DREAM update…

The next two DREAM events are looking good.

 JZ Calvan will be rematching Shinya Aoki which is good news for all the fans including me who really wanted to see how the fight would play out. That will be on the April 29 card, which is not far away at all!

 

In May, the next round of the lightweight GP will get underway, with Kaoru Uno stepping in against Mitsuhiro Ishida in what should be a classic battle between strength and technique, and Joachim Hansen taking on the rising star Eddie Alvarez, who basically pwntZeriosed Andre Dida in the first round. Hansen vs. Alvarez will be guaranteed fireworks, as will Buscape vs. Kawajiri.

All in all, some pretty solid fights and definitely a spring / summer to look forward to!

ELBOW 2 NECK IS OUCH

A nice gif of the illegal blows that prematurely ended the main event at DREAM 1 on Saturday night and caused an entire nation of MMA fans to let out a simultaneous howl of disappointment.

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.

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/