Time to give the boys a free history lesson, as it appears that there is a lot of new Conor era UFC fans who don't know mma history.
Let's be clear, between 2000 and 2006, Pride FC was the premier mma organisation and UFC was not even close to being on the same level. That is why Dana White was trying to co-promote with Pride, so he could build UFC brand. In 2003, he took UFC's biggest star Chuck Liddell to compete in Pride Final Conflict, eventually losing to Rampage Jackson (Rampage mauled him with brutal body shots ground and pound). Dana White who was watching ride side in Tokyo, was almost in tears as he knew the UFC was in debt to the tune of tens of millions and his biggest star was dominated really bad. The corner threw in the towel to stop the violence. To date, it's probably one of the most brutal fights I've witnessed.
Pride FC was the premier product with massive production shows backed by DSE and heavily funded by Fuji and other investors. They use to do a massive pre-show event before each show and it was amazing to watch. The fights would pull huge numbers, Pride shockwave 2002 for example had over 70,000 people in attendance. At the time UFC would have around 5000-10,000 people attending per show. Big difference. The fighters were also getting paid much bigger amounts this has been confirmed by many fighters who fought in both promotions.
UFC was very close to folding with over 40m in debt and in 2005 they survived as they got a big break from TUF1. This is what saved the UFC. If they had not got the Spike deal, I doubt the UFC would have continued. UFC managed to clear their debts as the TV show fueled the PPV shows.
Few years later in 2007, Pride folded because of the yakuza scandal leading to Fuji to pull out of the TV deal, this left Pride FC in a tough spot and they sold the company to the UFC for 70 million. At the time, Fedor was the man. He was the face of mma. UFC fighters were trying to leave the UFC to get a fight with Fedor, Randy Couture and Dana had a massive battle over it. Randy wanted to leave the UFC to go fight Fedor, and Dana took legal action against Randy to stop it. Ex UFC champs Sylvia and Arlovski both went to Affliction to fight Fedor, both were KO'd.
Ok, so what happened next? In 2009 Fedor went to Strikeforce because he got a better deal with Strikeforce, it's as simple as that. Fedor talked about how Dana lied about the numbers that he came out with in public, 30m for 6 fights or whatever Dana said at the time was not true. Fedor even said that M1 co-promotion was not a requirement, but they just needed a deal that was competitive with Strikeforce and it never came.
In any case, Strikeforce had the better HW roster anyway. Strikeforce had Overeem, Barnett, Cormier, Werdum, Bigfoot, Arlovski and many others.. UFC had Lesnar, Mir, Carwin, and Velasquez.
Fedor was essentially undefeated with 31 wins with only one loss (cut which was stopped by doctor in a fight he later avenged) from 2000 - 2009 was completely unheard of at the time. Fedor was very small heavyweight but completely outclassed his opponents with his technique. This is why he was and is considered the GOAT. At the time, he had like 6 wins against former UFC champions (Today it's 9 UFC champions). So if Fedor was fighting cans, were the 6 UFC champions a bunch of cans? Ok so the UFC had a bunch of cans as champions, got it. See the flaw in your logic Conor era UFC fan boys?
Now, let's go back to Pride. I have no idea where this narrative has come from where people think that the competition in Japan was easier. I've compiled a list of Pride FC fighters, I'm sure I missed a whole heap of fighters.. but I'm just trying to make a point here that Pride had the superior fighters in the early and mid 2000s. All the big names were signed to Pride, not UFC. The UFC only surpassed Pride when it folded in 2007.
So, it's safe to say that heavyweights who stayed with the UFC were ducking Fedor by fighting easier competition in the UFC. The list below of Pride fighters is much better than the UFC had at the time.
Pride FC fighters:
Alexander Emelianenko
Alistair Overeem
Anderson Silva*
Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira
Chuck Liddell*
Dan Henderson
Don Frye
Fabrício Werdum
Fedor Emelianenko
Gary Goodridge
Gegard Mousasi
Gilbert Yvel
Hayato Sakurai
Heath Herring
Hector Lombard
Igor Vovchanchyn
James Thompson
Josh Barnett*
Josh Thomson*
Kazushi Sakuraba
Kazuyuki Fujita
Ken Shamrock*
Kevin Randleman*
Mark Coleman
Mark Hunt
Mark Kerr
Mauricio Rua
Melvin Manhoef
Mirko Filipović
Murilo Rua
Paulo Filho
Quinton Jackson
Ricardo Arona
Renato Sobral
Ricco Rodriguez*
Robbie Lawler*
Royce Gracie*
Semmy Schilt
Sergei Kharitonov
Shinya Aoki
Takanori Gomi
Valentijn Overeem
Vitor Belfort*
Wanderlei Silva
* Had fights in both UFC and Pride between 2000 - 2006.
