This was Pride 21: Demolition, and if the name conjures images of some incredibly violent video game, then the people behind it are doing their jobs. It's billed as lawless, gladiatorial combat pitting highly trained martial artists from around the world against each other, and satiating the bloodlust of millions-in fact, if you believe the hype, the only thing it's missing is Jean-Claude Van Damme and that Chinese guy with the boobs from Bloodsport.
Lacking a legitimate ranking system and featuring fighters regarded more for their entertainment value than their win-loss records, Pride is a bizarre hybrid of professional wrestling and Ultimate Fighting Championship. With this, the twenty-first installment, the producers of the fist-fest are looking to cross the Pacific, bringing their forgotten brand of good ol'-fashioned fisticuffs to the U.S. But will it fall victim to the curse of "Ultimate Fighting Dullness?" For those in the dark, let's consider your typical UFC bout:
Ding ding.
Two hulking men square off at center ring, frantically bobbing, shuffling and waiting for that first punch to be thrown. The mounting tension is so thick you could crack it with Bob Costas' hair. The two fire furiously toward one another, topple unceremoniously to the mat... and lay anticlimactically on top of each other. For fifteen minutes.
Ding fucking ding.
It's tedious, dull, and hardly the "no holds barred" test of toughness it promises. But Pride strives to be different. And yet, even here, just how different depends on who you talk to.
Take Gary Goodridge, a Trinidadian fighter who parlayed a professional arm-wrestling career (he actually appears in the Stallone flick Over the Top) into a gig battling kickboxers and pugilists. To hear him describe it, Pride is the next best thing to bare-knuckle street brawling. "You can use everything," he explains. "Very little rules. No biting, no eye-gouging-that's it." Taking a distinctly contradictory view is one Don "The Predator" Frye, whose bout against the aforementioned Yoshihiro Takayama was the closest thing to the evening's main event. A self-proclaimed "Jurassic fighter," his take definitely harks to "back in the day" nostalgia. "Originally, when I [started fighting] in '96," he recalls, "[the UFC] was called 'No Holds Barred' because there were only two rules: no biting and no eye-gouging... Now [Pride] calls it ‘mixed martial arts' to be more politically correct. And they added a bunch of rules." (What new rules? Check out the official list on Pride's web site).
In Pride 21, Goodridge faced flabby grappler Labazanov Akhmed from Dagestan (near Kerbleckistan) in a bout best categorized as boring. Akhmed and Goodridge floundered about the mat like two seals playing Twister, until it was determined that Goodridge had won. We're still not sure what the basis for this decision was, we were just happy it was over.
Still, some might argue that a fight like that was considerably better than the event's opening match, which saw walking solar eclipse Bob Sapp (a former NFL offensive lineman who, at 6'3", 400 lbs., looks like he should have been fighting Mothra, not some trifling human) take on relatively puny Kiyoshi Tamura. Three punches, eleven seconds, game over; Sapp never even broke a sweat. Or the match between Brazilian kickboxer Anderson Silva and American Alex Steibling that would also end in mere seconds after Silva's shin unfastened an enormous gash across Steibling's forehead. Sound exciting? It was, actually. But those two were mere blips in the four-plus hours of wrestling entertedium.
Then The Predator arrived.
Scowling like a teamster with heat rash, Frye entered the ring amid a chorus of explosions and cheers. Forget positioning, forget technique, and forget mercy-Frye grabbed Takayama by the scruff of his neck and held his face in place for an unrelenting series of punishing punches. Standing toe-to-toe, Frye pummeled Takayama until he possessed features in only the most technical sense.
And... we... loved... it.
This is what we wanted to see-a fight that, minus the ring girls and pyrotechnics-could have taken place in a parking lot or barroom. Frye may have complained about the constraints placed on him, but when it came go time, he threw everything out the window-and at Takayama.
For that brief match (the fight was called by Takayama's doctor), we realized what Pride, and, by extension, what the UFC, wants to be. But whether or not it gets there is up to the promoters, rulemakers, and, to a lesser extent, the fighters. True "no holds barred" fighting may be as ancient as the trident, but faced with the increasingly theatrical WWE, there's a lot to be said for a hearty knuckle-feeding. We only hope Frye isn't the last of a dying breed.
By Eric Alt
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