet here.

That's why I hate the argument that Zuffa is responsible for the fighters success...but that is a different thread topic...

:hat

 

Nope it was a fad, Japanese love them.

@Vic-Joffre

Is MMA making any inroads into countries like Paraguay or Argentina ?

 

too much roids and fixed matches, all those guys deflated in the ufc and got exposed.

 

No. It´s an obscure sport in those two countries. You see a couple of argies in some brazilian events though.

 

I think Pride had an underground mystic to it that westeners really warmed to.... I must admit until stumbling across "The smashing machine" i didn't know anything about Pride or early UFC. After watching that doco i was fasinated and started searching for other fights

 

I knew Rampage's cousin. I don't actually know if they were real cousins or not but one night Rampage comes in and we start to have a few sakes. We were talking about the yakuza, because technically me and his cousin worked for their bar. He said "yeah it's the yakuza that pay me". Then he said that fighters could make extra money from the Yakuza who were their 'sponsor'. Not sure if he was trying to sound cool or if it was real.