Saturday night in Japan, late night here for those of us living in North America, the DREAM.16 event took place at the Nippon Gaishi Hall in Nagoya, Japan.
If you stayed up late to watch the event on HDNet then you watched as Gegard Mousasi became the first DREAM light-heavyweight champ by submitting opponent Tatsuya Mizuno with a rear-naked-choke at 6:10 of round 1.
While Jason “Mayhem” Miller became only the second fighter to ever submit Japanese legend Kazushi Sakuraba. The Japanese fighter looked all his age at 41, against the younger Miller and was quickly submitted by arm-triangle choke at 2:09 of the first round. The first to submit Sakuraba was Kimo Leopoldo who did it back in July of 1996 in the Japanese fighters first professional fight.
The full results for DREAM.16 are as follows:
Light Heavyweight Championship bout: Gegard Mousasi def. Tatsuya Mizuno via submission (rear-naked choke) – R1 @ 6:10
Middleweight bout: Jason “Mayhem” Miller def. Kazushi Sakuraba via submission (arm-triangle choke) – R1 @ 2:09
Lightweight bout: Shinya Aoki def. Marcus Aurelio via unanimous decision
Openweight bout: Satoshi Ishii def. Ikuhisa Minowa via unanimous decision
Featherweight bout: Hiroyuki Takaya def. Chase Beebe via KO (punches) – R1 @ 1:45
Featherweight bout: Michihiro Omigawa def. Cole Escovedo via submission (armbar) – R1 @ 2:30
Featherweight bout: Joachim Hansen def. Hideo Tokoro via submission (triangle choke) – R1 @ 2:48
Featherweight bout: Kazuyuki Miyata def. Takeshi “Lion” Inoue via unanimous decision
Featherweight bout: Mitsuhiro Ishida def. Akiyo “Wicky” Nishiura via split decision
Heavyweight bout: Yusuke Kawaguchi def. James Thompson via split decision