when the pride guys came in and beat the good ol farm boys of the ufc
former champ. had the best TUF fight with Bonner....and Silva goes up and shows him some chute box. and Silva is OLDER than Forest
This isn't true, Silva came to the UFC when PRIDE was alive and well. He's not part of the group that came to PRIDE after the dissolution of that organization (Cro Cop, Shogun, Henderson, Wanderlei, Rampage, Nogeira, Sokoudjou, ). I know he fought in PRIDE, but he was fighting in England (Cage Rage) for around a whole year before he came to the UFC in 2006.
Rampage and Henderson obviously did really well as soon as they were signed, but the other fighters, notably Wandy, Shogun and Cro Cop fell WELL short of expectations when they came to the UFC. Don't front like Forrest Griffin didn't tap out Shogun and Gabriel Gonzaga didn't destroy Cro Cop. Cro Cop initially washed out of the UFC after losing to Cheick Kongo and Wanderlei had decidedly mixed results in his UFC run. Some of them eventually found their way, but most of the PRIDE guys bombed in 2007 against extremely high expectations. It was so bad, people at the time were saying the PRIDE guys were entirely a product of the lack of drug testing overseas (that's bullshyt because the UFC drug testing was a joke back then, and the reality is 80% of guys in any org including UFC were on some shyt back then).