Recently in PRIDE Category

You can never have too many Pride highlight videos, this one brought to you by Jerod Phillips of Tap or Sleep fightwear.

Shogun looks to be back in form, healed from his surgery. He won't have it easy with Coleman, even if he is 44, at UFC 93 on Jan. 17. In case you don't know, these two guys have a history ... here's the lesson - Rua-Coleman I in Pride:

An extended look at Nogueira-Mir, Griffin-Evans and Silva-Jackson.

from ufc.com:
Live From the O2-Dublin - Saturday, January 17, 2009

Las Vegas, NV (USA) - The world's most exciting sport returns to the Emerald Isle as the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®) organization opens up 2009 with the star-powered UFC 93 card at the O2-Dublin in Dublin, Ireland on January 17, 2009.

In the light heavyweight main event, former two-division world champion Dan Henderson will collide with former UFC middleweight king Rich Franklin in three-round war which will set the tone for the 205lbs division in 2009.

Then, 2005 PRIDE® Grand Prix Champion Mauricio "Shogun" Rua returns to the Octagon™ to throw down with UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman in a rematch MMA fans thought they would never see. The pair last met in Japan in 2006, with the legendary Coleman pulling off a stunning upset by breaking Rua's arm in the first round.

Here's the video of the Rua-Coleman fight in PRIDE and the aftermath. As I remember it, Rua breaks his arm early in the fight when Coleman goes for a take down. Coleman either doesn't realize it or doesn't care and keeps after Rua with the ref trying to intervene.

Chute Boxe members, including Wanderlei Silva, hit the ring, as do members of Hammer House, Coleman's team. Phil Baroni takes down Silva, who ends up getting Coleman's shoe on his throat. Coleman is charged up after the fight but later tries to apologize. Chute Boxe has nothing of it. Silva's so mad, he wants to take on Coleman, Baroni and Rampage Jackson at the same time.

Chrles "Krazy Horse" Bennett has gotten a lot of mileage out of the story that he brawled with members of Brzil's Chute Boxe academy at a PRIDE show several years ago. Finally, video of the incident has surfaced. The video cuts off at the end, with Bennett waking up and then falling back to sleep. Hard to imagine he got up and knocked out Wanderlei, but I guess we'll never know.

Here's Bennett's account, from mmaweekly:
MMAWeekly: Let's talk about that. You bring that up. There was an interesting post on a lot of the forums saying you got into a battle with the Chute Boxe guys. What happened with that?

Bennett: Nothing much. They just jumped me. A bunch of little bitches.

MMAWeekly: When did this happen? Was it at the show?

Bennett: This was at the last (show), this was at the New Year's show.

MMAWeekly: So what went down?

Bennett: Um. They were pretty disappointed that their training techniques didn't work for the guy that I was fighting. You know? I made him look like shit when I beat him up. He tried some of that Chute Boxe shit, but it's bullshit. All that shit is bullshit.

MMAWeekly: So you go backstage, and what happens backstage?

Bennett: I got called out in the ring after I beat the dude. One of the dudes that was training with him gets into the ring and he was like, me and you are next. You know me. I don't look for any trouble. I was more like, Okay, whatever you say, but right now I won my fight. I'm going to have a good time. Then I go to the back in the locker room, and that's where the whole Chute Boxe team was at. Then, you know, this and that happened. I won't go into further details, but if you read the post you already know.

MMAWeekly: This is what I read. Somebody from Chute Boxe choked you out. Somebody was kicking you down and then, rumor has it, you got up and you knocked out Wanderlei Silva.

I found this on dailymotion.com and although I don't advocate street fights, I couldn't help but be impressed by this guy - elbow to the head, head-butt and finally, kick to the face while the guy is down, a la PRIDE rules. Bas Rutten would be proud!

World Victory Road's Sengoku, Japan's other major MMA organization (in addition to DREAM) has some major news.
First, this from nightmareofbattle.com:

The SENGOKU Middleweight GP which starts at SENGOKU V on September 28th is taking shape. Four participants have been announced and there are some great names in there. The four participants are Kazuhiro Nakamura who signs with SENGOKU and drops to Middleweight, SHOOTO Light Heavyweight Champion Siyar Bahadurzada who returns to the ring for the first time since his loss against Kazuo Misaki at SENGOKU I, 2007 Strikeforce Middlweight Tournament winner Jorge Santiago, and Evangelista Cyborg from Chute Boxe. The winner of this GP will probably face Kazuo Misaki in the first ever SENGOKU Middleweight Title fight.

Update: It will be an 8-man GP and they want three of the four final participants to be Japanese. The semifinals and final fights will take place in November.

and from bloodyelbow.com:

Frank Trigg joined BloodyElbow.com editor Luke Thomas on today's episode of "MMA Nation" and revealed that Fox Sports Net (FSN) is "working diligently" on a deal which would bring World Victory Road's "Sengoku" events to the American cable network.

Trigg cited the forthcoming deal as a major factor in his signing with the Japanese promotion, since a basic cable broadcast would provide more exposure for his Triggonomics apparel line than WVR's currently Japan-only pay-per-view showings. Trigg is set to face Makoto Takimoto - a world class judoka who took gold at the 2000 Olympics and currently holds a 4-4 record in MMA - at the fourth Sengoku event on August 24th.

Ryo Chonan beat Anderson Silva in PRIDE with a flying scissor heel hook. Hear what he has to say about that in this short, but hilarious clip.