T Nation

Pride vs UFC/Bellator

Combat
#1

Pride at the time was better than UFC (1997-2007)

Cro Cop, Noguiera and Fedor lost against higher caliber fighters once they moved to Strikeforce/UFC/Bellator. Pride was oligopolised by Fedor, Noguiera and Cro Cop. Those 3 were unbeatable until Pride disbanded. Wanderlei Silva also had a 4 year unbeaten run until Mark Hunt’s brick fists destroyed his chin.

Brock Lesnar (heavyweight), Randy Couture (heavyweight/light heavyweight) and Chuck Liddell (light heavyweight) were dominating UFC when these Pride guys came in 2007.
UFC and Strikeforce had better fighters starting from 2005/2006- a year before the end of Pride’s lifetime. This is why the Pride guys lost; they can’t all have suddenly dropped out of their prime as they were only 30 years old when Pride disbanded.

Since 2011 UFC has been in its Golden era:

Stipe Miocic/Fabricio Werdum/Cain Velasquez/Junior Dos Santos- unpredictable heavyweight division

Jon Jones/Daniel Cormier/Alexander Gustafsson/ Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson- everyone of these guys can beat one another- we saw that with Gustafsson losing by split/majority decision to Jones and DC and Rumble brutally knocking out Gustafsson

Whittaker/Romero/Weidman/Rockhold/Bisping- ever since Anderson Silva’s dethroning there’s been a vacuum as to who the best Middleweight is.

Cyborg/Amanda Nunes/ Germaine/ Shevchenko/ Holly Holm- unpredictable women’s division since Ronda’s dethroning

By 2020 all of the divisions will have new champions. New fighters are coming in and working their way up and this golden decade will cease to be.

#2

Belfort was a UFC champion and he didn’t do well in Pride. Lidell lost when he fought in Pride. Barnett was a UFC champion and Cop beat him in Pride. Overeem was a Pride fighter and he is one of the top HWs in the UFC as is Hunt. Fedor KOed Arlovski who was a UFC champion.

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#3

Forrest Griffin (Tennessee Legend!) beat Shogun and Rampage.

#4

Liddell won his Pride fight by knocking out Overeem. He then got knocked out by Rampage but to be honest Rampage beat him in UFC too. Arlovski is a crap fighter- that’s why I said at the time Pride was better until 2006 when it began to decline. Noguiera and Cro Cop both got defeated by Frank Mir and Roy Nelson.

Henderson, Anderson, Rampage and Shogun were good in both Pride and UFC. But they wouldn’t stand a chance against Gustafsson, Cormier, Weidman or Rockhold.

#5

And was beaten by Anderson.

#6

Werdum fought in Pride before he fought in the UFC.

#7

Vitor Belfort, Kevin Randleman and Mark Coleman didn’t do too well in Pride - UFC at the time was a small pond.

Cro Cop, Noguiera and Fedor didn’t do that well in UFC (Strikeforce for Fedor) because they were conveniently out of their prime at 32/33 (I don’t buy it).

Chuck didn’t do that well in Pride and Wand didn’t do that well in UFC but they both put on a show fighting each other.

Hunt, Overeem, Rampage, Shogun, Hendo, Anderson Silva and Werdum did well in both. In my opinion it’s a combination of age (they were at the early stages of their career in Pride and carried on winning once they were in UFC) and the fact some UFC guys like Bisping, Machida, Rashad, Sonnen, Nelson and Mir were good fighters despite never fighting in Pride so the talent pool became more saturated once Zuffa bought Pride.

When 2010 came along you had prospects like Weidman, Rockhold, Daniel Cormier, Alexander Gustaffsson, JDS, Cain,etc. By 2020 these 2010 guys will be the old guard and we’ll have a fresh batch of champions in UFC. Hopefully the Pride guys will have retired for good by then.