(Ishii misunderstood the SEG reps when they offered for him to sign for a K-1 bout with LeBanner. He thought he was signing for to get a K-1 belt with LeBanner.)
In keeping with Japanese tradition of announcing bouts at the last minute, K-1 revealed the majority of its competitors for its FieLDS Dynamite!! show on New Year’s Eve at a special press conference held in Japan last night.
Besides the rumored featherweight championship bout between champion Bibiano Fernandes and Hiroyuki Takaya and welterweight title tilt between Marius Zaromskis and Kazushi Sakuraba, SEG also confirmed Satoshi Ishii vs. Jerome Le Banner, Sergei Kharitonov vs. Tatsuya Mizuno, Shinya Aoki vs. Yuichiro Nagashim, Kyotaro Fujimoto vs. Gegard Mousasi and Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Josh Thomson among among other bouts.
They also announced that Strikeforce heavyweight champion and K-1 Open Weight Grand Prix winner Alistair Overeem will be on the card against a yet-to-be-named opponent and that depending on the caliber of his challenger, the fight could be for the DREAM heavyweight strap. Bobby Lashley and Todd Duffee are the two leading candidates to face The Reem, but according to sources, an announcement likely won’t happen until next week as they are working through a few hurdles with their number one choice.
A strange addition to the card is a pro wrestling bout between Bob Sapp and Shinichi Suzukawa which will be contested under Antonio Inoki’s Inoki Genome Federation (IGF) rules. At least it will give us a chance to go to the washroom and to grab a sandwich and a beer.
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Fans won’t get a chance to see Gilbert Melendez vs. Shinya Aoki at Dynamite!!, but there will be an important lightweight DREAM vs. Strikeforce fight on the card after all.
Strikeforce has a lightweight champion, Gilbert Melendez, whose only fight in 2010 was a win over the lightweight champion of Dream, Shinya Aoki, and who keeps talking about his desire to fight the lightweight champion of Bellator, Eddie Alvarez. So doesn’t Strikeforce have any of its own lightweights for its champion to fight?
I can’t help but think that maybe, as a child, Nick Diaz saw one too many after-school specials about bullying and came away with the wrong message. Somehow, somewhere in the spooky corridors of his mind, the notion took route that you can’t allow yourself to respect anyone until after you’ve beaten them in a fight.
MMAFighting.com has the disclosed fighter purses for this past Saturday’s Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Noons 2 event from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif.