Tag: Keiichi Sasahara

Kawajiri vs. Miyata, Takaya vs. Inoue Booked for New Year’s Eve DREAM Card

Filed under: News, JapanA pair of featherweight bouts have been booked for the Dec. 31 “How Are You?” event (this year’s Dynamite!! equivalent) with Tatsuya Kawajiri squaring off against Kazuyuki Miyata and Hiroyuki Takaya defending his belt against Ta…

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A pair of featherweight bouts have been booked for the Dec. 31 “How Are You?” event (this year’s Dynamite!! equivalent) with Tatsuya Kawajiri squaring off against Kazuyuki Miyata and Hiroyuki Takaya defending his belt against Takeshi “Lion” Inoue in Saitama, Japan.

DREAM executive producer Keiichi Sasahara announced the bouts Thursday at a press conference in Tokyo.

Kawajlri (29-7-2) fought in two of the three DREAM events in 2011, beating Drew Fickett and Joachim Hansen. In April, Kawajiri challenged Gilbert Melendez for the Strikeforce lightweight belt and lost by first-round TKO. In his most recent fight against Hansen in September, Kawajiri made the drop to featherweight. Miyata (11-8) fought once this year in a losing effort against Takaya with the DREAM title on the line.

Takaya (16-9-1), who won the DREAM title last New Year’s Eve, returned to the U.S. in April for Strikeforce and lost on the undercard to now-UFC fighter Robert Peralta. Takaya then bounced back in July with the aforementioned win over Miyata. Inoue (21-5) won all three of his fights this year against Taiki Tsuchiya, Koichiro Matsumoto and Caol Uno.

The full card will be a mixture of MMA, kickboxing and pro wrestling matches and will air on HDNet.

 

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Keiichi Sasahara Explains Alistair Overeem’s Absence

Filed under: DREAM, News, JapanDREAM Executive Producer Keiichi Sasahara met with the press Thursday to attempt to clarify the on-again, off-again situation regarding Alistair Overeem’s participation at DREAM.15. Well, clarify is probably the wrong wor…

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DREAM Executive Producer Keiichi Sasahara met with the press Thursday to attempt to clarify the on-again, off-again situation regarding Alistair Overeem‘s participation at DREAM.15. Well, clarify is probably the wrong word.

“Towards the end of the negotiations, because of reasons that I am not able to tell you, although the two fighters agreed to fight, it happened that these fighters could not fight. It’s not because of money, but if the reasons are something that I cannot tell you then you might be able to guess what they would be. Because of that, we are not able to have these two fighters fight.”

Ricco Rodriguez was at no point mentioned by Sasahara as Overeem’s opponent. Instead, former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski was planned.

Sasahara’s full statement after the break.

Executive Dances Around Exclusion of Overeem on DREAM 15 Card

(No, Overeem will not be fighting…but enough about that. Have have you all seen our new hex-shaped cage. I call it the Sexagon.)
In a bizarre move, DREAM Executive Producer Keiichi Sasahara addressed the media today in an attempt to quell the ru…


(No, Overeem will not be fighting…but enough about that. Have have you all seen our new hex-shaped cage. I call it the Sexagon.)

In a bizarre move, DREAM Executive Producer Keiichi Sasahara addressed the media today in an attempt to quell the rumors regarding Alistair Overeem dropping out of the event, but refused to discuss the reason for the Dutch fighter’s withdrawal, effectively doing little more than fuelling further speculation.

MMAFighting has the transcription of Sasahara’s prepared statement.

"Towards the end of the negotiations, because of reasons that I am not able to tell you, although the two fighters agreed to fight, it happened that these fighters could not fight. It’s not because of money, but if the reasons are something that I cannot tell you then you might be able to guess what they would be. Because of that, we are not able to have these two fighters fight.
We really wanted Alistair [Overeem] to fight. Today, unfortunately it is not happening so we will only have seven fights. I have to apologize to the fans who have been looking forward to seeing Alistair fight in Japan. I’m sorry."

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