Dana White Reveals how he took down PRIDE.

[J]

During the recent press tour for UFC 87: Seek and Destroy Dana White was asked about the UFC's deal with Mirko "Cro Cop" in 2007. The following was his response:

“Fifty times we thought it was over and we were buying PRIDE, then we hear they were talking to these guys and these guys and kept string us along. So when Mirko Cro Cop’s deal came up, we went after Mirko aggressively, signed him, and that really started to unravel PRIDE. He was really tight with them, so once we were able to take him away, all the other fighters started talking to us too. And that was basically the last nail in the coffin for those guys. It was really a business move to buy PRIDE. That’s why we signed Cro Cop.

“It wasn’t like we brought Cro Cop in and thought he was going to take over the heavyweight division or anything. I think that’s what the fans thought �" the hardcore fans who really knew a lot about PRIDE �" but it was a business move to kill PRIDE.â€￾

I seriously laughed a little bit when I read this. When the UFC signed Cro Cop he was the number three heavyweight in the world behind Fedor Emelianenko and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Too say that they didn't think Cro Cop wasn't going to come in and clean out the heavyweight division is bullshit.

Before the Gabe Gonzaga fight, it was being pegged that the winner of that fight would take on Randy Couture for the title. Everyone completely wrote Gonazaga off and it was expected that Mirko would dispose of him quickly and the UFC Marketing machine would focus on a summer money showdown between Mirko and Couture, but Gonzagas foot had other plans, knocking out the 2006 Pride Open Weight Grand Prix winner, and that was basically the end of "Cro Cop" in the UFC (his balls took on Cheick Kongo's knees in a later fight but this was the one that got into his head). Couture/Gonzaga was not the money fight the UFC was hoping for, not by a long shot and to say it was a plan to kill Pride is basically saying they didn't want a top three heavyweight, they wanted to shut down their competition.

I was on the conference call with Dana and Mirko promoting the fight and Dana praised up Cro Cop like the next best thing since sliced bread. So looking back now I'm sure he regrets the decision he made to give Mirko a ton of money but to say they didn't expect him to clean out the heavyweight division is just being naive. Sure it may have been a buisness move, and a smart one at that, but don't take credit away from Cro Cop to make yourself look better for signing a bad deal that he didn't perform up too expectations in.

Credit-MMANews.com

Not going to go on and say how smart of a man Dana is. Cause we all already know. I mean they guy revived a dying company and has brought it to a level it would have never achieved without him.

As for how he took down PRIDE pretty damn smart. Cro Cop was pretty much the last thing they had left. So taking him out of the picture at PRIDE pretty much finished the company off.

 

[Charismatic Edge]

Sounds like Vince McMahon doesn't it? It's ok this time. I didn't care for Pride because of the 10 minute first round. Fighters were out of gas and fights plodded along.

 

[xtremebadass]

As much as Dana thinks he is doing everything different, like being a private company with no partners, he is a huge business man.

BTW, Pride sucked, all Dana had to do was snatch Cro Cop and then it hit rock bottom. For the record, did I mention Pride sucked? It did.

 

[J]

Pride may not have been the best organized company. But it did help to give some big and semi big MMA Fighters there start.

 

[Charismatic Edge]

^^Yeah, you really have to give Pride a little credit. So many have come out of there as big time fighters. Henderson, Jackson, even Chuck Liddell fought there for a while. It's not a total loss.