Why won't the UFC and PRIDE fight their fighters against each other?

Question

Shouldn't it be like the old AFL and NFL merger?When they just decided to finally compete and merge together,throw their hands up and just do it,league against league,to see who is the best?I guess it will happen that same way someday.

Answer 1

its because the pride and the ufc have different rules

Answer 2

They do, Dan Hendersen fought Anderson Silva and lost. Rampage Jackson beat "Ice man" Liddell for the light-heavyweight belt. Minetaro Nogueira beat Tim Sylvia for the interim heavyweight belt, just to name a few. UFC just kept the top fighters in Pride and released the rest.

Answer 3

Nogueira, Silva, Jackson, Herring, Cro-cop all came from Japan.  Pride FC may have lost the war but its fighters became UFC champions in the end....

Answer 4

pride doesn't exist anymore. ufc bought them

Answer 5

UFC bought pride a while ago. they no longer exist.  former pride fighters are now part of the ufc and fight in it.

Answer 6

they do. the UFC bought out PRIDE...and thats why you got guys like forest griffin(ufc) fighting guys like quentin "rampage" jackson (pride)

Answer 7

Actually Mirko Phillipovic and Wanderlei Silva have both fought in the UFC, and Chuck Liddell has fought in Pride.  In fact, Mark Coleman switched from the UFC to pride because the competition in Pride is generally more brutal.  Because the great majority of Japanese all did Judo at some point in their lives, and because MMA uses a lot of BJJ which is similar, in Japan MMA has a much broader audience that can actively analyze what is going on in the ring when the two fighters start grappling.  In the United States, the audience is restricted to former high school catch wrestlers, naturally a few Judoka and BJJ people, and a minority of pot-bellied, tattooed beer drinkers.  In the begining, that was the majority of the audience ("biker" types) but, as the UFC became more "classy," its appeal has expanded.

The issue has to do with contracts, and if the UFC was able to buy out Pride, it had to do with the fact that Pride's owner I believe was charged with corruption, so it was easy to have a change of management.  Ultimately though regardless of who owns it all the respective fighters are under contract.  And, unless the contracts they sign specifically say they can fight outside the league at their own expense, "cross over" fights are unlikely, as too many of them would mean the loss of audiences.

Although many people want to watch Couture take on the likes of Emanialenko, unless the two branches get permission from the umbrella organization that owns them both, its not likely to happen.  As a general rule though, Pride fighters are generally more skilled than UFC.  They tend to come from martial arts backgrounds where the training is much more intense, and the coaches rely as much on form as they do on the athletic ability of their fighters.  Meaning, on both sides of the pacific the fighters are athletic, but the ones in Japan have more polished techniques and they have to be much stronger technique wise to get to where they are.

Indeed; the majority of UFC fighters who transitioned from it to Pride, have all been torn apart by someone they encountered whom they did not expect would beat them.  Whereas the Gracies have, easily, a 90% or higher win reccord in the UFC, in pride that number drops down to 70%.  Pride's standards, tend to be much higher, and you have to have more fights under your belt to be able to fight there, or, prove yourself skillful.

Pride fighter Fedor Emanialenko has shut down the likes of Mark Coleman, who in the UFC, with the exception of a handful of losses, was a damned juggernaut.  In Pride though, he's nothing compared to Emanialenko or Nogueira.

As much because of contract issues, as different standards, cross overs are not frequent.  Mirko got worked by Gabriel Gonzaga, but by now he's damned well nearly over the hill.  Same with Wanderlei Silva, and even then he has shut down more than his share of UFC fighters.

Food for thought.

Answer 8

Hopefully they will I can not wait for that

Answer 9

The first two guys don't know what they are talking about, the last guy is right. UFC bought PRIDE. Along with Rampage Jackson, I believe Dan Henderson was a Pride fighter as well.

Do you not notice how they don't show recent PRIDE fights? It is because they are no longer an organization.

Answer 10

Because Pride doesn't exist anymore.  

It was brought down by a scandal linking it to organized crime.  None of the Japanese TV networks would touch it after that.  UFC bought it out, but couldn't get a TV deal, so they just cherry-picked the better non-Japanese fighters and moved them over to the UFC, and Pride was folded.

The new Japanese promotion, DREAM, seems to be doing well enough.