Major honours
Opened by Rudimar Fedrigo in Curitiba in 1978, Chute Boxe is the oldest gym on this list and the team that most fully embodied the violent aesthetic of the PRIDE era. Built on a Muay Thai foundation, it pushed everything the Japanese rule set of the time allowed to its extreme: knees and elbows in the clinch, soccer kicks and stomps on a grounded opponent. Wanderlei Silva captured the PRIDE middleweight title in 2001 and held it for more than five years, becoming the most feared man in the sport, while Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua won the 2005 PRIDE Grand Prix before adding the UFC light heavyweight title in 2010. Anderson Silva spent his early career here, and Cris Cyborg also started out in Curitiba before collecting featherweight belts across four organizations. Coach Rafael Cordeiro later moved to California and founded Kings MMA.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The feud between Curitiba's Chute Boxe and Rio's Brazilian Top Team spilled beyond the PRIDE ring into brawls at Brazilian domestic events, and it split Brazilian MMA into two camps for much of the early 2000s.