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Final card for Man Festival
By Zach Arnold | December 25, 2006
- Hidehiko Yoshida vs. James Thompson
- Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Eldari Kurtanidze
- Akihiro Gono vs. Yuki Kondo
- Josh Barnett vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
- Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Ikuhisa Minowa
- Takanori Gomi vs. Mitsuhiro Ishida
- Mauricio Shogun vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura
- Shin’ya Aoki vs. Joachim Hansen
- Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Gilbert Melendez
- PRIDE Heavyweight Title match: Emelianenko Fedor vs. Mark Hunt
Topics: All Topics, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
So is Fedor/Hunt still happening or what?
JOSH, yes Fedor has already left for Japan.
A very strong card, in my opinion.
Hope all the fights materialise, and I will be a happy man! Shame it’s not on free TV.
Still, surprisingly excited about the K1 show, too…
Who wants to bet me that Yoshida ezekiel chokes James Thompson from the mount?
Yoshida by KO. This has the potential to be better than last years shockwave.
Am I the only one who thinks Yoshida/Thompson is a bizarre matchup? Maybe I’ve still got my morning brain haze… but this one’s odd. Maybe they wanted to ensure a Yoshida victory, but still give him a game opponent.
The rest of the card looks great.
Pride comes through with a solid card here — just when you thought they would be cheaping out. I am surprised once again. For all the Pride-go-by-by-talk, at least there is this card before they do.
man such a great card. the lw rankings are gonna change bigtime I think…
I just love this, get to see fujita bring it. Get to see a rematch of the fight of 2k, get to see fedor.
A bummer this might be the last hurrah though….
Yeah, this is looking increasingly like the last Shockwave. A very sad situation for MMA. I don’t think we’ll ever see something like PRIDE again — perfect rules, great presentation, best fighters, etc.
A fantastic card in the end. The late announcement of Thompson only makes it even more likely that PRIDE had Nastula lined up for Yoshida and in typical PRIDE fashion actually waited for the 9-moth suspension to be handed out before doing something about the fight.
Anyway, PRIDE has come back strong with annoumcements these last two-three weeks, and in the end are putting on a stronger card than UFC this weekend. I’m not even going to mention K-1 in this context.
Out of all the possible matches that could have been booked, Yoshida vs. Thompson is basically a jobber match. It’s a useless fight. Like Fujita vs. Kurtanidze and Shogun vs. Nakamura, and then there are the re-matches (with Barnett vs. Nogueira being the one true main event level fight on the card).
It’s a card on paper serves the hardcores, and those are the fans that are left in Japan to watch the event. I think the fights will pretty much go predictably the way they look on paper.
Josh, you can say the same thing about UFC 66 and UFC 67 as far as match making goes. The only thing that’s different is that UFC has more than just hardcore fans at the moment.
“Out of all the possible matches that could have been booked, Yoshida vs. Thompson is basically a jobber match. It’s a useless fight. Like Fujita vs. Kurtanidze and Shogun vs. Nakamura, and then there are the re-matches (with Barnett vs. Nogueira being the one true main event level fight on the card).”
Yoshida – Thompson is a good fight because the size disadvantage and Thompson not being useless offers Yoshida a challenge. It’s not Gardner all over again, but not too far from it either.
Fujita’s fight serves a puropse in that he faces a top wrestler. Yes it is booked to put Fujita over, but he’s not facing a boxer.
Nakamura vs. Shogun is hardly a mismatch, just a case of one man being the clear favorite to win. In many ways it’s comparable to Franklin – Silva as far as competitiveness is concerned.
I see three 90% certain winners on this card(Fedor, Shogun, Fujita), with Yoshida the only other fighter I’ll be surprised to see lose. Everything else is 65-35 or closer in my book. I don’t see how this card can be portrayed as being more predictable than the norm, really. As for who will be drawn to it, only time will tell, but it’s not like this is the big make or break event for PRIDE F.C.
Hey guys, just wanted to say I’ve finished putting together the Shockwave 2006 media preview. Basically I’ve pooled all of the videos for the main card fighters into one place, resulting in over 100 vids for you to educate yourself on the Shockwave fighters. You can check out the full video list at http://www.fightlinker.com/story.php?title=Pride-Shockwave-2006-Media-Preview and just click on the Media Links button on the site to access the media page. Hopefully this helps y’all get a bit hyped up … this card is definately more hardcore than mainstream but i’m finding myself getting pretty excited about it!