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« | Home | »

DREAM & Sengoku card updates

By Zach Arnold | April 4, 2008

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K-1 has set the table for the next two DREAM events (DREAM 2 on 4/29 and DREAM 3 on 5/11 at Saitama Super Arena). The 5/11 Saitama card features Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Luiz Buscape, Kaoru Uno vs. Mitsuhiro Ishida, Joachim Hansen vs. Eddie Alvarez, and Katsuhiko Nagata vs. the winner of JZ Calvan/Shin’ya Aoki II that will take place on 4/29 in Saitama.

Meanwhile, you can add Yuki Sasaki vs. Jorge Santiago of ATT to the Sengoku 5/18 Ariake Colosseum card line-up.

Topics: DREAM, Japan, Media, MMA, Sengoku, Zach Arnold | 23 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

23 Responses to “DREAM & Sengoku card updates”

  1. white ninja says:

    dream is putting together some interesting fights, but so far, there is not much there that is going to get any ratings for them

    im amazed that tbs/k1 is sticking to the heros/bushido formula of lower weight, albeit japanese fighters – while its cheap dont see it getting ratings

  2. Matt says:

    Agree, good for the fans, not so much for the nation of TV watching drones… Let’s hope the model is sustainable.

  3. Rictor says:

    Heh. It’s not like they’re putting some super fights in lightweight division. I’m sure we will see some super fights in higher weight classess on DREAM 3 and DREAM 2 is already a MW GP.

  4. Jeremy says:

    I can’t believe they are running shows two weeks apart. Will the fans pony up for both shows?

  5. Grape Knee High says:

    Crap. The last person I wanted to see inserted into this GP was Uno. Nice fighter, but the sport has passed him by.

  6. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    Any chance we’ll ever hear the lost 2nd podcast of the week that was mentioned in the last podcast several weeks ago?

  7. Zach Arnold says:

    I’m finishing up a surprise for the show.

  8. Zack says:

    “Crap. The last person I wanted to see inserted into this GP was Uno. Nice fighter, but the sport has passed him by.”

    I dunno…his fight with Hansen was one of the best fights of ’06.

  9. Iain Liddle says:

    It seems a little unfair on the winner of JZ/Aoki that they have to fight twice in two weeks. Especially if Calvan wins and that involves four long distance flights to and from Japan in that time.

    The feeling I have is that they’ve given the winner Nagata as he’s a good match for either of them, but it’s still kinda rough.

  10. IceMuncher says:

    I don’t like the JZ/Aoki situation. It’s tough to have fighters to fight consecutively like that.

    I have an awful premonition that Aoki is going to get kneed/kicked in the groin and stop the fight early again.

  11. MMA Forums says:

    I agree it’s definitely asking a lot for two fights in a two week time space.

  12. sprewellrimz says:

    you guys are forgetting Nagata absolutely sucks.

  13. The Gaijin says:

    Pretty shoddy rating for UFN and TUF on Wednesday. I think they’re getting around the same rating as the horrible TNA pro wrestling show.

    Can’t say I’m really surprised about UFN as it was more of a hardcore’s wet-dream with lots of good match-ups but no real star power – outside of maybe Houston Alexander (who’s star power was extinguished for sure after that fight) and maybe Karo (but I think he’s more “our” guy than the casual fan’s cup of tea).

  14. Dave2 says:

    I can’t believe they’ll have the winner of JZ/Aoki fight again 12 days later. That’s bullshit. But they wanted to fit Uno in so I guess they had no choice after the NC. They could have evened the gap between the events though at least. How can you have DREAM 2 about 1 1/2 month after DREAM 1 but then have DREAM 3 12 days after DREAM 2? Horrible scheduling job.

    Also I too wonder why DREAM is having a LW GP on TBS in a 19:00 – 20:54 timeslot. Lightweights don’t draw. That slot is just fine for Middleweights (though it should be a little later since the Japanese might still not have arrived home from work at 7 PM.) But the lightweights should be on some late-night time slot where TBS doesn’t have high expectations.

    But it’s odd how the fight business works in Japan. The K-1 World MAX GP Final last year had about the same rating as the K-1 World GP Final. So the Japanese like to see 154 pound K-1 but not 154 pound MMA? What gives?

  15. ilostmydog says:

    There is a drastic difference to how K-1 is perceived relative to MMA in Japan. Plus, K-1 MAX had Masato.

  16. The Gaijin says:

    KID can draw – and he’s a featherweight. But he’s obviously the exception to the rule.

  17. Pontus says:

    I really like the lightweight tournament they have going in Dreams now.
    But why can’t they make up brackets when the tournament starts instead of deciding who will fight who in every round of the tournament.

    It just feels wrong that they can matchmake the tournament to try and have the outcome they want.

    I mean how would it look in another sport if the ones who ran the tournament could decide the matchups after every round..

  18. Dave2 says:

    “There is a drastic difference to how K-1 is perceived relative to MMA in Japan. Plus, K-1 MAX had Masato.”

    K-1 was always more popular than MMA. But the fact that MMA is less popular doesn’t really explain why heavyweight/light heavyweight (and Middleweight if a Japanese star or a Gracie is fighting, otherwise they don’t care) MMA can draw and lightweight MMA can’t (except for Yamamoto).

    K-1 MAX has Masato but he’s not on every K-1 MAX show. Masato makes an appearance in the Final 16 and the Finals and a superfight on occasion but that’s it. Obviously having a marketable star helps but I believe I’ve seen K-1 MAX get good ratings without Masato being featured.

  19. The Gaijin says:

    Because in MMA – to them an off shoot of puro – it’s always about the Japanese star (from judo, wrestling or puro) beating the monster gaijin “heel”.

    There’s no “spectacle” to a Japanese fighter fighting and beating a foreigner or countryman that is his own size.

  20. Dave2 says:

    Maybe I can answer my own question. I’m a pretty casual K-1 viewer but I’ve heard from a K-1 enthusiast just now that the female fan base is a big money boon for FEG. They show tampon, cosmetics and other female hygiene/beauty products when Masato is fighting (the guy is right, I’ve seen some of these type of ads in the Japanese MAX GP feed recently and Masato wasn’t even fighting). He also says K-1 MAX has a lot of pretty boys with Masato being the main pretty boy but not the only one. So that might explain why MAX ratings don’t always suffer when Masato isn’t featured on a card.

    On the other hand, superheavyweight K-1 is struggling because all the formerly attractive stars are getting old or out of the sport and the current champion Semmy Schilt is unattractive and relatively boring. With the female fan base losing interest, the ratings go down he says.

    This was also the reason why K-1 apparently changed the knee/clinch rules to favor Masato and penalize Buakaw. The female fans were apparently crying and being turned off from the sport when they saw Buakaw knee Masato’s pretty face to a mess.

    After hearing this, that’s quite depressing. I’m all for entertainment first, sport second but I don’t ever want to see American MMA turn into a big whole shill for ratings like that. Can you imagine if the UFC changed the rules to ensure that handsome GSP and Rich Franklin don’t get their pretty faces messed up?

  21. ilostmydog says:

    Heavier fighters outdraw the lighter ones because it is easier to view those bouts as ‘entertainment’ rather than fighting. It’s harder for people to do the same when lighter, highly skilled fighters are in the ring.

  22. sved says:

    GOOD POINTS ALL AROUND

    however the key to remember is charisma

    Mach Saukurai has it
    Caol Uno has it
    Yamamoto Kid has it

    the Dream is considered fairly lowball by mainstream trend followers in its home country–but hardcore MMA fans Worldwide like it. The thing to key in on is that the PPv model is good and will make WVR money over the course of the year…Solid Japan vs-Brazil matches w/ a sprinkling of interest drawing HW matchups–(lets see some of those in the UFC they have about 3 good shows for HW’s a year) is what will bring the Competition between WVR and Dreams to a boil.

    Right now the key is finding a superstar hW matchup and a really exciting back and forth matchup between some newcomers to draw fan interest

  23. Dave2 says:

    I thought Pay-Per-View wasn’t a lucrative venture in Japan? They have Yoshida on their roster, Barnett as well and Gomi makes 20 million Yen (depending on the exchange rate fluctation, that’s about $188,000) a fight. Those are some pretty expensive guys so they need to get good buys on SkyPerfectTV in order to recoup. Though WVR is not big enough to get on Network TV either so they have to stick with PPV. But Yoshida vs. Barnett, Japanese vs Gaijin, Judo vs. Catch Wrestling, was a good theme for a main event for the first night. So the product will at least bring in interest.

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