For a long time, I've been watching Mixed Martial Arts (also commonly referred to a MMA). I have to admit, that before 2007, I hadn't really seen many Pride fights. I've been a loyal UFC fan since the first time I saw Royce Gracie choke out Ken Shamrock. Even though I hadn't seen many Pride fights, I've continued to hear the hype. Dan Henderson, Mirko Cro-Cop, Mark Coleman, Wanderlei Silva, Fedor, and the list goes on and on.

Each faction did an amazing job of creating disturbingly loyal fans. Any comment about one being better than the other would create an uproar of historic proportions. I would say that I enjoy the UFC more because I like the added excitment which cage brings over the boxing ring. I feel that it adds more elements to a fight than the standard ring.

Well, the MMA world was given a great gift in March 2007 when the UFC announced that it had purchased Pride! We were finally going to see the matchups we had only previuosly dreamed of. We would finally know who the best in the world really is. Well, I'm sure that I'm not alone in saying, I wasn't impressed with what Pride had to offer. Part of me was pretty disappointed at this. I'd really been looking forward to watching some of these Pride superstars which I had heard so much about. I had watched some YouTube videos of some of them, but that's about it. I'm not sure that anybody was more excited than I was to see Mirko Cro-Cop take the UFC Heavyweight division by storm. He put up a pretty dominating performance against Eddie Sanchez....who? That's right Eddie Sanchez. Even though I didn't know who Eddie Sanchez was, I couldn't help but be impressed. Then once the UFC gave him anybody else, we quickly saw the limitations of his skill (he subsequently lost to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo). Now don't get me wrong, I love Cro-cop, and I'll watch any fight he's in. I'm not sure that you could ask for a better guy in there. He's smart, he's humble, he's just a good guy, but I would have to say that he was apparently a bit over-rated. Being over-rated was simply a product of the caliber of fighters which the Pride organization was putting in front of him.

This trend has continued as we saw Dan Henderson now lose both the Light-Heavyweight Championship to Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and the Middle-weight Championship to Anderson Silva. He put up gutsy performances in both fights, but I don't think I'd ever heard more hype about one guy before. Then the only two fights that I've seen him in, he loses.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't want to hear it anymore. The UFC has proven to be a better pool of fighters and I'm glad that we have finally been able to find out. As far as I'm concerned, the UFC is to Pride as the NFL is to NFL Europe. Pride fighters are great athletes and some may be better than some UFC fighers, but I'm talking about these organizations on a whole. I say, that the debate is over, UFC wins.

Catch my other page where I discuss the new Showtime EliteXC.

Andrew Nadler

Passionate MMA Fan