I'm as much a fan of PRIDE as the next guy, but I'm not letting its dazzling spectacles and postmortem romanticism blind me from seeing the shady shit that's thousand times worse than in the UFC.
The UFC front man acting like a child? Big fucking deal, the other guy were in league with the Yakuza.
Underserved UFC title shots? Shit, PRIDE doesn't even need it to be a title match!
UFC fighters getting caught with steroid? Ha! Steroids was an essential part of the complete PRIDE breakfast!
For virtually any bad thing one can say about the UFC, there's a far worse example in PRIDE. And yes, that includes the so-called "hype", with an army of tomato cans and bought fighters on the payroll to serve that purpose.
PRIDE was awesome, largely because we were a bunch of innocent, wide-eye kids who enjoyed their pro wrestling-inspired antics/brutality/spectacle, while completely clueless about the shady shit happening behind the scene.
Yes, I was passionate about PRIDE. Just like I was passionate about the World Wrestling Federation.
Both Pride and the UFC clearly targeted pro wrestling fanbases, the differences between them do I'd say reflect the differences in pro wrestling in Japan and the US.
Pro wrestling in Japan whilst it had some WWE style presentation and sideshow "entertainment" had really always been focused on big fights that were mostly played pretty seriously with fairly down to earth action. That ment there wasn't really a stigma around it when it came to older fans so Pride didn't need to distance itself from that kind of presentation it just needed to shift from "realistic" fights to "real" fights.
In the US though you had a very different situation, pro wrestling had evolved in something based around much more cartoonish characters and fueds that was generally aimed at a younger audience. That left an opening for the UFC to be "grown up pro wrestling" with a somewhat more legit presentation a bit closer to boxing aimed at people who'd outgrown the WWE. Still though that ex WWE fanbase loved there fueds and were generally very easily led so whilst the sporting aspects is real the presentation/booking operates in a fashion not too dissimilar to the WWE building fueds and controlling as much of the promotion as possible.
What people forget as well is that in terms of western fans most of that Pride presentnation never made it to us, PPV's and DVD's weren't entire 7-8 hour shows they were mostly condensed fights with 8-9 covered in 3 hours, pure MMA goodness.
A lack of AC's was definitely a weakness in Pride when it came to medicals whilst whilst they seemed to happen weren't independent. In terms of PEDs I think its only very recently the UFC is getting close to serious and its not too long ago from a time were certain fighters(mostly big name americans) were allowed to use steroids. Generally I think there has been a hell of a lot more PED use in the past 7-8 years in the UFC than there was in Pride where it was likely limited to a handful of well known examples, guys with massive muscles for their frames have been much more common in the UFC.
In terms of judging/reffing I think the buck always stopping with Pride was good in some ways because it ment there wasn't any chance of using an AC as a scapegoat. If a decision favoured a big Pride name they would get called out on it, if the same happens in the UFC its just put down to poor judging. Plus of course these days the UFC are actually hiring a lot of the judges and refs themselves outside the US just like Pride, much of the fanbase don't seem to have picked up on that though.
Its the same with judging criteria, Pride's was MUCH clearer than the UFC's is today because it needed something more concrete to point to when matches like Nog/Ricco happened.
