The results from the Dream lightweight grand prix are in, and the Hellboy has been declared the winner.

He stopped two opponents to win the title, submitting Kultar Gill and knocking out favorite Shinya Aoki to grab the belt. Between the two fights, Hansen spent under 7 minutes in the ring.

Hansens win over Aoki avenged a loss to the Tobukan Judan over a year ago, when Aoki caught Hansen in a gogoplata. While Hansen is not the number one lightweight in the world by any means, this solidifies him as a top fighter, a position that has slipped in his recent decision loss to Eddie Alvarez.

His two finishes put Hansen back in a groove that he seemed to have been out of in Dream, as he hadn’t finished an opponent in his two fights since joining the organization, but now that he’s finishing guys, hopefully he will begin to show the consistency that he has lacked for most of his career. We can only hope.

After delays, expectation, anticipation, letdowns, upsets, epic bouts and a lot of optimism, DREAM will conclude what it started over 5 months ago. Things have definitely gone from bad to worse for the upstart organization. If you remember, earlier this year the 1st DREAM show raked in a dismal 9 rating even dropping to 6th overall that night. Fast forward to now and I think MMA fans have definitely come to embrace DREAM. They’ve definitely broke the mold of unreachable Japanese MMA by inked a deal with HDNet to televise their shows live in the United States and Nikkan Sports is reporting that Nike has just signed on to become a clothing supplier for DREAM. Sadly, there are 2 bouts that maybe removed from this much anticipated show. Hideo Tokoro suffered a minor accident after a car collision, but will continue with his anticipated bout with DREAM. 3 standout Takeshi Yamazaki. Also, Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto will go fightless in 2008 as an injury has kept him out of his DREAM debut against Joseph Benavidez and maybe for half a year. Things seem to be getting worse for “Kid” as he maybe in some HUGE trouble as he is rumored to be linked to allegations of illegal drug use. The good news is that The Fight Network is reporting that Alistair Overeem has confirmed that he will fight Mark Hunt this weekend. Ok, Finally the fight card thus far looks like this:

HEIWA DREAM.5 Lightweight GP 2008 Final Round
Date: July 21st, 2008
Place: Osaka Jo Hall in Osaka, Japan

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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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B.J. Penn is the most versatile fighter in the sport today. There are those who will object and say that Anderson Silva or Georges St. Pierre has him beat in terms of versatility, but St. Pierre lacks Penn’s jiu-jitsu prowess (and the blackbelt and world championship win) and Anderson doesn’t, at least from what we’ve seen, have the same capacity for ground and pound that Penn does.

If you put most champions in the cage with anybody in their division, just a middle of the pack fighter, they would revert to their game plan and dispose of their opponent with relative ease by playing their game. Penn wouldn’t do that.

B.J. Penn debuted in the UFC and was billed as a jiu-jitsu prodigy, something that we all knew he was. B.J. didn’t even finish an opponent with a submission in his first stint in the UFC. Instead, he made everyone in the division respect the power of his strikes when he knocked out Caol Uno, Din Thomas and Joey Gilbert, fighters who he was expected to work to the ground and submit.

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