Anyone who is paying attention to modern MMA can see that the biggest names in the business are not consistently offering a top shelf product. Elite XC put together a card that pits their champions against mediocre fighters and will make for a less than entertaining night aimed at getting attention, not at putting out a high quality product.

The UFC put on one of their best events ever, which had three interesting light heavyweight matchups, the debut of a man many consider a future phenom (Shane Carwin, just so we’re clear) and the biggest matchup that they can offer at 155 pounds.

Still, as I scroll down the cards of upcoming events, I found something bizarre.

The UFC is promising to put out shows that are far from interesting, namely it’s utterly uncreative UFC 85 card which consists of two interesting matchups on the entire evening (Davis vs. Swick and Vera vs. Werdum) and it’s unpromising TUF finale card which is headed by two fighters hardly at the top of their game, while the only two interesting matchups it has to offer (McFedries vs. Eastman and Lister vs. Horn) will remain in the middle of the card and will probably not be broadcast but for the grace of God.

So I am damned to look for incredible fights on the outskirts of the MMA world, but what I found is that I don’t actually have to look, because everybody else seems to actually care about putting out top notch fight cards.

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A crazy 2007 left us with a lot of questions and discussion to last us a while but 1 fight, Misaki vs. Akiyama, definitely gave us a lot to talk about in early 2008. Was it legal? Was it wrong? His hand was down.. etc. We saw lots of good arguments from both sides but finally I feel some justice was done. Even though we rarely see it in MMA, we saw a fight overturned due to video and photo evidence that the Grabaka Hitman, Kazuo Misaki illegally struck, the always controversial, Yoshihiro Akiyama with an illegal kick in their much anticipated bout at Yarennoka!! 2007.

I think that it is a great thing that the Yarennoka!! staff and FEG went back and reviewed the issue at hand and came out with a fair and honest decision, which was also a not so lenient one. We see very often in fights were fighters are unable to continue due to illegal strikes and are usually awarded the fight. The case was this with Yoshiyuki Yoshida’s less than spectacular win at the Cage Force Tournament Finals in December against Dan Hardy, where he was not only awarded the tournament title, but also a 4 Fight UFC deal too. I think the judging should have been the same for this fight. The fight should definitely be awarded to Akiyama like we’ve seen so often in the past. My only thought is that the reason why this fight wasn’t given to Akiyama is for reasons that don’t necessarily pertain to fighting but that’s a whole different story.

Where do they both go from here? Akiyama is recovering from an injury sustained in the bout, which definitely sidelines him to until March. FEG is having a show in March but I doubt Akiyama will be participating in it due his need to recover. Misaki on the other hand will be very active when he meets Shooto World Champion at 83 Kg. Siyar Baharduzada at the Inaugural World Victory Road (WVR) Show, Sengoku also in March. Also recently announced was the match up between Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos against Makoto Takimoto and Phil Baroni vs. Sanae Kikuta. Also, the 3rd standout member of the Grabaka squad, the colorful Akihiro Gono was supposed to see action against the very talented, Jon Fitch, but Gono was forced to pull out due to an injury he suffered.

With all the standard responsibilities and commitments of life during the last days of the year, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to find time to get to a computer and relay my thoughts to the people actually interested in what I have to say. To those people, I say I’m sorry for my lack of appearance on here and especially for my half of a K-1 Dynamite!! preview, which definitely should of been completed and didn’t get finished. School is getting crazy, but the good thing is that I’m FINALLY on my last required English class in college ever! and my Anthropology 101 class is pretty fun. Enough with all that stuff, let’s talk about a beautiful way year ended with Yarennoka!!

I think it’s incredibly apparent by now that I LOVE JAPANESE MMA and by elimination we could all easily say that PRIDE was Japanese MMA for a while, so this Yarennoka!! show did mean a lot to me. I don’t think that the incredibly “quick” PRIDE 34 show did PRIDE or the DSE crew any justice and was not the way they should’ve gone out. Thankfully, Yarennoka!! came along and maybe sent PRIDE away in peace. I say maybe because I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the last time we’ll see a show like this or at least hope that this isn’t the last one of these types of shows. Read the full story