UFC and PRIDE: Another Vegas Wedding

This past year The NFL’s Monday Night Football joined in matrimony with ESPN severing ties with ABC. Looks like there’s a new marriage in the sports world between UFC and PRIDE fighting.

UFC President, Dana White compares MMA events on TV to football games stating “As long as there is entertaining action, there can't be too much exposure.” Time will tell if this statement holds true, personally I think it’s a little far fetched, but then again I just started liking football about two years ago! We don’t know what the future holds with the marriage of PRIDE fighting with the UFC but were at least guaranteed some big marquee fights in the next few months.

“The reason for acquiring Pride is that while there are a lot of other (mixed martial arts companies) out there at the end of the day, the ones that matter are UFC and Pride."

According to a poll on www.fightopinion.com 66% of voters thought that PRIDE fighting would be the league to survive the longest. Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta are hoping that the public proves right. It was just six years ago that the Fertitta brothers bought highly criticized UFC. Once the sport was moved to Sin City, the Fertitta brothers began transforming the sport once called "human cockfighting" into a sport with rapid global success not to mention major moneymaking power. Many question why the brothers purchased a rival ultimate fighting-type series when they already have one…especially with a reported $65 million price tag. Lorenzo Fertitta was quoted as saying:

“The reason for acquiring Pride is that while there are a lot of other (mixed martial arts companies) out there at the end of the day, the ones that matter are UFC and Pride. Pride has some fighters under contract that our fan base wants to see fight against some of our champions and by acquiring Pride, that gives us the flexibility to put on some of these megabouts.”

I believe that this union will live happily ever after; the Fertitta brothers along with UFC Prez Dana White are doing everything in their power to NOT follow along in the footsteps of boxing. They hope to keep Pride fighting and UFC, keeping all the fights competitive, there will be no fighters with padded records, and although some of the fighters are 14-5, its only because its going to be all Top 10 UFC fighters battling it out. The crew is doing their best to make sure promoters don’t get their greedy paws on their new baby and they hope to market their fighters through free television graduating them into the Pay-Per-View world once they have a fan base.

And although ultimate fighting is often deemed as the “new boxing” the Fertitta brothers hope to turn this into a worldwide phenomenon, a sport that’s popular in all countries. They started off with a fight in the U.K. and they plan to expand to Ireland, Spain, Italy and Germany. Vegas will always be the entertainment capitol, especially when it comes to “new boxing” but the whole idea is to move the show around challenging themselves to grow the sport globally. The NFL and NASCAR cant get any bigger in the U.S., if they tried to sell their product to Asia, to Europe, to Mexico, people couldn't care less. MMA crosses all cultural boundaries, ethnicities and languages. You put two guys in the octagon using any type of martial arts to fight; everybody around the world gets it.

UFC is the largest pay-per-view provider in the world in 2006, it generated more tax revenue for the state of Nevada than any boxing promoter, had a bigger economic impact on the state of Nevada than any boxing promoter and now that this is a global expansion, you can only imagine how padded the Fertitta’s pockets are going to be!

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Destiney Bleu Lewis, Sports911.com

Originally published April 25, 2007 11:26 pm ET