Imagine if you will:
A dark arena, filled to the rafters with 60,000 die-hard MMA fans. And not just any fans, but the kind that cheer for both KOs and intricate guard passes alike.
An excited hush falls over this crowd, then seemingly out of nowhere, a spotlight illuminates a circle in which a man in a tuxedo is seated at a piano. He begins to play, a slow, delicate piece that reveals itself to be a hymn as a soulful singer joins in accompaniment. The lights dim. A few seconds later, the stage brightens and an entire choir picks up the hymn, in front of a backdrop of fight footage.
The lights dim again, and when they pick back up, the man who was sitting at the piano, is now in a loin cloth, beating the hell out of a giant drum, to the beat of the promotion's intro music as each of the fighters on the card is introduced to the audience.
The pianist, the drummer: Dana White.
Now I know what you're thinking: no goddamn way would that ever happen. Well in PrideFC, it did.
From 1997 to 2006, back when people who wore TapouT shirts were likely to actually train in MMA or BJJ, the Japan-based PrideFC was the only real competition to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And many of us considered it no competition at all. There were deliberate mismatches, such as Fedor vs. Zuluzinho, and the judging was, by American standards, weird. Kicks to the head of a downed opponent were legal. Drug testing was... questionable. And one guy even fought in a luchador mask.
But the effect of this kind of spectacular anarchy worked; it brought a sense of awe and magic to the sport, at a time when the UFC was trying to make the presentation of MMA in the United States, more like Boxing.
So for those of you who are fairly new to the sport, we're going to take you down memory lane. And for those of you who remember Pride fondly, we're going to wistfully weep manly tears for an fight promotion, the like of which, hasn't been seen since the days of the Roman gladiators.