new year

[neryo_tkd]

anyone kow anything about the new year's event?

[Sever]

I've not heard much from the K-1 Dynamite front (not that I've really looked, to be honest), but Pride's Shockwave card is currently looking a little something like this:

Confirmed fights:

Fedor vs Mark Hunt
Gomi vs Ishida
Gilbert Melendez vs Kawajiri (great fight right there)
Joachim Hansen vs Shinya Aoki (another great matchup)
Shogun vs Nakamura (should be a nice bit of murder going on there. Nak's tough as hell, but Shogun's just going to stomp a hole in his face)

Source - PrideFC.com (http://www.pridefc.com/pride2005/index_new_temp.php)

Rumoured fights:

Crocop vs Hong Man Choi
Josh Barnett vs Wanderlei Silva (the source for this is Fightsport so it's probably bull. I hope so)

And the following are also confirmed to be in action (there are some great possible fights here)

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Dan Henderson
Hidehiko Yoshida
Kazuyuki "Ironhead" Fujita

It being Shockwave, Pride don't usually announce all the matches until the last minute, they like to build the suspense up

[neryo_tkd]

what about cro cop vs fedor fight?

[Sever]

Crocop's recently had surgery on his injured ankle (an injury that's been plaguing him for more than a year, apparently), and while he's OK to fight, he's not 100% like he wants and needs to be for Fedor. With Fedor fighting for Bodog in Russia in March, Crocop's currently telling Pride that if he doesn't get the rematch in the first six months of next year he'll consider the other offers that he gets (including the UFC, apparently. Believe that when I see it) Source - Crocop's official site (http://www.mirko-crocop.com/?id=4&solo=56)
Essentially, he's doing the same thing he did over the OWGP pay deal - using the media to help with negotiations to get him what he wants. Previously he wanted more money, now he wants his rematch

[Wigglyman]

Previously he wanted more money, now he wants his rematch

As the old saying goes...be careful what you wish for!!

Anyways good on him, maybe they could end Pride's molly-coddling of their Champions.

[Sever]

Anyways good on him, maybe they could end Pride's molly-coddling of their Champions.I agree - most Pride champions are definitely protected, Gomi especially. He lost a non-title match to Aurelio, Aurelio got pounded on by Ishida, Gomi wins a tentative decision over Aurelio and now Ishida gets a non-title match at Shockwave - this simply should not happen.
Sakikabara has said that there are some changes on the horizon for the new year in Pride including a title defence at every show or as near as is feasible, which is a good thing

[Wigglyman]

I agree - most Pride champions are definitely protected, Gomi especially. He lost a non-title match to Aurelio, Aurelio got pounded on by Ishida, Gomi wins a tentative decision over Aurelio and now Ishida gets a non-title match at Shockwave - this simply should not happen.
Sakikabara has said that there are some changes on the horizon for the new year in Pride including a title defence at every show or as near as is feasible, which is a good thing


There simply should be no such thing as a Non-Title match...unless its a GP match, or against someone in a different weight class.

Yeh should be some good changes happening in Pride, like more Title defences and the end of Bashido shows.

[Sever]

Noguiera/ Barnett is going to happen. WHOO!
Source (http://www.tatame.com.br/2006/12/15/Minotauro-faz-a-revanche-contra-Barnett-no-Reveillon)
Here's a crappy translation
Defeated for americando the Josh Barnett in the semifinal of Pride GP Open Weight, Rodrigo Minotauro will still have revanche in 2006. As safe sources, Rodrigo would be scaled to face Barnett in the Pride of 31 of December. In the first meeting between the two, the fight well was balanced and the victory of Barnett came in the divided decision, at the time very contested for Minotauro. The public will have the possibility to see this revanche in takes off-teima between the two and the expectation is that of this time the victory is green and yellow.

COMPLETE CARD (subject to modifications):

Pride Shockwave 2006
Japan
Sunday, 31 of December of 2006

Dispute of the cinturão heavyweight:
- Emelianenko Stench will face Mark Hunt;

Other fights:
- Rodrigo Minotauro will face Josh Barnett;
- Takanori Gomi will face Mitshuhiro Ishida;
- Tatsuya Kawajiri will face Gilbert Melendez;
- Shinya Aoki will face Joachim Hansen;
- Maurício Shogun will face Kazuhiro Nakamura;
- Kiyoshi Tamura will face Ikuhisa Minowa.
__________________

[Wigglyman]

Looks like Crocop (http://www.mmauniverse.com/news/SS1100) and Fedor (http://www.mmauniverse.com/news/SS1101) could be out of The Shockwave card.

[Sever]

I believe Crocop may well be out (adding further credence to the "not going to the UFC" argument - he misses Shockwave, he's still under contract), but the info "gleaned from Fedor's website" is a post in his forum and he's still advertised as headlining the event
The dude fought for months with a broken hand, I doubt a broken toe's going to stop him fighting on the years' biggest show. Hell, I've competed in grappling matches with a broken toe, why the hell can't the best fighter in the world?!
I've just had a thought about this one - Fedor's injured, going into a fight with Hunt on the same day that for the last two years, Hunt has pulled collosal upsets. Can he make it three in a row? (I hope not, I've got money saying nietski)

[Atharel]

Dispute of the cinturão heavyweight:
- Emelianenko Stench will face Mark Hunt;

apparently "Fedor" means Stench in Portuguese? No wonder they're all such big Minotauro fans...

[Sever]

apparently "Fedor" means Stench in Portuguese? No wonder they're all such big Minotauro fans...That's what Google's translator spat out. Told you it was a crappy translation :D

[Apotheosis]

Got Shockwave as well as UFC 66 so you can say I spoiled myself...This was a pretty good event but not as good as it could have been.


1. Hanson vs Aoki- Aoki got a takedown very early in the first round and managed to get a GOGOPLATA from rubber guard to force Hansen to tap early in the first round. Aoki looked incredibly funny with his rainbow colored tights and mouth guard but it worked.

2. Shogun vs Nakamura- Shogun won via Unanimous decision. This fight was a bit lackluster, Shogun seemed sick or just off of his game and he couldn't do enough to finish Nakamura. In fact, I might even go as far to say that Nakamura won the stand-up!!!

3. Melendez vs Kawajiri- Melendez won the decision after a classic fight with both fighters throwing bombs round after round. Early in the first it looked like
Kawajiri might get the KO after knocking Melendez down twice but Melendez fought back like a warrior and ended up turning the tide. Both fighters went for the takedown a few times but couldn't keep it there, which meant the fans got to see a tremendous striking battle. One of the best fights of the year in my opinion.

Would LOVE to see both of these guys fight in February in Vegas as they both have styles that appeal to the average American MMA fan.

4. Fujita vs Eldari Kurtanidze- It was Eldari's first MMA fight and it showed with Fujita getting a dominating win by KO very early in the first round.

Eldari had a VERY strange style of holding his hands, with one almost fully extended the length of the fight.

5. Ishida vs Gomi- Gomi dominated Ishida with a knockout win very early in the first round. Would have liked to see Ishida go for the takedown but he ran out of time quickly.

Gomi seemed very cocky, very arrogant.

6- Thompson vs Yoshida- (Yoshida did not wear a Gi, which was odd)Thompson came into the fight as a big underdog, and for the first few minutes it showed with Yoshida getting a nice takedown and nearly getting multiple subs.

After an early dominant performance by Yoshida, Thompson landed a heavy punch that knocked Yoshida down. Yoshida struggled back to his feet but ate several heavy blows in the process. He ended up falling out of the ring, and had a very hard time getting back in for a restart. The fight restarted and the ref actually had to drag Yoshida towards the center of the ring, which made him look eerily like a corpse. Thompson got the mount, and thank God the ref ended the fight giving Thompson the win.

Both fighters looked out of shape, most likely due to the short notice they took the fight on(1 week).

Yoshida NEEDS to retire, he looked half-dead 5 minutes after the fight and had to be rolled out of the ring and carried out of the arena.

Pride and Yoshida seem dead set on having the first death in an MMA organization.

7- Barnett vs Nogueira- Both displayed great striking skills, spending over half of the first round on their feet. Nogueira minute by minute got the better of the striking, as Barnett could not chip his rock-like chin. From the 2nd round onwards, Nogueira got the best of Barnett with his superior striking skills and nice GnP... Barnett got a wicked guillotine choke towards the end of the fight, but Nogueira showed insanely good sub defense to get out of it and earn the Unanimous decision win.

8- Fedor vs Hunt- From the first time we see Fedor, he looked odd. He looked oddly emotional for the usually stoic fighter, and when he went into the center of the ring for the traditional staredown he refused to look Hunt in the eye...Maybe he was sad Mirko had left him?

Early in the fight Fedor got the takedown and full mount which had everyone calling the fight, he went for an armbar but missed and Hunt yanked out getting side position.

Hunt got a wicked keylock that looked like the end of the fight, but Fedor managed to take the pain and escape after what seemed like an eternity. If it had been anyone else, I would have said the fight was over.

Fedor managed to battle back to his feet and scored a takedown(the first since the first attempt that led to the failed armbar) which actually ended up with him on top as Hunt had earlier managed to defend Fedor's takedowns and land in top position. He then went for a kimura and showed Hunt how to properly execute an arm submission.

Fedor looked human, looked out of shape and ill-prepared and it shocked me.(May have been his broken toe) I hope for his and Pride's sake that he gets things back together and can remain the world's best fighter.

Some side notes- Trigg announced that Pride would be having 3-4 fights in the U.S in 2007.

The new announcer sucked, knew very little and all he did was ask Trigg stupid questions(on multiple occasions asking the same question more than once in a space of 5 minutes).

Pride did not mention Mirko once, at all. Seemed like they had all forgotten about the previous number 2 contender.


K-1 Dynamite-


MMA
Yoshihiro Akiyama (Pictures) def. Kazushi Sakuraba (Pictures) TKO (strikes) 5:37 R1
Hong-Man Choi def. Bobby Ologun (Pictures) TKO (strikes) 0:16 R1
Norifumi Yamamoto (Pictures) def. Istvan Majoros TKO (strikes) 3:46 R1
Genki Sudo (Pictures) def. Damacio Page (Pictures) submission (triangle choke) 3:05 R1
Paulo Cesar Silva def. Chad Rowan (Pictures) submission (Kimura) 1:02 R1
Hideo Tokoro (Pictures) def. Royler Gracie (Pictures) unanimous decision 3R
Taiei Kin (Pictures) def. Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Pictures) KO (head kick) 2:48 R1
Katsuhiko Nagata (Pictures)def. Shuichiro Katsumura (Pictures) TKO (strikes) 4:12 R1
Andy Ologun def. Ken Kaneko (Pictures) unanimous decision 3R
Yukiya Naito (Pictures) def. Dong Wook Kim submission (strikes) 1:11 R3

K-1
Masato def. Satoru Suzuki KO 2:22 R2
Semmy Schilt (Pictures) def. Pete Graham unanimous decision 5R
Musashi def. Randy Kim KO (punch) 0:33 R3
Badr Hari def. Nicholas Pettas KO (kick) 1:28 R2

Genki Sudo officially retired after his win, at a relatively young age(is 28?). No idea yet as to what he is going to do aside from(in his words "Travel overseas and see how human beings solve their problems and live happily with one another".

He also claimed he came to this decision after a visit to the urinal, which is a somewhat odd way of deciding to retire.

Kazushi Sakuraba lost 5 minutes into the first round, after being beaten on heavily. After the referee called the fight, Sakuraba protested that Akiyama had been too slippery and insisted officials check him and his gi for grease and nothing was found.

Sakuraba needs to retire as well, or else he and Yoshida(as I stated earlier) will be in a race that neither wishes to win that will end in their own demise.

I am seriously concerned that these two will end up permanently injured or even die.

[neryo_tkd]

thanks a lot for such a detailed report. i haven't seen any of the fights yet, but i'm looking forward to.

i'm glad nogueira won, but i'm also a bit disappointed to hear all that about fedor.

[Sever]

Fedor's broken toe was clearly affecting him in this fight (it was severe enough to fuel speculation that he couldn't fight at the event) and also, he'd apparently not been able to sleep the night before. That said, I feel that this fight really was Hunt's coming out party. The guy's learning the game well and was always going to be a tough matchup for Fedor due to his striking, chin and size. Fortunately for Fedor, his ground game's not quite up to the point where he knows how to do a keylock properly - that Americana looked much worse than it was, he had nothing there
All in all, Shockwave was a great show, one of the best of the year and I'm calling Kawajiri/ Melendez a candidate for fight of the year. That was great action all the way through, the Yoshida fight just shouldn't have happened in the first place, let alone continue after the ref dragged him back from the ropes. Incidentally, Sakikabara made a press announcement regarding Crocop after the Shockwave event in which he said that Crocop is now a UFC fighter and he wished him all the best there
I've only seen a couple of fights from the K-1 event and all I have to say about it is that Sakuraba was absolutely screwed. Aside from the grease issue (something I'm inclined to agree with Sak about - he was mentioning it during the fight, not just after, not to mention the way that Akiyama was just sliding out of single-leg takedowns and leglock attempts, took his gi off after the fighter introductions, and put it straight back on after the fight and Sak's never been one to complain), the finish came when Sak was going for a kneebar and was clearly active. The finish actually had both fighters looking confused and the ref's "grease check" was cursory at best. I'm usually the last person to call the shaft, but in this fight, the fix was in
All in all, this weekends events showed just how much MMA is like it's estranged father (pro wrestling) - we had a high-profile defection, an underdog putting on the performance of his life against the champion and a screw-job. It should be an interesting year coming up

[Apotheosis]

I think the fight with Sakuraba should have been stopped earlier, he ate numerous unanswered punches and it was late stoppage for sure.

I don't know if there was a grease issue, I don't see a problem with the gi coming off before and after the fight...If he was really greasing his legs, why would he then put gi pants on which would definetly take some of that grease right off?

Sakuraba wasn't close to the kneebar and was defending punches with his face, it was a late stoppage.

[Sever]

It was and it wasn't a late stoppage. The point when it should've been stopped was a long time before the actual stoppage came. At the point it was stopped, he was going for that leglock and was actually mounting intelligent defence. No one would've complained if they'd stopped it when his head was through the ropes, the fact is that the stoppage was erroneous at the point it was made and, the way Akiyama was slipping locks and takedowns makes it look like he was greased, plus Sakuraba was mentioning this to the ref during the fight. The bell also rang before the referree called the stoppage - screw job or no, there was definitely something shady going on in this fight
The gi issue was also pretty suspicious. Normally if a fighter wears a gi to the ring, if it's getting removed, it happens before the initial inspection outside the ring. I've never seen it happen as late in the day as it did here (after the fighters are introduced, have had their final instructions and are waiting for the bell) and his putting it straight back on after the fight doesn't help allay my suspicions there either. A gi doesn't really remove much grease at all; they're not especially tight and the kind of material isn't especially "sticky." Competitors usually get checked for grease in judo and gi comps as well as no gi ones and it's not like this is the first time Akiyama's been on the end of "greasing" accusations

[wazzabi]

kid yamamoto won!!! :D

[Apotheosis]

Sever- You may be right, I cannot say for sure either way concerning the grease issue. But I can say that the stoppage was way too late, Sakuraba was on dream street for quite a long time and it was as if they were trying to see him become their first death...

If it was a fix though, why would they let the fight go on so long? It appeared to me that the Ref was actually trying to "aid" Sakuraba by giving him way too long to recover. If he was just trying to screw Sakuraba, he had about 2 minutes at the end of the fight where he could have called the fight, but he waited for what seemed like an eternity...

Wazzabi- Yes, but then again it was the other guy's first MMA fight so......How about the man-beast known as Choi Hong Man? I heard he was impressive in his MMA debut, anyone have a clip of it?(cannot find one for the life of me).

[Sever]

Sever- You may be right, I cannot say for sure either way concerning the grease issue. But I can say that the stoppage was way too late, Sakuraba was on dream street for quite a long time and it was as if they were trying to see him become their first death...

If it was a fix though, why would they let the fight go on so long? It appeared to me that the Ref was actually trying to "aid" Sakuraba by giving him way too long to recover. If he was just trying to screw Sakuraba, he had about 2 minutes at the end of the fight where he could have called the fight, but he waited for what seemed like an eternity...That, I can't say. The ref should've stopped it earlier, but didn't, then someone outside the ring proceeded to call a stoppage when Sak was taking much weaker shots and making a move. It could just be down to incompetant reffing, but the timing of the gi removal (outside officials should've had something to say about that) , the absolute joke of a "grease check" after the fight and the outside stoppage call make me think there's more at play here than just a god awful ref. Akiyama's Heroes' poster boy right now; they want to build him as a top fighter in Japan, maybe motivation for a dominant victory was at play there, but that's just speculation. He most likely would've won without greasing and whatever the hell else was going on there so it's definitely confusing, but excluding the fact that the stoppage occurred past when it should have, anyone watching that fight can see there was something weird going on.
As for the grease issue - Akiyama was called on this plenty of times in his judo days. He's even been responsible for the IJF strengthening their rules on gi's. Here're a couple of articles on it:
Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/sport/archives/2003/09/16/2003068113)
and
The Independant (http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:dVMyW038y3IJ:www.judoinfo.com/2003WC.doc+yoshihiro+akiyama+ijf&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=2&client=firefox-a)

[Apotheosis]

It's always a good sign to be the fighter who has rules designed to stop you from cheating...

[Sever]

A press conference has announced that Akiyama's been retroactively disqualified, his purse has been withheld and the match has been ruled a no-contest with the official responsible for checking fighters for grease being fined and suspended. The sub-referree has been fined for not acknowledging Sakuraba's complaints of the grease, but no action has been taken against the in-ring referree, which is a bit confusing
On the face of things, K-1 Hero's needs a serious tune-up in their officiating department but how things lie under the surface is widely open to speculation after this debacle
Source (http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3254&zoneid=2)