As far as matchmaking goes, I wouldn't go as far as saying that UFC pampers their fighters, but I would say that Pride offers better matchups... It seems to me like in its haste to control mainstream MMA in the US, the UFC has simply overlooked providing quality over quantity... I can't argue that the acquisition of the WFA will undoubtedly offer a great contribution to the UFC's current roster: Rampage, Herring, Lindland, Machida (?), Eastman, and whatever other fighters the UFC has brokered contracts with since the dissolving of the WFA will serve as great competition for the several top-tier UFC fighters that have, IMO, gotten too "comfortable" in the UFC... However, without a wide selection of competitors in each weight class in the UFC, we're going to keep seeing long-reigning champions who consistently fight cans, in fights that might as well be non-title matchups...
Now let's take a look at Pride... As most people would agree, Pride has a great talent pool, (although they
could still stand to bring in more new fighters than they do) which consistently makes for interesting and exciting matchups... Pride also offers great inter-division fights, pitting fighters of different weight classes against each other, which keeps things very interesting... Although the fighter with the obvious weight disadvantage chooses whether they want knees/soccer kicks to a downed opponent to be allowed, (when one fighter outweighs another by a certain amount) these matches prevent us from getting an overload of fights we've already seen before; you won't
normally see a fight at a Pride PPV, only to see the rematch two PPV's later... In the end, it seems like Pride offers more of what they think the fans want to see, while UFC seems to keep putting together no-name undercards, (which have a tendency to out-do the main events...
) with one or two main event fights...
So, in short, no, it isn't just you...
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