I was just thinking about talent scouting and star development in different orgs over the years and came up with a list of legendary fighters from each org. I know that there are some fighters who fought in both orgs so I just put those guys in the org that they had the most fights in. For example Wand had 11 fights in the UFC and 26 fights in Pride FC so I put him in the Pride FC category. Josh Barnett has an equal amount of fights in both orgs but since he was a champ in the UFC and started there I just listed him in the UFC.
Pride started in 1997 and was bought out by the UFC in 2007 and in just 10 years they were able to cultivate a very strong list of talent and legendary fighters.
-Fedor Emelianenko
-Kazushi Sakuraba
-Rickson Gracie
-Rampage Jackson
-Mirko CroCop
-Wanderlei Silva
-Rodrigo Nogueira
-Josh Barnett
-Mark Coleman
-Mark Kerr
-Sergei Kharitonov
-Fabricio Werdum
-Shogun Rua
-Dan Henderson
-Ricardo Arona
-Little Nogueira
-Igor Vovchanchyn
-Kevin Randleman
-Allistair Overeem
-Mark Hunt
-Takanori Gomi
-Gilbert Melendez
-Renzo Gracie
The UFC have been around since 1993 and in their 23 years have also developed some incredible stars and also have a strong list of legendary fighters.
-Jon Jones
-Anderson Silva
-Conor McGregor
-Georges St. Pierre
-Chuck Liddell
-Jose Aldo
-Demetrius Johnson
-Randy Couture
-Tito Ortiz
-Tim Sylvia
-Bas Rutten
-Andrei Arlovski
-Frank Mir
-Josh Barnett
-Royce Gracie
-BJ Penn
-Frankie Edgar
-Vitor Belfort
-Stipe Miocic
-Rich Franklin
-Forrest Griffin
-Nick Diaz
-Nate Diaz
-Robbie Lawler
When looking back you see that both orgs did an an amazing job of scouting talent and and developing stars but Pride had a lot less time on the map and were operating at a time before social media and mass information sharing which means that their methods of marketing and promoting fighters were far more primitive and not nearly as effective as UFCs methods are today which had to have made it a lot harder to develop star power. Pride had less time, less promotional/marketing power and less resources and still developed some amazing talent. I mean look at this pic from 2003.
High level fighters getting paid well to fight on the worlds biggest stage. Gotta give Pride FC props for cultivating such talent 15 years ago.
Who do you think has developed more legendary fighters??
Pride and it's talent is basically a product of Japanese pro wrestling promotions.
It all goes back to Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson, who trained together in old school catch wrestling, both went their different ways in the pro wrestling world and ultimately both of them ended up in Japan training pro wrestlers.
Gotch trained Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who trained Suzuki and Funaki, who recruited and trained Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Rutten, going on to found Pancrase. Robinson would train most of the UWFI wrestlers that would go on to become Pride.
Then I don't think a lot of modern fans really understand the influence that Rings had on Pride. Pride basically swallowed up Rings, took their best fighters(Fedor, Overeem, etc), stole their ideas, then put them out of business In 2002.
The guy who founded Rings, Akira Maeda is connected to Takada, Fujiwara, and Tiger Mask. Those four guys all came out of the same dojo and basically laid the groundwork for what MMA would become. Their bidding war over Rickson Gracie would basically shape the history of MMA.
If you take away pro wrestling's direct influence on MMA history, you take away Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Suzuki, Funaki, Frank Shamrock, Bas Rutten, Sakuraba, Takada, and Fedor, plus Pancrase, Pride, Rings, and Shooto never happens.
