Press Release
STRIKEFORCE superstar Gegard Mousasi won the DREAM Light Heavyweight Championship Saturday night, submitting Tatsuya Mizuno with a stunning rear-naked choke in the first round.
Mousasi, one of the sport’s most skilled mixed martial artists, forced Mizuno to tap 6:10 into the fight, at DREAM 16, in Nagoya, Japan.
Mousasi knocked Mizuno down with strikes to the head and then slapped on the rear-naked choke for the win.
The 25-year-old Dutch-Armenian fighter improved his record to 30-3-1. Deadly both on the ground and standing up, Mousasi has won 17 of his fights by knockout and 11 by submission.
Mousasi has won 17 of his last 18 fights. His loss came to Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal, who took Mousasi’s STRIKEFORCE Light Heavyweight championship, in a unanimous decision.
With the DREAM Light Heavyweight championship under his belt, Mousasi will likely now seek to regain the STRIKEFORCE crown, in hopes of unifying the titles in two of MMA’s most prominent promotions.
With the exception of the King Mo loss, where Mousasi had difficulty stopping Mo’s wrestling takedowns, Mousasi has looked nearly unstoppable.
Also on the DREAM card, STRIKEFORCE’s Jason “Mayhem” Miller stunned Japanese fans by forcing Kazushi Sakuraba to tap out from an arm-triangle choke at 2:09 of the first round.
Miller, one of STRIKEFORCE’s flashiest, most charismatic middleweight fighters, shocked fans because Sakuraba, a Japanese legend, had not tapped out in nearly 15 years.
Miller, known for his slap-boxing style, took Sakuraba to the ground, pounded him, and then forced him to tap out with the triangle.
Miller had promised fans that he would force the icon to submit.