Worlds Collide: The Birth of PRIDE FC

How Two Men From Very Different Backgrounds Helped Launch a Martial Arts Revolution

Hello! Remember me? It’s been a minute since my last post. For that, I apologize profusely. But, as you’ll see below, my absence has been for a good reason—I have a new project cooking. And I wanted to tell you all about it.

For years we joked “PRIDE Never Die.” And for a time, even as I wrote a 20-year retrospective for its aging fandom, that felt true.

Today, not so much. Seventeen years after the promotion’s last event, it has never felt less connected to the contemporary MMA scene.

The passage of time (and the UFC’s slow corporatization of what was once an outlaw sport) have succeeded in whittling away the part of audience that loved the shenanigans and mystery that defined PRIDE. In its place is something homogenized and bland, a factory built pseudo-sport with fighters mostly learning the same techniques and combining them in nearly identical cookie-cutter styles. It’s a counter-culture, grass-roots phenomenon with all the edges sanded down, a fight sport and fandom populated mostly be people who would be aghast at the idea of getting into a fight in their real lives.

Modern MMA would have been entirely foreign to the men who cut a path through the detritus of the traditional martial arts, intent on separating what worked from what didn’t, pioneers willing to step in a squared circle without a clear idea of what or who they might find staring back at them a mere 10 feet away.

No, friends, PRIDE is now firmly a vestige of the past, prime for both reanalysis and, more importantly, fact-gathering and reportage. Before we can know why it mattered, we first must understand what happened and how it all went down. For many, especially in the West, this isn’t as clear-cut as you’d expect. PRIDE operated in the deep grays, an underworld promotion that sometimes tread heavily over the line between reality and fiction. Quite often there were two PRIDEs, the one for the primary audience in Japan and another targeting the growing audience in North America and the UK.

PRIDE was a promotion built to highlight aging pro wrestlers who once cosplayed as real fighters—and, truly, it never quite deviated from that mission. But, along the way, it also managed to cultivate and feature the best fighters from around the globe, an all-star collection of the planet’s most dangerous misfits and martial savants. The result was something remarkable, a clash of styles and cultures that always felt on the verge of chaos, prize fights where seeing was not always believing.

The protagonists were generally Japanese wrestlers (and later martial artists), local heroes facing steep odds, first against the stoic Samurai mastery of the Gracie Clan and later against whirling buzzsaws like Wanderlei Silva or preternaturally calm destruction machines like the “Last Emperor” Fedor Emelianenko. This was a promotion that contained multitudes, both underdog wrestlers proving their courage and the world’s greatest martial artists, all coalescing, however uncomfortably, under the same banner.

Others have attempted to capture the majesty and stunning spectacle—unfortunately, they only saw glimpses of one PRIDE, never understanding there was a different version playing in front of millions in Japan long before it ever reached the shelves of an FYE or Suncoast in DVD form. My goal, here, is to help make that right, to write a PRIDE book that, well, I can be proud of, one that recognizes both the complexity and the grandeur that made it so special.

Did I bury the lede here?

That’s right, I’m officially announcing a follow-up to my book detailing the life of MMA pioneer Ken Shamrock. It’s the first part of a duology, a pair of books documenting both the incredible rise and tumultuous fall of PRIDE FC.

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I’d originally committed to a single (likely gargantuan) book with the grandiose idea of cramming the whole story into one volume. But, the truth is, the tale is too vast for that, spanning decades and continents—and that’s before Nobuhiko Takada and Rickson Gracie ever step into the ring for that famous first fight.

Both fighters in the main event of PRIDE 1 come from long legacies of warriors, followers of martial paths others paved before them.

Inoki vs Olympic gold medalist Willem Ruska

This is the story of Antonio Inoki, a professional wrestler looking for a way to distinguish himself from his competitor Giant Baba—and finding it in “martial arts” matches with Olympians and boxing stars.

Of Satoru “Tiger Mask” Sayama, who was intent on taking what Inoki had created to new, extreme levels, rejecting fame and fortune as a masked wrestling star to focus his attention on a new system of fighting he held firmly in his mind and his heart.

Of Akira Maeda, the strapping future star who rejected authority and conventional wrestling mores, creating a cult-like following in the process, shoot kicking and fighting his way to infamy. No one benefitted more from the energy he brought to pro wrestling than his protege, Nobuhiko Takada.

It’s also the tale of Mitsuya Maeda, a globe-trotting grappler who brought his wrestling-infused Judo to Brazil where he taught a rich man’s sons the gentle art—one they transformed into a brutal and unstoppable fighting art.

Carlos and Helio Gracie

Of Helio Gracie, who forged a legacy through toil and blood, a scrappy fighter willing to test his skills and defend his values, both on the street and in stadiums in front of adoring masses.

Of Royce, Rickson, Renzo and Royler, the Gracie brothers who used their father’s techniques to literally reinvent martial arts around the globe, conquering America and Japan in short order. Rickson, by all accounts the strongest, wasn’t selected to defend the family’s name when the stakes were highest. That stunning choice sent him packing to Japan, where a different destiny awaited.

These two disparate worlds colliding created PRIDE, with Takada as the central character for three years. His was a journey to redeem his honor—but also the honor and reputation of professional wrestling. The Gracies became the noble opposition, respected measuring sticks against which to test your own prowess and courage.

But something funny happened along the way. Fans, who had come initially to cheer Takada, fell in love with a sport, transferring that energy seamlessly to both new foreign standard bearers and new heroes. By the time Mark Coleman won the greatest tournament in mixed martial arts history, the foundation was set for a promotion suddenly expanding its target range— with America solidly in the crosshairs.

That’s a story for another time.

This upcoming book is all about Rickson, Takada and the worlds that birthed them, a conflict decades in the making. We’ll start with them, then go backwards to see how they came to be on that stage, looking across the ring at each other.

That first event was an audacious beginning, one followed almost immediately by missteps and stumbles. We’ll see how PRIDE managed to avoid a complete wipeout, then watch with amazement as the promotion reemerged, its foundations stronger and better prepared for all that was to come.

Mark Coleman

All the greats of the day were there—the American wrestlers Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman, battling demons every bit as fierce as their opponents. Igor Vovchanchyn, the diminutive two-fisted Ukranian brawler who struck fear in the hearts of all. Enson Inoue, the Hawaiian-born Japanese star searching for a home. Royce Gracie, the little brother with big shoes to fill. And Kazushi Sakuraba, the devilish imp who chain-smoked and drank his way to glory, the redeemer who rescued the reputation of his beloved pro wrestling.

In some ways this is a familiar story. But I hope to infuse it with new research and original interviews, bringing a shadowy world into the light as best I can. The goal here is simple—to preserve the legacy of the sport’s foundational figures, yanking the history of this incredible promotion out of the hands of the UFC, where it is destined to always be presented as “less than.”

Make no mistake—in its time, PRIDE was by far the biggest, boldest and most successful mixed martial arts promotion in the world.

Bar none.

It deserves a proper history. I intend to provide it. I hope you’ll join me.

Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.