toro

mauricio "shogun" rua, my GOAT!!!!

its impossible to view the posters from this era of MMA and not immediately draw comparisons to the putrid generative slop the modern UFC insists on shoveling their billionaire backed budget into. these posters were explosive and alluring and nonsensical in a human way, in the same way the sport it hoped to advertise was.

pride 8 was pride fc in full effect, littered with youthful future monoliths of the sport such as wanderlei silva and mark coleman in the preliminary matches and pre established legends like royler gracie and igor vovchanchyn. this event also marked the beginning of kazushi sakuraba's run as "the gracie hunter". his match with royler gracie manifested echoes of masahiko kimura vs helio gracie, both long, grueling, hard fought matches that ended in a gyaku ude-garami (double wrist lock which became known as the kimura lock because of the legendary application of kimura himself). this match went on for a sweltering 23 minutes where gracie kept himself to the ground in an attempt to lure sakuraba into a grappling scramble in which he would've applied his world renowned brazilian jiu-jitsu to submit the japanese fighter. instead, gracie spent most of the fight with his back on the mat, motioning for sakuraba to come grapple with him, and subsequently getting his legs chopped by sakuraba's brutal leg kicks.

this left gracie's legs visually bruised and battered, along with his body language suggesting nothing but pain and discomfort, corroborated by his refusal / inability to stand the longer the fight went on. the gracies were very technically proficient, but their stubbornness was what landed them in mma history. eventually, sakuraba got him in the kimura lock, but royler didn't tap, just as his predecessor had done almost half a century prior. instead of breaking his arm, as masahiko kimura had done to royler's father, the ref simply called it off, which was touted as controversial by the gracies (there was no way royler was getting out of that lock without breaking his arm but that's just My professional opinion)

its really hard to truly verbalize how rough this fight felt. sakuraba's leg kicks are monstrous and audible, sharply reverberated through the tokyo venue against the audience's droning cheers. it also doesn't put into perspective how fucking long this fight went on for. you should watch it on youtube if you can spare the 25 minutes (or skip to the end to catch how long sakuraba held onto that kimura lock for :P)

bonus: ukrainian kickboxer igor vovchanchyn putting on a terrifying car crash level knockout against francisco bueno. much shorter display of dominance that can somewhat be contained in a gif. this fight was less than a minute 30 and ended up being bueno's last fight in pride.