Are Henderson, Fedor, and Wanderlei's Pride Titles more prestigious than the UFC Championships?

[kenetics]

I can't help but think that Dan, Fedor and Wanderlei are more than UFC LHW and HW champs, especially at that era.

Tougher competition over in Japan.

Yes. During that time pride was the number 1 organization. UFC always tried to co promote with them all the time. They sent multiple fighters to pride.

Until this day UFC hasn't filled an arena with numbers pride did during the golden age of mma.

And most important, they NEVER did interim belts lol.

 

[MCS]

Edge to UFC belts when Anderson and Rampage unified. If a UFC title defense meant basically the same as a unification, which got little hype. UFC title defenses were more heavily promoted. Also that Pride had already gone under, so the belt of a defunct org lost value.

But a Pride champ entering Strikeforce meant more than their belt.

Now it's basically recognizing great fighters of the past. Of course Fedor, Wand, Shogun's Pride belts mean a whole lot more than say Franklin's MW belts. The competition was better. But they were a rival org, so UFC doesn't (or didn't) promote them that way.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

You can tell from posts like this who never watched Pride. At the time pride was the most talented division, but their belts didn't mean much. Nog had the belt 500 days and never even defended it. Fedor had the belt for like 5 years and only had 3 defenses. Pride was about the fights, not the belts.

Exactly.
IIrc, Pride had only like 5 or 6 HW title fights ever.
Nog vs Herring
Nog Vs Fedor x3
Fedor vs Mirko
Fedor vs Hunt

I agree that Pride was better, but their belts meant less within their promotion.

 

[qw3rty]

HW: Pride > UFC
LHW: Pride > UFC
MW: UFC > Pride

 

[markg171]

Fedor fought 3 times as many fights in the same period of time as many UFC champs.

Dude, if you let Ngannou fight a bunch of random unranked bums he absolutely would go undefeated too that year.

For all the cans he fought, he fought twice as many top tier challengers

Yes, and the good fighters are all that matters. Of which after he became champ there was about 10 of them before Werdum submitted him, and that's being generous with the definition of good. It certainly wasn't 10 top 5 opponents/top contenders.

Which while indeed is impressive, isn't anything that we haven't seen before. Anderson, GSP, Jones, MM, Aldo have all done that or more, just without the cans and much higher ranked opponents. Even guys like Khabib and Usman aren't far off (I'd say they're at 7 good opponents presently), let alone some of the random contenders on massive streaks in the UFC like Leon Edwards of all people who could seemingly easily keep this going.

He beat many UFC champs before they came over and won their titles. This conversation is a tired shill argument

Unless I'm misremembering somebody, he only ever beat UFC champions after they'd already LOST their titles, many years afterwards, barring Sylvia who was still 16 months removed from being champ. None were ever prior unless you want to include Nog's interim title even though he literally fought in a UFC HW tourney to decide their undisputed champion that Brock won, not Nog.

It doesn't sound like a tired shill argument at all, but rather misrepresented fandom myths you guys just regurgitate.

 

[Oldman1]

Pride belts are no more valuable than a burger King hat

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

Exactly.
IIrc, Pride had only like 5 or 6 HW title fights ever.
Nog vs Herring
Nog Vs Fedor x3
Fedor vs Mirko
Fedor vs Hunt

I agree that Pride was better, but their belts meant less within their promotion.

That isn't what TS is asking. TS isn't asking which promotion valued their own belts more he is asking which belt is more prestigious. How could the UFC belt be more prestigious if the Pride belt holder was always ranked higher?

 

[djacobox372]

Well, for Hendo he came over and defended both of those belts in the UFC against the equivalent UFC champion and the UFC champion beat him both times.

It should be noted that both of those "UFC" champions were Pride dropouts who earned title shots in the UFC based on their Pride experience.

 

[NoBiasJustMMA]

HW: Pride > UFC
LHW: Pride > UFC
MW: UFC > Pride

That last one is only true after Anderson won the MW belt Hendo was ranked over Franklin.

 

[kellier]

Exactly. Price didn't put much stock in their belts. Tournament wins and being #1 mattered far more than belts. Several pride champs even lost and kept their belt

Sure Hendo was coming off a loss at 185 from Misaki going into the unification fight with Silva

 

[Fedor>Cain]

Well, for Hendo he came over and defended both of those belts in the UFC against the equivalent UFC champion and the UFC champion beat him both times.

Yea and Eddie Alvarez came from bellator and won the UFC belt. That doesn't make his bellator belt more prestigious than his UFC belt lol

He do lost to rampage who is a pride guy. And he lost to one of the GOATS in Silva. No shame in that.

Hendo is probably the best win of Silva's career. Silva was beating up rich Franklin and bums like Chris leben lol. MW sucked balls in the UFC at the beginning of Silva's run.

 

[markg171]

That isn't what TS is asking. TS isn't asking which promotion valued their own belts more he is asking which belt is more prestigious. How could the UFC belt be more prestigious if the Pride belt holder was always ranked higher?

It sure as shit seemed more prestigious when the UFC champs beat the Pride champ 2x in the only ever Pride vs UFC champion bouts.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

Silva was beating up rich Franklin and bums like Chris leben lol.

Leben beat up his fair share of Silvas though.

 

[Sweater of AV]

It sure as shit seemed more prestigious when the UFC champs beat the Pride champ 2x in the only ever Pride vs UFC champion bouts.

You should look a bit deeper into what fighters were involved in those fights.

If you want to go even deeper....

 

[markg171]

You should look a bit deeper into what fighters were involved in those fights.

If you want to go even deeper....

Yeah, and neither were champs in Pride were they?

It's almost like they were better fighters by the time they were in the UFC...

 

[Sweater of AV]

Yeah, and neither were champs in Pride were they?

It's almost like they were better fighters by the time they were in the UFC...

Yeah Rampage wasn't quite good enough to be champ in Pride but handled Chuck like a child. Prime vs prime we all saw what happened.

It's almost like your head is shoved up your ass and you don't want to remove it.

 

[CerebralKnievel]

Well, for Hendo he came over and defended both of those belts in the UFC against the equivalent UFC champion and the UFC champion beat him both times.

Rampage was a Pride import as well, though. Chuck had simply already lost to him.

 

[Bobby Boulders]

LW PRIDE belt was more prestigious too, at that time.

 

[BFoe]

Lmfao at saying it's incorrect to say that Henderson's belts were inferior when he literally lost both belts to his counterparts in Pride/UFC unification bouts

Like Jesus Christ man. They literally competed and the UFC won.

But in this case, the 2 “UFC guys” were actually PRIDE guys, were they not? Rampage and Anderson. So I don’t know that means a whole lot as far as this topic goes.
The fact that they both came from PRIDE and became UFC champs would speak to PRIDE’s superiority.

 

[wrestlefan]

PRIDE fighters of that era definitely have a better record vs the UFC fighters of that era.