Forgot all about this, there are some very good fights. The Hansen-Alvarez figth went about like I thought, but Alvarez looked sharper on the feet than I thought and Hansen was a little better on the ground than I thought, but basically it was Alvarez way outboxing, way outwrestling, and then escaping 2 or 3 good sub attempts. Alvarez is a legit top 10 lw now I would think. Diaz looked good, the refs kept ****ing him and giving the hometown fighter the chance to stop and wipe the blood from his mouth, give me a ****ing break, why not just penalize Diaz for wearing the wrong shorts or some other Japanese crock of ****. Manhoef hulked up on the ground and pounded Kim to ****. Mayhem GnP'd with nothing coming back for 6 minutes or so until somebody had some mercy and stopped it. Kawajiri won a decision that I didn't pay much attention to. After last night the idea that Ishida was considered the #1 LW in the world by some people seems incredibly laughable, somehow Uno stopped about every takedown, outstruck him, and then RNC'd him, it was really weird, very un-Ishida like. Kawajiri, Ishida's teammate had to basically be restrained when Uno went to go through the usual "good fight" stuff; something related to a 2004 shooto fight between Uno and Kawajiri that went to a draw.
Overall, it was a good event. Alvarez/Hansen is a fight of the year candidate :good . It was good to see Uno put on a good performace and be the first fighter to sub Ishida. Don't think the Kawajiri incident was to do with thier fight in 04 but more to do with Uno beating his boy. Results in full:- Takeshi Yamazaki def. Shoji Maruyama via unanimous decision Jason Miller def. Katsuyori Shibata via TKO (punches) Round 1, 6:57 Melvin Manhoef def. Dae Won Kim via TKO (strikes) Round 1, 4:08 Daisuke Nakamura def. Bu Kyung Jung via KO (punch) Round 2,1:05 Nick Diaz def. Katsuya Inoue TKO (Towel, Punches) Round 1, 6:45 Tatsuya Kawajiri def. Luiz Firmino via unanimous decision Eddie Alvarez def. Joachim Hansen via unanimous decision Caol Uno def. Mitsuhiro Ishida via submission (rear-naked choke) Round 2, 2:39
Seems like a good card. Im impressed at what Dream is doing. I really miss Pride now that its been a year I hope that can kinda replace it.
Good stuff. I'm glad Dreams is here to bring back some of that old Pride flair, and I'm happy EliteXC seems to be taking off. The UFC needs the competition, whether they know it or not. Competition is better for the fans and pushes each product to get better.
Hell yes it is, that was a wonderful fight, I prefer to see fights finished, but **** that was good. It was sort of a clash of a very american style with boxing and wrestling and a very scandanavian style with guardwork and muay thai. I have no real insight about why Kawajiri went ape****, just what I read.
