So what exactly am I getting at? PRIDE, the MMA leader in the Land of the Rising Sun, appears to be here to stay in America. And if the February card at T&M is going to be as excellent as I heard it might be, the UFC will have to start reworking the magic that made it the leading mixed martial arts promoter in the Land of the Free.

Most hardcore MMA fans are torn between which of the two shows they prefer, as they are one in the same, yet night and day different. You have assuredly read the drivel on our forums about how PRIDE fighters would tear up the UFC's and vice versa, or the classic “UFC > PRIDE” and “PRIDE > UFC” threads.

That was all in good, friendly fun, as virtually every fight fan coveted the day that either PRIDE would invade America or the UFC would journey back to Japan.

Now those dreams are reality and from the most ardent MMA fan all the way down to the casual viewer, PRIDE's legitimate presence in America is better than people might first think.

Naturally Zuffa does not want PRIDE traipsing through their daisies and wants to keep DSE out of their own backyard. Like most corporations in America, the mentality is that competition is horrible and there must be complete totalitarian control over everything involved in said corporation's business.

But when someone with a rational mind actually looks at the factors of business — product marketing; supply versus demand; public interest; product quality; and the positive/negative aspect of a monopoly — corporate heads with ingenious business acumen deal with adversity/competition and actually thrive off of it.

Just look at Pepsi Cola against Coca Cola, General Mills opposed to Post or Miller versus Budweiser and you'll notice how well each respective company has succeeded typical expectations when faced with a legitimate challenge. In turn, both parties profited mightily from staunch competition.

I expect, after looking closely at various forms of history — both the world in general and in various factions of corporate America — that not only will PRIDE eventually thrive in the United States, it will cause the UFC to not only cater to fight fans' demands, they'll become larger than they are today.

The main goal as far as the media and fans are concerned is to have the two giants eventually work together on at least a somewhat regular basis to deliver the mega fights that have to be made.

Smaller promotions like King of the Cage, Cage Rage, Shooto, World Fighting Alliance, etc. will obviously not vanish, but they won't be able to compete with the big boys.

The IFL and WFA seem to be serious contenders, at least in America today, but the sad reality is that the vast majority of fight fans don't care about a team concept (IFL) or limited resources coupled with an obscure product virtually nobody knows about (WFA).

Promotions like the ones listed above would play the role of Diet Rite, RC Cola and super market brand cola compared to Coke (UFC) and Pepsi (PRIDE).

I wrote a few months back about how certain fighters and athletes have "it" and others don't, no matter how gifted they may be. The same can be said about the UFC and now PRIDE. The people who run PRIDE know what they are doing and over 10,000 paid attendees at Saturday's card is evidence enough of that.

Every single MMA card concocted in America since the UFC's almost mainstream explosion has failed miserably at the gates, save for the Strikeforce event featuring Frank Shamrock (Pictures), which still holds the record for the largest live attendance in North American for an MMA event.

K-1, the world's most successful fight organization in the world, can't draw more than a few thousand fans each time they come to the U.S. The resurrected WFA had a horrible live gate, as do each of the IFL cards. I won't even write about the crowds at the smaller shows, which, in reality, mainly serve as a farm system for the UFC and PRIDE. And even Strikeforce hasn't come close to matching their magic in March.

Saturday’s litmus test for PRIDE seems in quick retrospect to have been a riveting success, but the truth won't be revealed until the live gate revenue as well as the pay-per-view figures are uncovered.

The UFC, once Zuffa purchased it, took a few years to build itself into an empire. PRIDE will probably achieve the same success, but possibly in a shorter time period.

The ironic thing about this whole smorgasbord of fights is that if it wasn't for the UFC tearing up the fight game over the last two years, PRIDE wouldn't even be over here. And in due time it will be Zuffa's American dominance and popularity in the States that will have paved the way for PRIDE to become a major player on the American circuit, the Pepsi to Zuffa's Coke.