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Full 5/5 PRIDE Osaka Dome card
By Zach Arnold | April 30, 2006
Yuji Shimada (pictured above): Photo credit — DSE official HP (Japanese)
By Zach Arnold
DSE has been marketing the Open-Weight tournament as a 16-man tournament, but it appears that it will be a 14-man tournament with Emelianenko Fedor getting a bye into the second round. Card line-up:
- Non-Tournament: Gilbert Yvel vs. Roman Zentsov
- Alistair Overeem vs. Fabricio Werdum
- Tsuyoshi Kohsaka vs. Mark Hunt
- Josh Barnett vs. Emelianenko Alexander
- Kazuyuki Fujita vs. James Thompson
- Mirko Cro Cop vs. Ikuhisa Minowa
- Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Zulu
- Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Yosuke Nishijima (using the boxing gloves)
Topics: All Topics, Japan, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 7 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
[...] Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira will take on Zuluzinho and Gilbert Yvel will take on Roman Zentsov. Zach Arnold of Fight Opinion is reporting that the Yvel-Zentsov match will be a non-tournament fight. Instead Fedor Emelianenko will automatically be given a spot in the second round. [...]
Zach,
with Fedor being added to the second round it’s possible he may eventually have to face his brother. Do you think they would actually fight each other if it came down to it?
You have to think that Fedor vs. Alexander would be a match they would want to do last. With Barnett vs. Alexander, they seem to be pushing the Barnett vs. Fedor family feud. I don’t think they would be crazy enough to book Barnett vs. Fedor on 7/1 in Saitama, but you never know.
If you’re DSE and you want Fedor to face the easiest opponent to beat on 7/1 in Saitama, you’re probably looking at him facing Overeem or Yoshida.
yoshida will get the easiest fight in round II – and that wont be Fedor.
Look for Yoshida to get Overeem (or Werdum) or Kohsaka (if he can somehow pull a sub on Hunt)
cant wait for nishijima in the boxing gloves and that great crocop/minowa match – these will be MMA classics
This is just a Heavyweight Tournament with Minowa in it. Very dissappointing to me. Just call it a damned HW Grand Prix. I really wanted to see what would happen if Henderson or some of the Chute Boxe guys were in this.
Hopefully this ends up with a good 2nd round.
You could get:
Yoshida/Nogueira
Hunt/Alexander
Cop/Overeem
Fujita/Fedor
Hunt/
I am so amped about the Zulu/Noguiera match. After this we need to get Zulu/Barnett, or any other combination of Zulu vs. a top tier guy.
Also to me Fujita’s whole purpose in the tournament is to be fed to Yoshida to get him to the final four.
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