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« | Home | »

DREAM 11 at Yokohama Arena

By Zach Arnold | October 6, 2009

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Update (10/7): The show drew a 12.7% rating on Tokyo Broadcasting System. The highest quarter-hour mark? Minowaman vs. Choi Hong-Man. Minowaman faces Sokoudjou in the Super Hulk tournament finals. This is funny news because Sokoudjou was not too thrilled about having to face Bob Sapp at DREAM 11 (Sokoudjou wanted his fight against Gegard Mousasi). Sokoudjou should be thrilled with the easy payday and the fact that he will get another easy payday against Minowaman and draw some eyeballs.

For the hardcore fans, the big story of the show was Joe Warren losing to Bibiano Fernandes in the Featherweight tournament. Warren, who was the clear cut favorite on the sportsbooks to win the tournament, got submitted/referee stopped by Fernandes. In the week leading up to the show, Warren had been doing media rounds and telling writers that he has been spending too much time away from home, so much so that he wanted to open up a Team Quest branch in Denver in order to get some consistency back in his home life. Warren was anywhere from a +100 ~ +150 to win the tournament. Hiroyuki Takaya was second at around +200 ~ +225. Fernandes was a big underdog as a ‘win the whole tournament’ play. Which, naturally, meant that he would win the whole deal like he did. It will be very interesting to see where Fernandes gets ranked on upcoming Top 10 lists in the 145-pound category.

Kazushi Sakuraba dispatched of boxer Rubin Williams (video here) and Sokoudjou finished off Bob Sapp pretty quickly. Ikuhisa Minowa, being outweighed by over 150 pounds against Choi Hong-Man, submitted the (former) giant with a heel hook.

Shin’ya Aoki defeated Joachim Hansen by submission to get the DREAM Lightweight title.

The claimed attendance for the show at Yokohama Arena was 14,039.

Topics: DREAM, Japan, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 27 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

27 Responses to “DREAM 11 at Yokohama Arena”

  1. PizzaChef says:

    The Aoki/Hansen fight was a goddamn joke.

    It looked like they were trying to do everything to fix it for Aoki. Aoki faked an injury and the ref was helping Aoki take down Hansen. It was just a bad joke.

    Rest of the card wasn’t bad. The final was simply amazing.

  2. Alan Conceicao says:

    Fernandes was a big underdog? Really? I wish I hadn’t put all my money into football this past weekend then, because I could have made a killing betting on him. I would have thought he’d be the obvious favorite. Oh well.

    Where does he belong in the 145lb picture? I dunno. Depends if he fights again soon. A rematch with Kid Yamamoto makes a ton of sense…it would be stupid not to do that fight. He’s probably solidly in the top 10.

  3. Zach Arnold says:

    Fernandes was a big underdog? Really? I wish I hadn’t put all my money into football this past weekend then, because I could have made a killing betting on him. I would have thought he’d be the obvious favorite. Oh well.

    On one sportsbook:

    Which fighter will win the Featherweight GP?

    Warren – +100
    Takaya – +200
    Fernandes – +800
    Tokoro – +1200

    Not kidding.

  4. 45 Huddle says:

    Shinya Aoki can’t take a shot. It’s that simple. I have never seen a fighter appear more hurt from grazing shots then Aoki. Between this fight and the first JZ fight…. I’m not sure which is worse.

    DREAM has done everything possible to help this guy out. Obviously he has skills, but he is always one punch away from losing a fight. The best is Aoki calling out the UFC fighters in interviews all the time. Watch his second fight with Sakurai to see what would happen to him over and over in the UFC. And yes, I know knees on the ground are illegal, but he would be hit until knocked out by most of their top Lightweights.

    As for Hansen…. He is kind of in a pickle right now. He really should be fighting at 145 pounds. He talked smack about the WEC, so it is highly unlikely he will end up there. DREAM’s Featherweight Division is really closer to Bantamweight. The guy is out of luck. And he is too inconsistent at Lightweight….

    Anybody have a video link of the finals? It sounded awesome from all the descriptions but I haven’t been able to find it…

  5. Bryan says:

    45, here is the link for the GP Final.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qth7WiAqHi0

  6. 45 Huddle says:

    thanks Bryan!!

  7. Alan Conceicao says:

    I don’t know why Hansen would want to fight in the WEC. Even if he’s getting paid peanuts in Japan (say, 25-30K a fight) that’s a lot more than he’d get in the US fighting for the WEC’s featherweight division.

  8. 45 Huddle says:

    Very good finals. Probably the best final fight I have seen in the last 10 years the major Japanese organizations, including RINGS, Pride, Sengoku, and DREAM. I saw some people online say they thought it could have gone either way, not sure how that is the case. Fernandes controlled the vast majority of the fight except losing the last 90 seconds.

    And Wow, Bibiano had back control while Takaya was standing up, and they restarted it. You have to be kidding me. That might be worse then the Nelson/Arlovski stand-up. The DREAM refs were horrible throughout the event. They would stick their hand between the fights if one punch was borderline back of the head. They would show absolutely favortism to the Japanese fighters. Just horrible.

    Alan…. My point is that he doesn’t have a good weight class right now. He weighed in at like 151 lbs. No way should he be fighting at Lightweight. And yet because of the way the DREAM weight classes are structured, he will always be too small for LW and to big for FW. i agree he will be making more money in DREAM, but he is also much more likely to get more losses on his record while being there.

  9. I didn’t see Bibiano as the biggest underdog anywhere. Tokoro was a HUGE underdog on most sites. I grabbed up Bibiano at +300 and threw down half the max bet.

  10. Zack says:

    Zach…those were not the odds going into last nights show, maybe going into the 2nd round.

    Here was prior to last night…

    Odds to win entire Dream Featherweight GP:
    Bibiano Fernandes +300
    Joe Warren -115
    Hiroyuki Takaya +300
    Hideo Tokoro +1400
    Field (Any fighter not listed above) +1300

  11. Dave says:

    Those odds are hilarious. I’m pretty sure most of us knew this was Bibiano’s tournament coming into this show. I, on a whim, put 5 bucks on Warren to win the whole thing before his debut because the odds were crazy. It was 5 to win $1,000.

    Funny how he beats KID Yamamoto and his stock goes through the roof.

  12. Zack says:

    “Funny how he beats KID Yamamoto and his stock goes through the roof.”

    Yes, that is peculiar how big wins would give someone more legitimacy.

  13. Robert Joyner says:

    Zach, you asked about where bibiano would place in rankings….. on my ballot for the next IMMAWR, i’ll have him at 8 or so, plus or minus one

    like a few others, looking at the finals draw i figured Bibiano would take it, Warren just lacked respect for his ground game, lacked the good sense/gameplan to tread carefully

  14. BM2 says:

    That’s insane, Bibiano was even more underrated than I thought. I thought everyone had already assumed he was the favourite after KID was eliminated…

  15. smoogy says:

    Aoki vs. Kawajiri and Bibiano vs. Kid Yamamoto II on NYE, please.

  16. Dave says:

    “Yes, that is peculiar how big wins would give someone more legitimacy.”

    I love KID, he is entertaining to watch, but uhhh yeaaah, KID has kinda been exposed.

  17. The Gaijin says:

    “KID has kinda been exposed.”

    Really? How so? He lost a close call to Warren and was coming in with a ton of ring rust on him. He’s got W’s over Yahya, Fernandes (who everyone is creaming over), Sudo, Uno and Curran.

    He might be overrated, but I’d hardly say that he’s been “exposed”.

  18. Zack says:

    Who hasn’t been “exposed” recently? WEC’s golden boys haven’t looked great this year. Doesn’t mean they aren’t top notch still in their weight classes. Kid lost an extremely close decision to someone who is going to be a top guy for the next handful of years.

  19. David M says:

    I’m not sure if I will never watch Dream again and I don’t think Aoki should even be ranked. There was no kick to the groin; that was appalling. I hate Japanese mma.

  20. dangerousdan says:

    19 posts so far and no slam on Sapp. . . . odd

  21. Dave says:

    Sapp isn’t worth making fun of at this point. He does what you expect him to do.

    I haven’t watched any of this show yet, is it as depressing to watch as the last Sengoku in the empty backroom arena?

  22. Mark says:

    We’re so used to him losing nobody cares anymore.

  23. Kalle says:

    As a longtime Hansen fan the title fight was a disgrace. Good on Aoki for pulling out the last second victory, he earned that, but the blatantly preferential treatment he got from the referee was just disgusting. Is there any kind of official explenation on why they allowed him to take a break and rest after being hurt from those upkicks?

  24. Dave says:

    I think KID’s time as a top level fighter is just gone. I loved him to death in the past, and the fight with Sudo was one of the most anticipated fights for me in the past few years, that doesn’t mean I have to see a bright future for him now.

    KID, realistically, is not a top 10 fighter at 145. He has a past that is littered against great competition and gimme fights and has pulled off some solid wins, but we are talking two years ago. Yahya has gone 3-0 since, Bibiano 6-0.

    KID has an ego and a ton of hype behind him, which can weigh him down.

  25. Ivan Trembow says:

    I have been a bit puzzled by two things in the reaction to this event online:

    -Apparently, Aoki was somehow protected and it was somehow a crime for him to get time to recover after getting kicked in the groin. Really? The instant replays were from a reverse camera angle from which you couldn’t actually see the foot hit the groin, but if you go back and look at the original camera angle as it happened live, it’s clear as day that he was kicked in the groin. Are fighters not supposed to get a break to recover when they get kicked in the groin? The fact that Hansen kicked Aoki twice in the head after kicking him once in the groin doesn’t change the fact that Aoki was kicked in the groin.

    -Also, the Fernandes vs. Takaya fight was apparently a Fight of the Year candidate. Really? I didn’t come away from the fight with that feeling at all. I thought it was a good fight, but a Fight of the Year candidate? No way.

    On the whole, there was far more bad than good with this event. The “good” was the Aoki-Hansen fight and the Featherweight Grand Prix; and the “bad” was the embarrassing mismatches given to Sakuraba and Kawajiri, as well as the awful Minowa-Choi fight and the predictably one-sided Sokoudjou-Sapp fight (although at least that didn’t appear to be a badly-worked pro wrestling match with a pre-determined ending, which is more than I can say for Sapp’s previous fight in the Super Hulk tournament against Minowa).

    I know that the Super Hulk crap is the key to their success in the ratings, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. The same could be said of EliteXC putting Kimbo Slice in fight after fight on major events, and I didn’t support that, either.

  26. Kalle says:

    Ivan, I looked at the upkicks in slowmotion. In the original camera angle the ref blocks the view but there’s a hint of a foot in the groin area. The only person with a clear view was the ref and he only stepped in after two kicks to the head.

  27. Ultimo Santa says:

    Akoi got kicked in the nuts, dropped his hands to hold his junk, and THEN got kicked in the fact a couple times.

    The ref made the right call to jump in. I don’t see how this was Dream “protecting” him.

    I’m not saying anything about Akoi’s ability to take a punch because that’s a stupid argument that gets made ad nauseum about every single fighter that’s ever been KOed – always by a bunchy of keyboard warriors who are barely athletic enough to lift an XBOX controller. (I read a post every other day about how GSP has a glass jaw…this type of crap seriously has to stop)

    But Akoi and Hansen had a competitive fight, Akoi DID take some big shots, and he won – fair and square – in dramatic fashion. End of story.

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