Why did PRIDE sign Phil Baroni?

[JaredExtreme]

I just watched Total Elimination 2005 and was surprised to learn PRIDE signed Phil Baroni to some kind of contract. Does anyone know why?

[vadrip]

Well, supposedly because of his appeal being from the UFC and his bad boy image, Pride and Japan tend to be more concerned with spectale than sport because they're not picking because of his fight record.

[shadowkiller]

See isnt it sorta the other way around? UFC is sorta about the spectacle, almost pro wresting without the fakeness. I always thought pride had better fighters. But Pride does seem to be a much bigger sporting event whenever broadcast, saitama super arena is pretty big!!

[vadrip]

No, the UFC matches fighters pretty well, in Pride they'll have an over the hill prowrestler with no experience fighting someone with well over 20 fights. Have you seen some of these guys fighting in Pride like Matsui, Shoji,Giant Silva, Ogawa,Takada & others they have no business in a ring.

Pride will have a lot tomato can fights for just the spectale of it, they also like to match fighters up with huge weight disparties like someone 185 fighting someone 230 pounds. The weight classes definitely don't always apply in Pride. I remember a 200 pound Tamura fighting a 400 pound Sapp, I mean come on.

[shadowkiller]

But you forget to mention the good fighters. Silva, Sakuraba, Cro cop, Vitor, Takashi just to name a few, They definitley have some of the bigger names.

[SamuraiGuy]

Lidell, Couture, Ortiz, Belfort..... bigger names????

IMO UFC is better.... never really liked teh whole ... ring thing, reminds me of boxing too much.. although there have been some amazing fights in both organizations.... Cro Cop and Silva need to come to UFC.

[crazyjoe380]

This past ufc was better then pride but pride was very techincal this time around..

[shadowkiller]

Vitor fights for both organizations. My opinion has always been that pride had better fights and fighters. Though I think I have seen more UFC.

But I would still watch k-1 before both.

[THT]

Baroni

He was signed because he Knocks people TFO. Which is always a fun way to end a fight for the fans.