In a recent quote in the Houston Chronicle UFC President Dana White suggests that the UFC may opt to dissolve PRIDE. Here’s the quote:

“It’s a possibility,” White said. “There’s a lot of different things we could do right now. That is definitely one of the possibilities.”

When the UFC originally announced its intentions to purchase PRIDE it seemed as though they would continue to run the organization as a separate entity primarily in Japan. However, after the sale was confirmed at UFC 71 the sale the UFC seemed to realize that the PRIDE business was not run exactly as they had hoped and reforming the MMA organization may not be as easy as they had hoped.

According to the report (and the recent surge of PRIDE fighters signing with the UFC) it seems highly likely that the UFC will ultimately decide to dissolve PRIDE moving its top talent to the UFC while lower talent will likely join Zuffa-owned World Extreme Cagefighting. Of course all of these scenarios are dependent upon the lawsuits fighters filed regarding the transfer of their contracts to the new organization being resolved.

At this point the status of PRIDE is up in the air but I think if we continue to see more top PRIDE talent signing with the UFC then we will have confirmation that the PRIDE organization is in fact being dissolved and incorporated into the UFC.