PRIDE lightweight Takanori Gomi takes on Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett at Pride Bushido 5.

Bennett was bragging on BET’s Iron Ring show, saying that he doesnt even go into the gym and train for his fights.

I believe him, he sucks. The guy has ridiculuos natural talent, but just can’t stay out of jail long enough to get a ground game. Imagine the value a well trained, showman like KH could be for any promotion.

HT: Ultimate MMA Videos

According to Sports Navi, PRIDE FC veteran Mark Hunt has signed with the pro wrestling promotion “Hustle”. Hunt made an appearance on the Hustle Mania show last November, as a guest.

Hunt holds notable wins in PRIDE over Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Cro Cop.

It is likely Hunt could fight in K-1 or another MMA organization again, but for now it seems like Hunt is best suited for Pro Wrestling.

According to the Wrestling Observer, Pride FC Worldwide Holdings a company set up by the Fertittas to handle the sales of PRIDE, has filed suit against Dream Stage Entertainment, Dream Stage Holdings and their president Nobuyuki Sakakibara for defrauding them out of million of dollars over the purchase of PRIDE FC.

It is rumored that DSE did not have the copyright to a lot of footage of some of the major PRIDE events (Fuji TV produced may of the big shows in PRIDE).

Sherdog is also reporting that DSE president Nobyuki Sakakibara plans to sue the Fertittas over the firings of employees and closing up shop soon after the purchase.

Its official, Fedor Emelianenko will face the Korean giant Hong Man Choi at Yarennoka! on New Years Eve in Japan. Choi holds a 1-0 MMA record, but also holds a 12-4 K-1 kickboxing record, with notable wins over MightyMo, Gary Goodridge, and Bob Sapp.

The world’s number-one fighter in Fedor Emelianenko (26-1, 1 NC) will attempt to scale the 7-foot-2-inch, 360-pound wall known as Hong Man Choi (1-0-0) at Yarennoka! New Year’s Eve! on Dec. 31 at the Super Saitama Arena in Saitama, Japan.

The complete Yarennoka card will be broadcast Live on HDNet.

Fights Currently Confirmed

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Choi Hong-Man
Shin’ya Aoki vs. JZ Calvan
Mitsuhiro Ishida vs. Gilbert Melendez
Kazuo Misaki vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama
Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Luiz Azeredo
Hidehiko Hasegawa vs. Hayato “Mach” Sakurai

In a recent article on SI.com, David Epstein tried to convince the readers that PRIDE FC was overrated. While some big loses have been featured lately in the media, Epstein statements tells me that he is not an educated fan of the sport.

Many current fighters in the UFC were former Pride fighters. Pride was a breading ground for great fighters, for years many talented Japanese and Brazilian fighters graced the Pride rings in favor of the UFC. Epstien assumes the fact that Ramage is a UFC fighter not a Pride fighter. Jackson has fought most of his career in Pride, 17 promotions vs. 2 UFC promotions coming into UFC 75. Dan Henderson who really should be at middleweight, held his own for 5 rounds with Jackson, making the fight very competitive. UFC fighters Chuck Liddell and Marvin Eastman had early KO loses to Jackson. To say Pride was overrated just shows lack of knowledge of MMA by the “Main Stream Media”.

Since the popularity of The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC has transformed itself into the top promotion in the world. Drawing talent from all over the world as well as creating a new bread of young fighter. This new fighter is skilled in various disciplines, eats clean and can go hard the whole fight. This is a far cry from the old days of the UFC, where many fighters had beer belly’s and partied the week before the fight. They were brawlers, heavy handed tough, but lacked many of the skills the new MMA Fighter has.

Now that PRIDE is no more, we have started to see the PRIDE talent spread to the various promotions. MMA has become so competitive a lose by top fighter is expected. It is more about who doesn’t make a mistakes as opposed to who is more talented. In the end its more about the fighter and not the promotion

That’s what Zach Arnold over at Fight Opinion is saying and he has the proof right out of Dana Whites mouth. The article list some of reasons for the mishandling of Pride by Zuffa and backs it up with plenty quotes.

Even though he purchased PRIDE earlier this year, White insinuated the Japanese-based promotion is essentially history. White said the PRIDE brand was “tainted,” referring to the alleged mob involvement of its previous ownership group that cost the promotion its television outlet in Japan.

– Fox Sports

After days of speculation that Zuffa LLC would be breaking up Pride Fighting Championship, the Japaneses online newspaper Nikkan Sports is reporting that Pride FC is set to return on August 18th. The event will be held at the Saitama Super Arena, the same building that hosted so many past Pride events. The show is slated to be a Japanese fighter showcase featuring Hidehiko Yoshida. Zuffa LLC purchased Pride from DSE earlier this year, but not much has been mentioned on what they plan to do with the organization. Many of the big name fighters already came over to the UFC including, Dan Henderson, Mirko Cro Cop, Antionio Rodrigo Noguiera and Rampage Jackson.

According to a post UFC 71 press conference Dana White announced that the Zuffa’s acquisition of Pride has been finalized. Sherdog broke the story last week, but the UFC made it official.

We’re still trying to figure out this whole Pride and UFC thing. The deal is done. We acquired the company yesterday or the day before…. Talking about all the Pride stuff, we’re going to work on that stuff over the next [weeks] now that the deal is officially closed. You can’t start running a business when you don’t own it yet. We’ve owned it for two days. I know we made the big announcement [on March 27], but it might have been a little premature. The deal wasn’t done yet. The deal was pending, but we were far enough along where we felt comfortable announcing the deal. Now that it’s closed two days ago, we’ll get that straightened out

– MMAWeekly

According to Sherdog.com, the purchase of Pride FC by the Zuffa LLc has been finalized. The deal was supposed to close on May 1, but that day came and passed with no word. Sherdog was first to report on the original deal, so I am pretty confident that this rumor is indeed true.

However, two sources tell Sherdog.com that the deal has in fact been finalized

Earlier in the week reports of a class action lawsuit filed against Pride FC parent company Dream Stage Entertainment, on behalf of a number of Pride fighters surfaced. Dana White on Thursday denied all knowledge of the class action suit.

According to MMANEWS, who was in on the conference call with UFC president Dana White and Mirko CroCop, Dana confirmed and denied some big rumors floating around. Here is some of the major points as reported.

Key Points in Conference Call

• Pride will adopt the UFC Unified rules and weight classes.
• No UFC fighter will fight on Prides Lightweight Grand Prix.
• Dana White is pissed still at Tito Ortiz, not a surprise.
• As reported earlier, HBO deal signed.
• ESPN will cover UFC weigh in from now on
• Nogueira’s contract was up with Pride, so the UFC signed him last week. He is rumored to be facing Brandon Vera.