To this day no other organization holds as much fond memories and entertaining matches for me as that of PrideFC.
The powers that be at Pride understood it was about the spectacle of the event card itself, they didn't create ''stars'' but larger then life superheros pitted against one another in what was more often then not crowd pleasing matches.
Don Frye would at that time never have been thought of as a legit top 10 HW but does anyone remember how the crowd would erupt in waves as he would raise his arms from left to right. His entertaining fights, wins over Shamrock, Takayama and his brutal defeat by Le Banner at the Pride/K1 Shockwave card or that head kick by Goodridge will always be remembered.
Frye is just one of the many examples that could be made...The point is, is that Pride could take the talent pool they had that ranged from so-so to good to great and make highly exciting match ups. Didn't matter if they made sense, they filled seats, they entertained, they gave the fans the fights they would want to see.
Now I will not go so far to say that Bellator is the new Pride but I will say they are putting out matches that most North Americans love to call freak shows and flame away about on the forums but be damn if anyone wants to miss watchin' it.
I of course can only speak for myself and at the end of the day what I want to see when I watch a MMA event is entertaining fights with fighters I know about and fights I'd like to see made. If those fights come from two p4p best guys or two guys from the internet I don't care...but hey, thats just me.
