The Bottom Line: 25 Years Ago This Day

It was 25 years ago today that Pride Fighting Championships, one of the two most influential organizations in MMA history, ran its first event. For years Pride was the gold standard in MMA, both for its major-league presentation and for the most talented roster of fighters during a period when the Ultimate Fighting Championship was still recovering from a concerted effort to destroy the company—and the sport—in the United States.

To this day, what drove Pride FC’s popularity is misunderstood in many circles. It’s sometimes asserted that Pride rose up because Rickson Gracie was a major star to the Japanese public or that the glory days of the promotion were driven by the popularity of Fedor…