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.

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!

PUMPED about NYE?!?!?!

So the New Years Eve MMA scene in Japan went from being about as exciting as watching men’s figure skating to as awesome as inhaling TNT whilst boning Lucy Liu during an earthquake with two tiny crocodiles nibbling on your nipples.

First, K1’s Dynamite spectacular.

We are going to see Rani Yahya against Yamamoto Kid. Kid showed in his last fight that he can be really pushed by a strong and skilled, elite-level BJJer. Yahya may not be as strong as Bibiano Fernandes, but his BJJ is world-class (as Joe Rogan would say in between frowning at Mike Goldberg’s overenthusiastic use of the word “teep”). Kid is always exciting, so this should be a fantastic fight.

We are going to see Sakuraba against Funaki. Putting aside the fact that these two guys combined ages probably reaches over 100, this is going to be awesome. Two absolute legends, and they both like a bit of the old grapple grapple, so it should be a chessmatch between two greats. Here’s hoping it’s not a fly-swatting match between two pensioners, or a yawn-inducing snooze fest a-la Gracie Sakuraba II.

Then there’s the rumours of Kharitonov, Minowaman, Tokoro, and Melvin Manhoef (last spotted ripping the heads off babies and skewering them on his penis) all competing which pretty much make this a can’t miss.

Second, the revival of Pride… or is it? A quick glance at the website ( http://www.yarennoka.com/ )reveals that Pride’s Japanese web designer clearly wasn’t out of a job for long… I also hear that Sato Daisuke will be involved. He’s the one who made all the majorly pump-tastic introduction clips for the Japanese broadcasts of Pride… I compiled a couple here.  Basically, everyone who was involved in Pride is involved in this special event. Yarennoka means “Can’t we do it?!” and was one of Antonio Inoki’s catchphrases. His others being the equally as inventive “ONE TWO THREE DAAAAAAAAAAH” and its derivate, “DAAAAAAAAAAAAA” (while slapping you in the face.)

Basically a bunch of the Japanese MMA scene’s bigwigs got together ( Monte Cox (CEO of M-1 Global), Shigeru Saeki (DEEP) and Sadaharu Tanigawa (FEG)) and decided to make a totally awesome MMA spectacular, and a shitload of cash for themselves. They all claim this is a farewell to Pride, rather than a revival. Takada is on board… you may remember him from such disasters as “Man with a nappy on bangs a huge drum for ten minutes”. Takada said he’d only get involved with Yarennoka if he could get Gomi on the card. Well that didn’t happen, but still…

We are going to see Shinya Aoki against Gesias Cavalcante. This has got Japanese MMA fans salivating harder than Gabe Ruediger in a Mister Donut. Can Aoki’s high-flying submission style beat the ape-like strength and aggression of “JZ Calvan”? (Hint: no. Aoki will take too much punishment trying to reverse boston crab JZ’s earlobes.)

Then there is the strong possibility of Fedor fighting the Techno Goliath, Choi Hong Man. While I am disappointed that such a great man has been reduced to a comedy match worthy of a K-1 main event, I am also pretty pumped to see Fedor pummelerizing the be-tumoured one’s rather large head into a giant Korean flavoured pancake. Other rumoured competitors include Mitsuhiro Ishida, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Kazuo Misaki, Joachim Hansen, Luiz Azeredo, Ricardo Arona, Gilbert Melendez, Aleksander Emelianenko, Mark Hunt… basically, it is going to be sweeeeeeeet as.

I’m pretty pumpalised about the whole thing, really.

If you’d like to keep up with Japanese MMA news, I recommend the following sites. Bookmark them if you haven’t already!

http://nightmareofbattle.wordpress.com/
http://sukimma.blogspot.com/
http://www.fightopinion.com/

Fantastic Pictures

honeyee.com ｜Web Magazine「ハニカム」h._Archives/Blog＞Susumu Nagao_blog

Click on the link to see some recently updated pictures on the blog of Susumu Nagao, one of the best MMA photographers ever.

Rickson and Royler demo.

From an early Pride, here’s Rickson and Royler showing off some smooth moves.

Oh, did you hear? Rickson is back! Possibly. My money is on K1 throwing huge amounts of money at him to fight Masakatsu Funaki, a Japanese legend also coincidentally coming out of retirement, in a rematch of their 2000 clash that sent Japanese fans into slobbering fits of excitement.

Two new videos I made.

Please note, these are not as good as they could be. I kind of get bored waiting to convert video files into zillion gigasplog editable files and searching through them and blah blah blah. I hope to improve as time goes on.

First is a brief vid abut introducing “the heroes”, people who fight for K1 hereos. It occurs to me that folks in the West don’t get exposed to it at all, with it not being on PPV or on TV. Apart from the naughty internet downloaders.

This one also falls short of what I wanted to make, but you might enjoy it. It’s about “falling” and has that awesome quote from that president guy about dust stained faces and arenas and stuff. Damn that quote is long, though.

Enjoy!