Maybe I'm off the mark here, but other than the actually commercial products visible, I see the UFC as more of the pure fight. Pride had these elaborate entrances, they stood the fighters up way too quickly, and could tell that the crowd influenced the judging (not that that doesn't happen everywhere).
I am certainly not a UFC apologist, but I like the actual action inside the UFC than in Pride. Of course that has to do with the fighters aswell. Pride has / had more strikers that can roll; while UFC has more GnP / BJJ guys that have good strikes. So its a mixed bag.
The reasons that Pride and the UFC rose to the forefront was the commercial success. Have you ever seen the commercials Rampage, Sakuraba, and others have done in Japan? Those commercials were contracted through Pride.
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