Pride-UFC update

UFC's purchase of Pride officially went through this past Thursday.

And in a smart move by Dana White, it looks like they are abandoning the Super Bowl-event idea and instead will focus on bringing in the Pride stars to the U.S. and getting them more involved with UFC. For example, he talked about finally making the Chuck Lidell-Wanderlei Silva match.

Very smart I think for 2 reasons:

a) For Pride to eventually succeed on its own, they have to lean on big brother first. Getting these guys exposure in UFC will get them some name recognition in the U.S. amongst the non-hardcore fans who know these guys already anyway.

b) The Lidell loss just shows you that anything can happen in UFC nowadays (very exciting when you think about it). The idea of building up to a big money match is out the window now and Dana realizes that. You get your money matches in as soon as possible as the nature of the beast now dictates the death of the old paradigm. Pro Wrestling can still do the long term build up to a huge money match because who wins and losses and how they win or lose is predetermined. A few years ago, you can say whoever wins in MMA was also "predetermined" in that the gulf between the top fighteres and the second tier was just enormous. Boxing is still that way - in the build up to a title fight, you throw tin cans out there at the big names. Ideally, somoene good enough to make the fight look good, but not good enough that he can hurt the guy they're building up or worst case scenario even beat him. Not anymore in MMA, specifically in UFC.

Side note time - Ironically, the ability to build up to a huge money match is the biggest advantage pro wrestling has over boxing and MMA, but they haven't done a great job of that in ages. Everything just seems rushed nowadays, thanks to the Monday Night Wars. I remember when I was a kid, the focus for the WWE (then the WWF) every year was Wrestlemania. The day after the Wrestlemania of that year, the build up begins for the Wrestlemania of the next year. The angles were laid into place and a slow burn would happen til about January or so when the hard sell for Wrestlemania would happen and the storylines to get you to that point are then set in motion, leading to the big payoff at Mania. Then, the process gets repeated again. Gone are the days though when you were teased a Macho Man Savage turn on Hogan for months. Or the Andre heel turn on Hogan that was just a shock for a then 11 year old ErwiNation. Or the Macho Man Savage-Steamboat injury angle that was did months before their Wrestlemania 3 match. Or the Owen Hart turn on his brother Bret that was being hinted at for months. The list goes on and on. Wrestling needs more long term planning again, even though they've done a better job of that lately. Hopefully they'll find their way again.