The Fight Network

Spike's new ‘Best of Pride' show debuts tonight at 10pm EST hosted by Kenda Perez. It will feature classic fights from the Pride promotion, which launched in the fall of 1997 and featured a number of ‘questionable' fights during that era.

The promotion ascended to a mainstream appeal on the back of Kazushi Sakuraba as he became ‘The Gracie Hunter' defeating Royler Graice in November 1999 and then getting the biggest win of his career (in terms of importance to the popularity of Pride) in May 2000 after fighting Royce Gracie for 90-minutes and Gracie's corner throwing in the towel (along with subsequent wins over Renzo and the late Ryan Gracie). In 2001 the feud between Sakuraba and Wanderlei Silva allowed the promotion to sell out the Tokyo Dome where the highly undersized Sakuraba lost by doctor stoppage and set up a rematch in November 2001 where Sakuraba was knocked out in the 1^st round.

In 2002 the company continued to grow with the popularity explosion of Bob Sapp, the debut of Hidehiko Yoshida and led to the biggest MMA show in history, a co-promotion by Pride and K-1 at Tokyo National Stadium headlined by Mirko Cro Cop defeating Sakuraba.

In 2003 they introduced the Middleweight Grand Prix, which was a big draw with the third meeting of Sakuraba and Silva in the opening round along with U.S interest through the insertion of UFC light heavyweight Chuck Liddell, who defeated current Strikeforce Heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem in the opening round. The tournament was won by Wanderlei Silva in November 2003 as he defeated Quinton Jackson in the finals in the first of their three fights (the last being at UFC 92 in December 2008). This began the tournament crazy for Pride and many other Japanese promotions, which continues to this day with the DREAM and Sengoku promotions.

In 2004 they featured a Heavyweight tournament that led to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Fedor Emelianenko fighting in the finals of that tournament (the two first met in February 2002 with Fedor dethroning Nogueira to become the Pride Heavyweight champion) and this time they fought to a no contest after Fedor suffered a nasty cut during the bout and it was stopped.

The 2005 tournament reverted back to a Middleweight tourney featuring a final four contingent of Ricardo Arona, Wanderlei Silva, Alistair Overeem and Mauricio ‘Shogun' Rua, which was won by Rua defeating Arona in the finals, which could have a difficult political situation as Rua and Silva were Chute Box teammates at the time and would not fight one another.

The 2006 tournament was a new concept ‘Open Weight' Grand Prix, which featured the deepest final four of any MMA tournament in history with semi finalists Josh Barnett, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko Cro Cop and Wanderlei Silva with Cro Cop winning the tournament with one of the most devastating knockouts in history to Silva and then defeating Barnett in the finals on the same night. This was the last time Cro Cop looked that good as this was his last fight for Pride and debuted with the UFC in February 2007 in a lackluster fight with Eddie Sanchez and then followup losses to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo for the UFC in 2007.

It was also in 2006 that the promotion finally expanded to the U.S holding their first show ‘The Real Deal' in Las Vegas, Nevada headlined by Fedor Emelianenko retaining the Pride Heavyweight title against Mark Coleman. The show did moderate buys on pay per view and was heavily papered but they did return in February 2007 for Pride 33 ‘The Second Coming' headlined by Dan Henderson knocking out Wanderlei Silva to win the Pride Middleweight Title and also featuring an amazing fight between Nick Diaz and then Pride Lightweight champion Takanori Gomi in a non title bout where Diaz submitted Gomi with a gogoplata but the decision was later changed to a ‘no contest' when the NSAC ruled that Diaz had tested positive for marijuana. The company was bleeding money at this point after their TV deal with Fuji TV in Japan was axed in June 2006 following a scandal linking Pride to the Japanese Yakuza and that was their source of a substantial amount of their income to put on the production at the level their audience was accustomed to and affording to pay the level of fighters they employed.

Pride FC president Nobuyuki Sakakibara announced on March 27^th that Pride had been sold to Zuffa LLC with a rumored figure of $70 million being the price tag. The final show under the Pride banner was Pride 34, aptly entitled ‘Kamikaze'. It was the intention of Zuffa to continue to run shows under the ‘Pride' name but hit roadblock after roadblock in Japan and the promotion ceased to exist after the Pride 34 show.