DREAM.14

[jmt225]

[YOUTUBE]WK0mFlRpSCo[/YOUTUBE]​

Main card

• Welterweight bout: Nick Diaz vs. Hayato Sakurai
• Middleweight bout: Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Ralek Gracie
• Featherweight bout: Norifumi Yamamoto vs. Federico Lopez
• Featherweight bout: Yoshiro Maeda vs. Kenji Osawa
• Featherweight bout: Joachim Hansen vs. Hiroyuki Takaya
• Featherweight bout: Hideo Tokoro vs. Akiyo Nishiura
• Featherweight bout: Kazuyuki Miyata vs. Takafumi Otsuka

......................................................................................​

First off, please note that this card is NOT finalized. It's still possible that Marius Žaromskis, Gegard Mousasi, Katsunori Kikuno, and/or Tatsuya Kawajiri could be added to the show. I promise to keep this thread updated just in case any of them are.

That said, if Marius and Gegard don't end up having fights on this show, then there's only two fights I will give a damn about:

Nick Diaz vs. Hayato Sakurai
Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Ralek Gracie

I've made it no secrete how big of a fan I am of Nick Diaz, so of course I'm always stoked to see him fight. His opponent, Hayato Sakurai, was great once upon a time and he was expected to be Nick Diaz's opponent at the Strikeforce show in January for the SF Welterweight Title, but Sakurai unexpectedly lost to Marius Zaromskis, which of course gave Maruis the shot against Nick.

After the Maruis fight, Sakurai lost yet another one against Akihiro Gono, which was just as big of upset as the Maruis loss. Before those two losses Hayato Sakurai was one of Japan's most respected fighters. He's had 47 fights in his career (record being 35-10-2), and has faced some of the greatest in the history of the sport. Fighters like Anderson Silva, Matt Hughes, Takanori Gomi, Jake Shields, Jens Pulver, and Shinya_Aoki (who he has defeated twice). So, obviously... Sakurai has had a very storied, well-respected career.

However, as great as Sakurai has been, he's still going to get his ass completely handed to him in this fight. Nick Diaz is simply superior than him in literally EVERY aspect of MMA, and there's absolutely nothing Sakurai could do to beat him. Literally... nothing.

But, like I said, it doesn't matter who his opponent is, if Nick Diaz is fighting, I'm watching. And even though Sakurai has lost a lot of his glory these past few months, it will still be fun to see Nick in there with a true legend, kicking the ever living shit out of him.

And as far as that other fight I mentioned to looking forward to... the Gracie Hunter is back!

Yep, Kazushi Sakuraba, aka The Gracie Hunter, gets back in the ring with a Gracie for the first time in 3 years. Sakuraba was the first Japanese fighter to ever defeat a Gracie (and the Gracies had been fighting in Japan for several decades before that happened), and since then is 4-0-1 against the Gracies.

His next Gracie victim is Ralek Gracie, whose only had 2 professional MMA fights to this point. He's 2-0, defeating two cans.

So, yeah... while it's not a tough opponent for Sakuraba, I'm still fucking stoked to see him beat yet another Gracie. And besides, much like Nick Diaz, I get excited for a Sakuraba fight under any circumstance. The guy is simply fucking awesome.

Anyways, it's most likely going to end up being a strictly two fight show, but boy... I could not be more excited for those two fights. Definitely looking forward to it.

 

[rammsteiner]

Sakuraba, Kid, and Minowaman are all on the same card. You can tell FEG needs the ratings unfortunately

I can't wait to see the card though I'm looking forward to it

Hansen vs. Takaya and Tokoro vs. Wicky should be awesome fights to watch

 

[jmt225]

For those who haven't seen it yet, here's the main event of this show between Nick Diaz and Hayato Sakurai:

[YOUTUBE]pn97VwSz53U[/YOUTUBE]

Please finish watching the fight before reading any further....



So, who wants to argue now that Nick Diaz is not a top 10 P4P fighter in this sport? Seriously, I know Sakurai "isn't what he once was," but he's still a GREAT fighter and the fact that Diaz was able to tap his ass out in just the first round, when Shinya Aoki (arguably the greatest submission fighter in MMA history) couldn't pull of a sub in neither of his fights again Saku, to me proves just how fucking great Nick Diaz truly is. He's been boxing people up in his last few fights and beating them all on the feet, but here he gave a reminder to everyone that he is still one of the best BJJ practitioners in the entire sport. Make no mistake about it... Nick Diaz is as hot as any MMA fighter you could name right now.

And as far as the other fight I said I was looking forward to... HUGE disappointment. First of all, Sakuraba lost, but it wasn't the fact he lost that made this so fucking crappy, but the fact that this had some of the worst officiating in MMA history. Basically, there's a good little fight going on between these two, when in the third Ralek gets a takedown. Sakuraba the goes for a kimura from the bottom and sweeps Ralek. From this point, it looks like Ralek's going to defend it as Saku goes for it, but the ref randomly steps in and moves the position entirely to pull Ralek's shorts up... seriously, what the fuck? You never know what could have happened there if the ref didn't fucking step in. Anyways, that eventually allowed Ralek to reverse and attempt an armbar, which you could argue won him the round, although to be fair he'd probably won the previous two rounds anyway.

It was still a pretty good fight though. That Ralek Gracie is actually pretty damn good and I think he has a very bright future in the sport. Definitely look forward to seeing what the future has in store for him.

And other than that, KID Yamamoto finally got back to his winning ways after KOing a can in the first, Minowa beat a fat ass can himself in the first, and Takaya beat Hansen in the first by KO in what was definitely the upset of the night.

But yeah... very good stuff from DREAM Saturday morning. I hope you guys decide to check out some of the show on Youtube.