Hughes and Sanchez Won’t Compete in PRIDE Lightweight GP

Hughes and Sanchez Won’t Compete in PRIDE Lightweight GP

UFC fighters Matt Hughes and Diego Sanchez will not compete in the PRIDE Fighting Championships Lightweight Grand Prix tournament this year, according to UFC president Dana White.

In fact, no UFC fighters will compete in the 16-man tournament.
White made the announcement during yesterday’s conference call with media. (That chat with the media has produced a number of headlines in the past 24 hours.)

During the past couple weeks, the two UFC welterweights’ names became attached to the tournament, largely because their images appeared on a promotional flyer and on PRIDE’s Web site. However, the timing didn’t seem to work; Hughes is expected to get a title shot with current welterweight champion Matt Serra in September, and Sanchez is currently recuperating from surgery following a staph infection.

Even with the tournament’s delayed start — Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, the organization’s incoming owners, recently moved the first round of the tournament from May 20 to July 16 — Hughes and Sanchez wouldn’t seem to be available.

Even if they were, White said he wouldn’t want them competing. Instead, his vision of an “MMA SuperBowl” would be the first time UFC and PRIDE fighters compete in the same event.

A cross-promotion event of that type could happen as soon as this year, he recently stated.

As of now, rumored fighters for the Grand Prix event include Shinya Aoki, Marcos Aurelio, Luiz Azeredo, Luiz Firmino, Takanori Gomi, Joachim Hansen, Mitsuhiro Ishida, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Gilbert Melendez and Hayato Sakurai. Pancrase veteran Satoru Kitaoka earned an automatic bid into the tournament by winning a DEEP tournament on Friday.

White stated that the organization still doesn’t know if the tournament will take place at 155 pounds or at 170 pounds.

Then it's gomi for the win yet again.

Im going with Hayato Sakurai he is a bad man!

This is just plain stupid. They should do everything they can to get some popular UFC guys in this tourney. It would be a great way to get UFC fans into Pride right away. I know a lot of people who watch UFC stuff but know sh!t about Pride. This would give them more incentive to watch and give them someone familiar to root for.

DennisN wrote:

This is just plain stupid. They should do everything they can to get some popular UFC guys in this tourney. It would be a great way to get UFC fans into Pride right away. I know a lot of people who watch UFC stuff but know sh!t about Pride. This would give them more incentive to watch and give them someone familiar to root for.

True indeed. Too many people are ignorant of Pride's Existance. If hughes was a part of the GP and somebody like Gomi KO'd him people would pay much more attention to Pride

JoeDaddy wrote:

I think they want to keep them apart until the yearend superbowl! They will fight but it should be the best of the best!

I understand the reasoning but I think they should have something asap which combines Pride and UFC fighters.