With year-end shows right and left, it is no surprise there is a plethora of Global MMA action for us to enjoy in these last days of 2007. The most apparent and most anticipated of these year-end shows are without a doubt UFC 79: Nemesis and Yarrenoka!! 2007. This month alone, 10 days, we’ve had a stellar close to the Cage Force Tournaments, the TUF Finale and Cage Rage 24, which on paper seemed to be great competitive and entertaining cards. Of course, we as MMA aficionados expect this month to be one of the busiest and most action packed of the year along with September.

With daily announcements on confirmed matches for Yarrenoka!! and the UFC hype machine working at full blast, our mouthes salivate and truly anticipate the end of this year expecting a great end to this wild, chaotic, and fun MMA year. We expect and anticipate most major MMA promoters to go all out and try to end the year in a great and productive way but FEG (Fighting and Entertainment Group) is drowning in the shallow end of a large MMA pool. Sadly, a usual delicacy in our yearly MMA diet, K-1’s Dynamite!! has proven this year to be spoiled left overs.

With the end of the highly anticipated and very disappointing K-1 World Grand Prix Finals just one day ago, FEG must hurry and scramble to try to secure a decent card in less than 20 days. Can they do it?

Personally, I believe it is very obvious that this show will come and go without a whisper or a bang. Of the 6 confirmed matches thus far, 3 MMA and 3 Kickboxing, only 1 really serves to be competitive and really having some sort of implications about the future of these fighters. The rest seem to fall into the category of more for entertainment. I’m not calling them “freak show” fights by any means but they don’t necessarily serve to move fighters up and down rankings and only a couple of true competitors can emerge from this. These match-ups seem very entertaining but fall way to the side when compared to Chuck vs. Wanderlei or Aoki vs. Calvancanti.

-Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Masakatsu Funaki

- Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto vs. Rani Yahya

-Sergei Kharitonov vs. “Might Mo” Siala Siliga

-Melvin Manhoef, Denis Kang, and Makoto Takimoto are all rumoured.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the Sakuraba match-up. I think it’s great that they paired him up with somebody about his general age and I’m glad he’s fighting on New Years. It has become customary for us to see Sakuraba on New Years. He’s fought every New Years since 2003 minus 2004 when he was slated to meet Wanderlei Silva for a 4th time but was forced to pull out due to an injury and he was later replaced by Mark Hunt.

He’s kept incredibly active this year with beating Yurij Kiselov in rather easy fashion in his comeback after the Akiyama fight at Hero’s 8. The Gracie Hunter did manage to accumulate a loss to Royce Gracie at the disastrous K-1 Dynamite!! USA show in Los Angeles but after it was discovered that Gracie tested 25 times higher than the permitted I feel Sakuraba gets a free pass. Most importantly though, at the Hero’s Middleweight Tournament finals he managed to beat the incredibly energetic and weird, Katsuyori Shibata, a Funaki student. Not just beat, but beat down. He even used open palm strikes to the outclassed Shibata as a way to send a message to Funaki. He then challenged a disgruntled Funaki as Funaki walked away from the ring with his beaten student.

I think this match is very attention getting not only due to the fact that it is Sakuraba himself but also to the fact that he’s fighting Funaki or some other person who had big contributions in the early days of MMA. Also, I’m curious to see if Funaki has really let the game pass him by.

Another HUGE reason I believe this card is taking such an enormous hit is because of the pimping that FEG is doing. Fighters like Gesias “JZ” Calvancanti, 2 time K-1 Hero’s Middleweight Grand Prix Champion, and supposedly Yoshihiro Akiyama, K-1 Hero’s LightHeavyweight Grand Prix Champion are supposedly on loan to the Yarrenoka!! show. JZ has already been confirmed and Akiyama looks slated to fight PRIDE’s 2006 Welterweight Grand Prix Champion, Kazuo Misaki. These 2 men are some of the best fighters in the world and they’re loaning them out not really thinking of how great their show will end up. Sure, Zuffa is also involved in their own pimping with Rickson Gracie student Rani Yahya, a former WEC 135 lbs. contender, who is set to meet up with one of the most athletic and gifted fighters in the world, Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto.

I will admit that if for some reason FEG were to secure a fight between Denis Kang and Melvin Manhoef that it would certainly draw much more attention due to the fact that Manhoef is a known fighter, who most people view as one the most entertaining fighters in the sport and also to see what shape Kang will come back in after his not so surprising KO from the hands of the controversial Akiyama.

To get to the top FEG will need to be able to draw and attract people to their shows. With the void that PRIDE left in Japan maybe they believe that they would be winners by default but it’s proving to actually hurt their product and give them maybe a false sense of security in a PRIDEless Japan. I’m confident that they have the ability to secure some of the best talent in the world but the way things are going they don’t really seem to get the picture.

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