I heard a clip of music today. It was just being used as background on some stupid TikTok but it instantly took me back to the most amazing era in the history of MMA.
Oh, dear Glob I miss the Pride FC!
Just entering one those matches was grounds for a mental competency hearing. It was like the WWE without the script. There were grudge fights with fifty years of international history behind them. The Yakuza was in it up to their tattooed eyeballs and clans had to be seated in separate parts of the Tokyo Dome. A fighter could fight for an insane 90 minutes and then have a SECOND bout that very night. There were fights with special rules that allowed no limit to the number of rounds. There was no testing for steroids and mass monsters would climb into the ring to deliver blows that were illegal in every other sanctioned martial arts event in the world; soccer kicks, stomps, and knees to guys that were already on the mat, even full body slams to the head were all perfectly legal. You had a feeling that there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that any given fight would end in victory by manslaughter. There were freakshow fights where 400-pound behemoths would pitted against fly-weight fighters.
Championships where the pride of nations was at stake took place there and fighters would walk out to fireworks. There was Rickson Gracie finally having it out with Nobohiko Tanaka the pride of Japan and mopping the floor with him. Japan’s honor would be restored three years later when a clearly bored looking Kazushi Sakuraba would use UFC champion Royce Gracie as his fidget toy for an hour and half.
This was Pride FC’s theme. Just hearing it lowers your IQ by 20 points, raises your T-count by 400 and makes you want to run up to Brock Lesner to punch him in the junk, then Stuka a flaming Maserati into an empty pool. It’s music to make terrible life choices by and was purest gear fueled Generation X.
The Dark Herald 