Fedor Emelianenko vs. Pedro Rizzo Booked For June 21 In Russia

[Ash]

You're comparing two different eras of the sport.

While that's true, the guy I was sticking it to claimed that PRIDE was better because they paid out more than present day UFC fighters, which is untrue.

[Onion]

Because, despite being in decline, he is still better than many UFC heavyweights. I'm not going to delusional and claim Fedor is better than Overeem, JDS, or Cain, but I'd give him a fair chance against most others.

Create a cruiserweight division and he would be champion.

Both JDS and Cain would be in that division, so no.

[ATroms]

While that's true, the guy I was sticking it to claimed that PRIDE was better because they paid out more than present day UFC fighters, which is untrue.

Im not argueing about PRIDE vs UFC fighter payout... But take Wand Silva for example. At PRIDE 33, he was their champ and was paid $150,000 during a time where PRIDE was in absolute financial ruin, and that was 5 years ago. MMA has grown immensely since then. For his latest bout against Cung Le, he was paid $200,000. Now i know his worth is nowhere near what it used to be, but the sport, and especially Zuffa/UFC has grown to such financial/economic heights that my point is, the UFC should be paying better to certain fighters... Especially guys like Wand Silva. And on that same UFC 139 card compared to PRIDE 33, no PRIDE fighter was paid less than $10,000... The same cannot be said for UFC 139. So in certain circumstances, one can rightfully argue that PRIDE was more generous with fighter payouts than the UFC is even now, especially when you factor in the kind of money theyre bringing in present day compared to 5 years ago.

[Ash]

He's paid considerably higher than the 200 G's listed, so he wasn't a great example to use. He's a main eventer which always means a million dollar payout. I might be mistaken about this, but I think the only people nowadays that make less than 10K are winless fighters that lose.

[PITTFOX]

2. The UFC was driven underground and off cable because of politics. They were reduced to putting on piss-poor events available for PPV on their crummy website. To the UFC's credit they managed to survive eventually making massive concessions to return to cable. During this time Pride had a contract with cable-competitor Directv. While the UFC wallowed in obscurity Pride aired MMA events that were being broadcast worldwide stealing subscribers and PPV dollars from North American cable companies. Don't think the cable companies didn't notice and don't think this didn't have an impact on the UFC's eventual return to cable. During this period of time Pride kept MMA alive. Pride, via Directv, was the only ticket in North America for professionally produced MMA events. Fighters like Igor Vovchanchyn became mega-stars in the sport. Everyone in the MMA community during this time remembers this.

3. Bullshi+. The UFC may not exist were it not for Pride's success. Pride demonstrated to U.S. cable companies that MMA was a viable, profitable sport.

Igor was never ever a mega star in North America. Ever. The UFC was 99% unaffected by Pride in a positive way. If anything the Pride mega fans acting like the UFC was the Bellator of the time probably had a negative affect on the UFC. Pride was great and the UFC was great, but they each had virtually zero impact on the other until Pride starting going under. Pride did not have good PPV buys over here.

[PITTFOX]

Im not argueing about PRIDE vs UFC fighter payout... But take Wand Silva for example. At PRIDE 33, he was their champ and was paid $150,000 during a time where PRIDE was in absolute financial ruin, and that was 5 years ago. MMA has grown immensely since then. For his latest bout against Cung Le, he was paid $200,000. Now i know his worth is nowhere near what it used to be, but the sport, and especially Zuffa/UFC has grown to such financial/economic heights that my point is, the UFC should be paying better to certain fighters... Especially guys like Wand Silva. And on that same UFC 139 card compared to PRIDE 33, no PRIDE fighter was paid less than $10,000... The same cannot be said for UFC 139. So in certain circumstances, one can rightfully argue that PRIDE was more generous with fighter payouts than the UFC is even now, especially when you factor in the kind of money theyre bringing in present day compared to 5 years ago.

I think that although the UFC doesn't pay as much on the low end fighters, they do have much more options all around for a fighter to be successful. They have Medical insurance, Sponsors, bonuses and probably most importantly time to prepare for fights.

[ATroms]

He's paid considerably higher than the 200 G's listed, so he wasn't a great example to use. He's a main eventer which always means a million dollar payout. I might be mistaken about this, but I think the only people nowadays that make less than 10K are winless fighters that lose.

See, now this is where it becomes fuzzy. Because Zuffa uses different ways and outlets to provide better paydays for their fighters present day. But as its listed, money coming straight from Zuffa/UFC is $200,000. So you have to use parallelism here, in that money coming straight from PRIDE was $150,000. Thats at least how i understand it. Now i know Zuffa has done different things to increase fighter pay... But $$-stream coming straight from their pocket is 200,000$... Should be more is all im saying.

PS - PRIDE wins this arguement like any other arguement... Just the fact that they were handed briefcases of straight cashflow backstage makes their payment method better anyways

[Cbear]

There were always stories that The Men In Suits at ringside would entertain fighters after the shows andperhaps unreported perks existed

[WEREWOLF]

1. Igor was never ever a mega star in North America. Ever.

2. The UFC was 99% unaffected by Pride in a positive way. If anything the Pride mega fans acting like the UFC was the Bellator of the time probably had a negative affect on the UFC.

3. Pride was great and the UFC was great, but they each had virtually zero impact on the other until Pride starting going under. Pride did not have good PPV buys over here.

1. I never said he was. Ever. I said he became a mega-star in the SPORT during the time in question. Going into Pride Vovchanchyn had won NHB tournaments all over the world including Brazil's World Vale Tudo and was riding what would become a 30+ fight win streak. Vovchanchyn signing with Pride was a huge deal at the time for fans of the sport.

2. I disagree for the reasons I've already stated but since I enjoy banging my head against a wall I'll recap. During the time in question the UFC was banned from cable and on life support. Enter upstart satellite TV provider Directv. One of Directv's selling points was the fact it was willing to air PPV events like Pride. I remember. It was the reason I, and everyone else I knew who was into the sport, switched to Directv. The UFC was driven off cable because of politics not because the UFC did poorly in PPV sales. Directv was a direct threat to cable TV's market share stealing subscribers from cable and profiting from PPV sales of a sport cable and it's political interests were actively seeking to bury. Without the advent of Pride and it's subsequent success on a competitor's platform, the UFC would have been much easier for cable television to ignore. Without a cable outlet the UFC would have gone belly up.

3. I agree they were both great but I obviously disagree they had no impact on each other. If nothing else Pride forced the UFC to up its game and improve the quality of their fight cards.

[Ash]

1. I never said he was. Ever. I said he became a mega-star in the SPORT during the time in question. Going into Pride Vovchanchyn had won NHB tournaments all over the world including Brazil's World Vale Tudo and was riding what would become a 30+ fight win streak. Vovchanchyn signing with Pride was a huge deal at the time for fans of the sport.

Your time line is a bit messed up here. By the time SEG and the UFC started being dropped by cable providers, Igor was already ranked the #1 HW in the world, he didn't exactly have a rise to prominence then. I also question the claim that there was buzz about him debuting in PRIDE, as I think the crossover of fans at the time of both PRIDE and NHB events is pretty low, on top of both information and footage of such events being somewhat tricky to come by back then. Great acquisition and all, but it wasn't even close to similar as when they signed, say, Mark Kerr or gave Royce Gracie a truck load of money to fight in the GP. I suppose that is all semantics, however.

2. I disagree for the reasons I've already stated but since I enjoy banging my head against a wall I'll recap. During the time in question the UFC was banned from cable and on life support. Enter upstart satellite TV provider Directv. One of Directv's selling points was the fact it was willing to air PPV events like Pride. I remember. It was the reason I, and everyone else I knew who was into the sport, switched to Directv. The UFC was driven off cable because of politics not because the UFC did poorly in PPV sales. Directv was a direct threat to cable TV's market share stealing subscribers from cable and profiting from PPV sales of a sport cable and it's political interests were actively seeking to bury. Without the advent of Pride and it's subsequent success on a competitor's platform, the UFC would have been much easier for cable television to ignore. Without a cable outlet the UFC would have gone belly up.

This is such a bizarre statement, I'm not sure where you're culling your information from. At no point ever did [insert cable provider] think bringing the UFC back was an ace in the hole to compete with DirecTV and PRIDE, especially considering how small DirecTV's market share was at the time (more people were stealing it worldwide than subscribing to it, in fact). It's an absurd and completely untrue claim. The return of the UFC to PPV cable was mostly related to them being sanctioned by the NSAC and a bunch of other athletic commissions softening the ridiculous political outrage against it, and being promoted and financially backed by FOX for some time.