The Shrine

Well, first of all it is the first time that a PRIDE event has been held on American soil; that is a historical landmark on the level of something such as the World Series being held in Tokyo. Though that does not come close to the historical landmark of an American Wrestling and MMA Legend (Mark "The Hammer" Coleman) being outcheered by the Russian World Heavyweight champion; in fact there were boos for Coleman and the fans at times were chanting "Fedor" very loudly.

There's a lot of fighting techniques here that you will not see in the UFC. I wish I could find Barnett vs. Nastula and Hendo vs. Vitor Belfort. Wanderlei Silva also came out and challenged Chuck Liddell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C81q92iDo9Y VILLASENOR VS LAWLER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KO2d3Rhfk0 Phil Baroni vs. Nishijima

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB7Bnf9xhlc Butterbean vs. Sean O'Haire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0D5TpfjsS0 Randleman vs Shogun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PmBXE2TRLw Fedor vs. Coleman

I was annoyed I had to create an account and sign in, but after seeing the fights, I'm all better now. All of those were fucking awesome. Thanks for the links dude.

Nice one Kupe. I also liked the homage to Chris Benoit at the end there.

Thanks for the fight:

Nastula really surprised me in that fight, he neutralized Barnett and dominated the fight until the end. He is relatively new to MMA, but a Judo world and olympic heavyweight champion. With some further training (particularly in jiu jitsu and kickboxing), even at the age 35-42 point in his career, he could still be one of the top fighters in MMA; as far as I'm concerned, he proved that he was up there in that fight; he outdid Randy Couture against Barnett when Randy was at the top of his career.

Nastula has 3 losses on his record, but those losses are to Barnett, Nog, and Aleks (Fedor's younger brother), Nog is certainly a top 4 (he is #2, #3, or #4 depending on who you ask) and Aleks is somewhere between 4 and 10 (he has a win over Kharitonov and Nastula, but he needs a few more to solidify himself).

The Barnett fight surprised me, too. Barnett just came out second in the open weight tournament, I thought he was going to demolish this guy I had never heard of. I think there might have been something to the commentators banter: Barnett might not have had enough time to recover from the tournament.

That's true, he took quite a beating in the tournament a month ago. Nastula though, he may be new to MMA, but he has been involved in combat sports for quite some time (namely Judo where he is one of the best in the world).

Do you guys think the rules difference in America affected any of the fights?

Ishamael wrote:Do you guys think the rules difference in America affected any of the fights?

Well, considering how the fights all went, I don't think it really made a difference to anyone.Every single fight had the expected result except for Butterbean vs. Sean O'Haire, that actually surprised me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mth5NTRzYMw

And the last fight.

PRIDE Welterweight Champion Dan Henderson vs. former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion (from 2004) Vitor Belfort. This was a great fight and I would have liked to see it go to 5 rounds. Despight Belfort being quite a bit larger than Hendo, it really seemed like Hendo was by far the stronger of the two.

Beautiful grappling in that fight.

I didn't find any of those fights "way better than UFC" (the first two were removed). Honestly, it's like it's WWE vs WCW all over again for you, and you are all over Pride's nuts (got a thing for drama and sweaty half naked men?).

I liked the Barnett fight mind you, but it's definately not the whole other level you keep spouting about. Watching Pride always reminds me of one thing though...Octagon > Ring.

One thing I saw on TV that I liked recently was the "IFC" (besides the ring format). What the hell is that? It was cool because they had a team best-of format for their fights. Nifty idea. I need to find out if it was a one time deal or some new regular offering.

So yeah Kali, you see leg lock techniques, grappling techniques, and striking skill like that ALL the time in UFC =/

I suppose you could have an argument if you took out almost all of the UFC roster and just said: Liddell, Babalu, Anderson Silva, GSP, Matt Hughes, BJ Penn, Tito Ortiz (and people would argue against me putting him on that list), and Jeremy Horn are comparable to people on PRIDE's roster. However, that is the problem with UFC, they have enough fighters that they can usually only feature between 1 and 4 good fighters on a show; everyone else on their roster is pretty much just Joe-somebody who came up from Brazil, or some gym in Iowa, in order to make a few thousand so they can eat for the next few months. Whereas PRIDE will fill its card from top to bottom with MMA legends, olympic champions, and world champions. The UFC guys, for the most part, just do not have the fighting expertise that PRIDE guys do, and it really shows. The UFC has some nice up and comers (Karo, Diego, and Bipsing), but you know that given 2-4 years they're going to end up in PRIDE or K1 if they go somewhere, it is what happens to most of the good fighters that ever go through UFC.

Essentially UFC is a minor league, Pride is a major league. Pride takes on guys who have worked their way up through MMA and other combat sports to the point in which they are recognized as among the best in the world at what they do; olympic gold, world champion, MMA gold. UFC gets almost all of their guys from some gym, guys that no one has even heard of. UFC, for most of the great MMA fighters who have ever been in it, is just a stepping stone.

Woops, missed one fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IdbuL3A1js Nakamura vs Travis Galbraith (King of the Cage Champion)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7f9gQ9NhSU Opening, impressive light + firework show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wBt7YNlLnA coleman entrance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgnQCkt_vw0 Fedor entrance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_APwYuebcBc (crowd view)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQ4e_iJ9Vw A severely deformed Coleman after fight, with crying daughters + Fedor.


http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c141/ ... or-god.gif

This picture makes me laugh =)