I DREAMed about HEROES full of PRIDE…

Spoilers about the show follow.

Watched all those DREAM videos.

Watched all the videos in this post. Very enjoyable!

So, here are my thoughts.

• I’m not sure who this was made by, but it has the same feel as all the Pride pre-fight videos.
• There is a hell of a lot of talk about Fedor. Despite the fact that he is not a part of the organisation, they have no qualms about fighters like Cro Cop saying that he is probably the best fighter in the world right now. They show footage of Fedor’s fights, and his sambo escapades. I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t end up fighting for DREAM, after seeing these videos.
• It really is an absolute who’s who of MMA, apart from a handful of stars on the North American circuit. These videos truly got my pumped about the promotion. It all looks almost too good to be true… It seems that Pride the ship went down, but all the passengers survived and are now cruising on the good ship DREAM. There’s Cro Cop, Aoki, Calvan, Uno, Kid Yamamoto, Kawajiri, Akiyama, Sakuraba, Tokoro, and in fact Fedor’s name is directly mentioned along with the others, as if he already was a part of the promotion… I need to be careful, I’m getting a killboner in my brain just writing all these names in the same sentence.
• Aoki is being pushed as the great Japanese hope. He’s also got the mind of a pervy old Japanese businessman.
• Actually, the more I watch the videos in terms of production, the more I feel they have a stronger K-1 / Heroes influence than a Pride one. Although they were always very similar, I was reminded of the K-1 / Heroes TV broadcasts.
• Crusher Kawajiri is absolutely fucking ripped. I had no idea the guy was such a monster.
• Saturday night is alright for fighting.

What’s up

Went to judo on Wednesday. Fervently avoided anyone who looked big, strong, and had anything other than a brightly coloured belt. Look, I was exhausted, and judo is dangerous shit. It’s like jiu jitsu only it happens five feet in the air. If I make a mistake, I go crashing to the floor. And I suck at judo, so I make lots of mistakes. I’m taking it really slow in judo, which is fine by me. I want to pick up some basics first, and once I know I’m not going to break my neck by landing incorrectly then I’ll be regularly sparring with the strong black belts. Just not yet. Please.

This weekend is going to be wicked. I’m going to buy some nice cold beer (there are billions of different beers to choose from in Japan, and loads of them are seriously tasty), and I’m going to go to my inlaws house and watch DREAM 1 on a huge flatscreen TV.

DREAM is going to be sweet. It’s basically Pride, back from the dead and on primetime TV as if nothing had happened.

The main event is JZ Calvan against Aoki, which I am super pumped for. JZ Calvan is the all-round monster that dominated the last two Heroes tournaments, if I remember correctly. Shinya Aoki is the Paraestra-affiliated super-duper-ultra-grappling-whizz, who can simultaneously armbar your teeth off and heelhook your shins out. How they perform against each other will make for a truly fascinating match.

Shinya Aoki – Artist’s Rendering

JZ Calvan – Artist’s Rendering

 

There will also be Cro Cop against Random Japanese Tomato Can Junior. I hope that Cro Cop can get back to doing what he does best… kicking the wigs off random Japanese cans (or just people in general), spraying the audience (and your face) with buckets of blood.

Bob Sapp – Body of a Silverback, Heart of a Hampster

Bob Sapp… wrestling superstar, mixed martial arts legend, former NFL powerhouse, and… ah, who am I kidding.

Bob Sapp… a really, really big black guy whose head looks like a brain when it gets squeezed!

Elite XC recently paid a basquillon dollars for him to get his ass unceremoniously kicked by some random South African guy (probably). K1 literally falls over itself backwards to book him for their big events. And it looks like the new promotion DREAM is interested in him, too.

But why?

Zach over at Fight Opinion compares him to Kimbo Slice. I’d say that’s like comparing a slice of processed cheese to a sharpened, well oiled yellow chainsaw with rusty nails glued on the side in terms of killing/maiming power. They are both the same colour, but that’s about it. Sapp doesn’t even have a beard.

Bob Sapp is the biggest flop in MMA. He has absolutely no spirit. Watch! As he cries when he gets punched. Glare! As he gets knocked down and will do anything to prevent being stood up to continue fighting. Cringe! When the only fights he wins are against very tiny people!

Without further ado, I bring you… Bob Sapp…. Body of a Silverback, Heart of a Hampster.

Bob Sapp vs. Cro Cop

The beast’s strength begins to be “sapped” at about 5 minutes, when Cro Cop starts to land some strikes. Until that point, Sapp had survived mostly by breathing very heavily, bullrushing Cro Cop, and grabbing onto him and shoving him around a bit. Then the strange girly-steps-with-the-guard-up commences, as Sapp tries to inch his way towards Mirko without getting hit. A few seconds later, Cro Cop lands what looks suspiciously like a kick and then a punch. Well, somebody should have told Bob Sapp what this K1 lark was all about because he crumples in surprise and then sits down, whimpering, on the floor where he stays for a while, trying to figure out why the nasty white man is trying to hurt him. (As a side note, Mirko is about as pumped as I’ve ever seen him winning that fight…)

Bob Sapp vs. Peter Aerts

More vintage Sapp. The big man takes on the Dutch Lumberjack, a man who seems to get harder with age. This is a very special Sapp moment. There’s a huge build up. Aerts’ home crowd is P-U-M-P-E-D. The fighters glare at each other. Sapp’s got this glaring business down, I tell you. The match starts. Bob throws all semblance of a gameplan out the window and does his customary over-excited autistic elephant smash brainfart. Aerts falls over, and Sapp returns to his corner, ready for another run. He crashes in, goes for the double leg takedown (not always the best idea in a kickboxing match), and then calls it quits. That’s it, fight over. After a few replays, I realise that Aerts did somewhat graze Sapp’s gigantic chest with his knobbly little knees. The Beast lies on the floor, gasping and crying as per usual, waiting until his count is almost up, then makes a show of attempting to stand up, all the while dreaming of the large paycheck from K1 that he’s going to cash just for falling on the floor. Awesome.

Bob Sapp vs. Cyril Abidi

Here’s Bobby wining the only way he knows how… by fighting a smaller guy, and by cheating horribly! He fights Abidi, everybody’s favourite smelly French kickboxer (as christened by Rampage Jackson), and basically gorilla pounds the back of his head and neck with giant, clubbing blows until Abidi’s balance is so impaired–possibly permanently–he can barely stand. Abidi never gets knocked out, by the way… ever. Where most people fall down, Abidi gets KO’d but stays standing. His brain just goes on holiday out his ear. Like the way owls can sleep on branches and not fall off, that’s Cyril.

Bob Sapp vs. Kazuyuki Fujita

Worst nightmare for the Wet Blanket… someone nearly his size, who actually has some skill! Gasp! Groan! Ironhead makes short work of Weird Brain Head. Enjoy!

Bob Sapp vs. Jan Nortje

From this last weekend. Same old same old… Sapp rushes at his opponent. Everything is going swimmingly until his Nortje throws, and lands, a punch. The Giant follows that up with a few more tasty wallops that old Brain Head eats directly in the face. As he crumbles to the floor in a shower of wasted Elite XC dollars, his leg buckles slightly. The ref calls the fight. Sapp protests, strongly enough to save some face (LOL) but weakly enough that the ref doesn’t actually listen to him. Sapp later blames the loss of the fight on his hamstring giving out. That’s a little like blaming a car accident on the dog that came and took a dump on the smoking, twisted wreckage of your car after you’ve smashed it. In otherwords, completely irrelevant.
Here’s to you, Bob. Take those suckers for every penny you can!