PRIDE Fighting Championships (Pride or Pride FC, founded as KRS-Pride) was a Japanese mixed martial arts promotion company. Its inaugural event was held at the Tokyo Dome on October 11, 1997. Pride held more than sixty mixed martial arts events, broadcast to about 40 countries worldwide.What is Pride? , Official Pride site. Last retrieved December 5, 2006 PRIDE was owned by the holding company Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE).
For the ten years of its existence, PRIDE was one of the most popular MMA organizations in the world. Pride broadcast its event on Japanese pay-per-view and free-to-air television for millions of spectators in Japan, holding large events in sports stadiums, including the largest live MMA event audience record of 91,107 spectators at the Pride and K-1 co-production, Shockwave/Dynamite, held in August 2002, as well as the audience record of over 67,450 people at the Pride Final Conflict 2003.
Pride was devised in 1997 as a way to promote a fight between Nobuhiko Takada, a professional wrestler at the time considered one of the leading stars of the shoot-style wrestling circuit and the top star of UWF International (UWFi), and Rickson Gracie, a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu fighter from the Gracie family and vale tudo champion. The first event (later known as Pride 1) at the Tokyo Dome drew an audience of 40,000 spectators and attracted the attention of the Japanese media. With the success of the first events, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in crisis at the time, PRIDE became the leading organization in the nascent sport of MMA.
With its origins in Japanese professional wrestling, PRIDE was known for its focus on spectacle and entertainment. Events were proceeded with opening ceremonies and fighters had elaborate entrances. There were no formal weight classes—except for championship belt bouts and the Grand Prix tournaments—and fighters would often be matched with opponents of wildly different weights. Including the frequent promotion of "technique vs size" freakshow fights. Pride's New Year's Eve cards were considered its flagship events, traditionally held at the Saitama Super Arena and featured some of the promotion's biggest fights. Pride also had the Grand Prix, one-night single-elimination tournaments with multiple fighters. The PRIDE ruleset was also more permissive than the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, permitting soccer kicks, stomps and knees to downed opponents, body slams directly in the head ("spiking"), and allowed more fighting outfits, including wrestling shoes and keikogis. Matches were done in a boxing-style roped ring and went for an opening ten minute round followed by two rounds of five minutes.
In 2006, DSE started to have financial issues, as a scandal revealing ties between the company and yakuza resulted in the end of multiple lucrative contracts with Japanese broadcasters. In March 2007, DSE sold Pride to Lorenzo Fertitta and Frank Fertitta III, co-owners of Zuffa, which, at the time, owned the UFC.Nagatsuka, Kaz, "UFC hopes to shake up Japan fight scene", Japan Times, 28 February 2012, p. 15. While remaining as legally separate entities with separate managements, the two promotions were set to cooperate in a manner akin to the AFL-NFL merger. However, such an arrangement did not materialize, and in October 2007, Pride Worldwide's Japanese staff was laid off, marking the end of the organization as an active fight promoter, while the top and most popular fighters were brought to the UFC. As a result, many of the Pride staff left to form a new organization alongside K-1 parent company Fighting and Entertainment Group. That new organization, founded in February 2008, was named DREAM. However, this promotion would close in 2012 after the bankruptcy of FEG.
In 2015, Pride's co-founder and former president Nobuyuki Sakakibara established Rizin Fighting Federation in Japan with the same philosophy and ambition as for the defunct Pride organization.
History
The Origins of Pride Pride has its roots on Japanese Professional wrestling (Puroresu). In the 1970s, Antonio Inoki rose to pronominance in Japan by founding New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and introducing his own style of wrestling he dubbed "Strong-style", derived from training in Karate and Catch-As-Catch-Can, an earlier style of legit Professional wrestling and submission grappling, taught by Karl Gotch. This style was more realistic, using full contact strikes and a lot of kicks, as well as realistic grappling moves from his Catch Wrestling training. Inoki promoted professional wrestling as a legit and real combat sport and the "strongest" fighting style, and to prove it he fought worked (i.e. predetermined) matches against fighters from other martial arts and combat sports, such as judo, kickboxing, sumo and karate, known as "heterogeneous combat sports bouts" (Ishu Kakutōgi Sen; 異種格闘技戦). In 1976 Inoki fought a match against boxing world-champion Muhammad Ali, since neither fighter could agree on who would be the loser, the match evolved into a shoot (i.e. real) fight between the two contestants, eventually resulting in a draw.
The match against Muhammad Ali, as well the other heterogeneous style bouts inspired a lot of Inoki's students. They left NJPW and founded a new company named Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF), which promoted a realistic style of pro-wrestling that eschewed the most theatrical elements of wrestling and resembled closer to an actual fight, but it was still predetermined. This style would become known as "Shoot Wrestling". The UWF closed in 1990 and was succeeded in 1991 by the UWFi, which became one of the top professional wrestling promotions in Japan, as their brand of shoot wrestling proved to be exceedingly popular with the Japanese public. The main attraction and most popular star of the UWFi was Nobuhiko Takada. The other precursors of Pride were the Japanese mixed martial arts competitions and shoot style pro wrestling promotions Shooto, a self-styled hybrid martial art organization founded in 1985 by former shoot wrestler "Tiger Mask" Satoru Sayama, Pancrase founded in 1993 by wrestlers Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki attempting to create a non-scripted shoot wrestling promotion, Vale Tudo Japan, a Vale Tudo tournament organized in 1994 by Satoru Sayama based on the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Brazilian Vale Tudo and Kingdom, founded in 1997 as a successor to the UWFi. Pride was also influenced by the wild rise of K-1, a kickboxing promotion founded in 1993 which became very popular in Japan for its huge and action-packed tournaments.
Early years (1997–1999) Pride Fighting Championships was initially conceived of in 1997, to match popular Japanese pro-wrestler Nobuhiko Takada with Rickson Gracie, the purported champion of the Gracie family of Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners, who gained popularity in Japan after winning the 1994 and 1995 Vale Tudo Japan tournaments. The UWFi tried to recruit Gracie in 1994, but the negotiations failed, reportedly as he expressed little interest in working or participating in matches that he regarded as staged rather than legitimate. UWFi wrestler Yoji Anjo answered the purported insult by travelling to Los Angeles with several associates and journalists and did a dojo storm on Gracie's academy. Anjo challenged Gracie to a fight, Gracie accepted and violently defeated him in front of the assembled group, ultimately choking Anjo unconscious after the refused to surrender to Gracie's ground-and-pound. The incident was filmed and subsequently circulated in Japan, where it became a source of considerable embarrassment for the UWFi and enhanced Gracie's reputation as a legitimate fighter. By this point, Takada had become one of Japan's most prominent combat sports figures through the UWFi's shoot-style wrestling, which presented him as a legitimate fighter, making him the promotion's natural candidate to answer Gracie's challenge. Anjo's defeat, however, left the promotion without a satisfactory answer to the humiliation. The UWFi eventually collapsed in December 1996, leaving Takada without a promotion, but the unresolved rivalry between Takada and Gracie provided the foundation for a new event. In the aftermath of the collapse, promoters saw an opportunity to turn the long-standing conflict into a legitimate contest, with Takada positioned as the man who could answer Gracie's challenge and avenge Anjo's defeat. The proposed bout would pit one of Japan's most prominent professional wrestlers against Gracie in a legitimate mixed martial arts fight, rather than a staged professional wrestling match. This concept ultimately led to the creation of the first Pride event.
The event, held at the Tokyo Dome on October 11, 1997, and organised by Hiromichi Momose, Naoto Morishita and Nobuyuki Sakakibara, who had established the Kakutougi Revolutionary Spirits (KRS) promotion, specifically to promote the event. PRIDE.1 attracted 47,000 fans, as well as Japanese mass media attention. Despite the event being conceived largely as a one-off spectacle, the success of the event showed there was a significant audience for large Mixed Martial Arts events. KRS subsequently promoted three more events, including the highly anticipated rematch between Takada and Gracie a year later in 1998.Japan's Fight Clubs, JapanInc.com. Last retrieved December 5, 2006 However, KRS was never intended to become the permanent corporate structure behind the promotion. Following its fourth event, the organization was dissolved and its members established Dream Stage Entertainment (DSE), which took over the promotion and its assets. Under DSE, the series' name was formally established as the PRIDE Fighting Championships.
With K-1 enjoying popularity in Japan, Pride began to compete with monthly showings on Fuji Television, as well as pay per view on the newly formed satellite television channel SKY PerfecTV.
Pride Grand Prix, Bushido and further rise (2000–2006)
In 2000, Pride hosted the first Pride Grand Prix, a two-part openweight tournament held to find the "world's best fighter". The tournament was held over the course of two events, with sixteen fighters competing in an opening round and the eight winners returning three months later for the final round. The second round of the tournament marked the first time Pride was broadcast in the United States and featured a 90-minute match between Kazushi Sakuraba and Royce Gracie and American fighter Mark Coleman winning the tournament by defeating Igor Vovchanchyn in the final round. Pride would gain a fervent cult fanbase in the US, boosted by a highlights deal with Fox Sports Networks and regular DVD releases of Pride shows including older cards that were not initially screened outside of Japan. English-language commentary for Pride was provided by Stephen Quadros or Mauro Ranallo, with Bas Rutten or Frank Trigg providing analysis.
In August 2002, Pride teamed up with Japan's leading kickboxing and fight promotion, K-1, and held the world's biggest fight event, PRIDE Shockwave (known as Pride/K-1 Dynamite!! in Japan), which attracted over 71,000 fans (with some sources claiming 91,107 fans). The event had a big opening ceremony, which featured Antonio Inoki dropping into the stadium by parachute. He then joined Hélio Gracie and the two "founding fathers of MMA" lit a ceremonial olympic torch together. The actual event was marked by a "freak show fight" between 223 lb (101 kg) Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira and 350 lb (158 kg) Bob Sapp, and Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Royce Gracie, a "Judo vs. Jiu-jitsu special rules match" between Yoshida, an Olympic gold medalist in judo and Royce Gracie, the first champion of the UFC. The fight ended in controversy.