UFC President Dana White told Sun Media’s Scrapyard he is not ruling out a return for the Pride Fighting Championships.

He said, “You never know, anything is possible. I don’t want to say the Pride name is dead. It’s still a strong powerful brand. But the reality is that us running Pride in Japan, that completely fell apart.”

Pride FC was founded October 1997 in Japan. The organization was home to some of the world’s top fighters, including Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Mirko Cro Cop, and Anderson Silva. After running into financial problems, the promotion was sold in March 2007 to Zuffa, LLC, parent entity of the UFC.

Since the purchase, no Pride events have been held. Many of the fighters were brought into the UFC, while others fledged to different promotions. Most notably, Emelianenko, arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter, opted not to sign with the organization.

With the large library of Pride fights under their ownership, the UFC created a Best of Pride FC series, which recently began airing on Spike TV.

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