Current UFC champs.....
- Thread starter Dagestanaev
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there were hardly any champs in Pride and they defended their belts just as often as UFC fighters do now. They FOUGHT more often but the title wasn't on the line in many of those fights, including a time when Silva lost to Arona but Arona obviously wasn't awarded the belt. Gomi lost to Aurelio AND Nick Diaz and his belt wasn't on the line.
It's easier to take a fight if you get to keep your title, obviously.
Let's not romanticize Pride as a promotion that was about champions because it wasn't. UFC is FAR more focused on championship stuff.
It's weird people try to have their cake and eat it too with Pride. They try to say Pride was awesome because it was a freak show, attraction, entertainment first based promotion, but you also get strange post like this that try to make it seem like it was about being the best or whatever and UFC is pure WWE - when Pride was nothing like that and was more pro-wrestling oriented than current UFC is (it's lineage is literally from wrestling).
I guess like anything people try to make older stuff have every positive quality they can have. Like 1/3rd or 1/4th of the relatively few title fights they had in Pride didn't actually feature a real "#1" contender. Sakura rematches, post prime Mark Coleman, 5-2 Mark Hunt (with a gift win over Wanderlei Silva),
It's easier to take a fight if you get to keep your title, obviously.
Let's not romanticize Pride as a promotion that was about champions because it wasn't. UFC is FAR more focused on championship stuff.
It's weird people try to have their cake and eat it too with Pride. They try to say Pride was awesome because it was a freak show, attraction, entertainment first based promotion, but you also get strange post like this that try to make it seem like it was about being the best or whatever and UFC is pure WWE - when Pride was nothing like that and was more pro-wrestling oriented than current UFC is (it's lineage is literally from wrestling).
I guess like anything people try to make older stuff have every positive quality they can have. Like 1/3rd or 1/4th of the relatively few title fights they had in Pride didn't actually feature a real "#1" contender. Sakura rematches, post prime Mark Coleman, 5-2 Mark Hunt (with a gift win over Wanderlei Silva),
