For fans who go back to the MMA’s so-called Dark Ages, Pride FC was a life raft in which to keep the spirit of the sport afloat. Pride was doing big shows in Japan for a decade, creating myths, turning regional figures into folklores, importing the biggest names from around the globe to its stages and exacerbating the spectator experience. Pride was pyrotechnics and million-watt bombast. It was anticipation and Lenne Hardt’s blood-curdling shrieks. There was Wanderlei Silva and Fedor Emelianenko and Cro Cop and Sakuraba, soccer kicks and brutality, the quiet awe of the Japanese fan base.
Ten years after Pride FC’s final show, Nobuyuki Sakakibara looks back on what was, what is, and what could have been
