In typical Japanese promotion fashion, FEG has finally announced their full Lightweight Grand Prix matches. On the other hand, with only 5 days until the event a full card has not yet been finalized as the they have been unable to fully secure an opponent for Mirko Cro Cop and Ikuhisa Minowa. There are signs coming out of Japan indicating that Yoshihiro Nakao could step up to the plate. Takumi “Handlebars” Yano joked about the Yakuza may “abandon [Nakao] at the Sea of Tokyo”. Not too many people have seen Yano in action, sadly. He trains with Nakao and the guy is VERY unorthodox in everything and is a very fun fighter to watch. Anyways, the card looks alright at the moment. There is alot of kind of bad matches but I guess it makes the 2 round anticipation thicker.
Heiwa DREAM.1
- Shinya Aoki vs. Gesias “JZ” Calvancanti
- Tatsuya “Crusher” Kawajiri vs. Kultar “Black Mamba” Gill
- Kazuyuki Miyata vs. Luis “Buscape” Firmino
- Joachim “Hellboy” Hansen vs. Koutetsu Boku
- Mitsuhiro Ishida vs. Jung Bu-Kyung
- Katsuhiko Nagata vs. Artur Oumakhanov
- Andre Dida vs. Eddie Alvarez
Super Fight
- Hayato “Mach” Sakurai vs. Hidetaka Monma
The plan is to obviously have 10 fights with Cro Cop and Minowaman with unconfirmed opponents thus far. It’s very apparent that there are only 7 GP matches meaning only 14 fighter but due to the lack of fighters, supposedly Caol Uno and Vitor “Shaolin” Ribiero could have the fortune of being passed directly to the round of 8. Personally, I think everyone in the GP should fight. No bye-rounds unless you’re the Champion and even than it’s really iffy. Also, you have to remember that Takanori Gomi did manage to secure a win at Sengoku and I’m incredibly sure that World Victory Road might be willing to co-promote if it meant getting a bit more eyes on their product.
As for Sengoku, they had their inaugural 1st show on Wednesday and had a decent show and fights. One thing I will admit was that the introduction before the promo parade looked incredible and just beautiful. Overall, like I said a good night of fights and some mostly obvious outcomes. Nothing incredibly surprising came out of the fights and almost nothing really worth mentioning unless you’re talking about Siyar Bahadurzada. I was beyond impressed with him.
The biggest winner of the night was someone who lost. Siyar Bahadurzada definitely moved up a notch for me. Coming into the match I had speculation of how he would adjust to fighting on a bigger circuit against someone as tricky and tested as Misaki but he managed to stay in alot longer than I expected and also put up one heck of a fight. Also, something that should be noted because it’s truly bizarre. I was kind of thrown off when Misaki secured a Kimura in the 1st and it looked to me like the Referee’s where actually giving their backs so that Misaki had a stable surface to perform this because he was almost falling out of the ring. Am I the only one who noticed that? I could be wrong.
Anyways, DREAM.1 is this friday so definitely expect a preview and hopefully a full card within the coming days.
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I do still love MMA and have...
March 10th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I agree about everything mentioned in the article. (I think they wanted to give Misaki an opportunity to finish the fight, because if you reset from that position he’s going to lose the submission)
I’m excited for DREAM and I hope that the production value is as good as Sengoku.