I see the appeal of Pride's style and certainly can recognize how awesome it was at its best, but my first impression of Pride, after becoming accustomed to a WEC/UFC style of MMA was that it had more of a pro wrestling flavor to it.
There are plenty of solid reasons to criticize the UFC, but it is amazing to see Pride held up as a paragon when it is often an even worse example of the very things the UFC is being criticized for.
You are correct that there was a pro wrestling flavour to Pride and that is one of the main reasons for the deeply held passion of its fans, a pretty large number of them were pro wrestling fans already.
Whether or not there is good reason to be disillusioned with Pride due to their Yakuza connections and what not, the point is the passion was there first so it's not easy to dispel it. With the UFC, there's none of that, really. The passion was not built in to the fanbase already before it became evident there's a lot to be concerned about with how the UFC does business.
Pride captured long time fan's imagination in the MMA age of innocence. In hindsight there were a lot more problems than were evident at the time. Today every move the UFC makes is heavily scrutinized by many of those same fans. I think this is probably a good thing, but it makes it inevitable that many of them will be dissatisfied.
I think there is still a lot of passion in MMA, but the old timers call it hype.
I disagree. For some there is no passion; it has been replaced by hype. Not the same thing. If it were, you wouldn't see everyone and their dog jumping on and off bandwagons all day on here.
Neil Magny loses 1 fight - Sherdog thread: Magny hype gone in the blink of an eye like it never existed. 1 fight, as though he doesn't have the opportunity to fight again and do better.
One of the biggest issues the UFC has in terms of the way they market fights is that, unlike Pride, where they would have non-title matches for fun and tournaments with all their top guys and when people lost it was not as much of a concern; that is, keeping your record intact was not a priority; everyone (except Fedor) lost at one point or another and it just wasn't as big of a deal as it is now.
In today's UFC, despite DFW protesting many years ago that this is What is Wrong with Boxing Today™, keeping that fight record as clean as possible is of the utmost importance. One loss can set you back for ages. When Pettis came in to the UFC from the WEC and lost to Guida (ugh, now there was some ugly lay'n pray GSP haters), it took over 2 years for him to work his way back to a title shot.
This kind of thing does not engender a lot of faith from the fans that their favorite fighters are going to have the opportunities they deserve, but worse than that, you get some guys who are unwilling to risk the Pettis treatment and just sit out waiting for their title fight. If the UFC was as willing as Pride to schedule these fun fights that had not effect on ranking or future opportunity, this wouldn't be as much of a problem but I don't think there is any way to do that nowadays given the culture the UFC has created.
