Dynamite!! 2009! Press Conference Has Arrived Part 3

Shinya Aoki was a little cocky at today’s press conference. When asked about who he wants to fight he said: “Who’s the current champion of SENGOKU? I don’t know.”

He also said that if the promoters tell him to fight, he’ll think about it.

When asked to comment on the message Aoki just sent him, Hirota said: “My frank thoughts are that it made me feel sick (it can also mean feel irritated/offended).”

Hirota once again said that he wants to KO Alvarez on NYE, he thinks that fight would be more exciting. He ended his comment with: “My impression of Aoki? He’s a fighter with long arms and legs.”

FEG’s Tanigawa said that he himself proposed this union event. They started discussing since the end of October. He also said that he doesn’t know what will happen with the FieLDS sponsorship next year.

The WVR GM said that the current plan for the next SRC event is March. The fighters participating will be the fighters who have fought there until now.

Sasahara said that there will be 18-19 fights on NYE, and there will also be fights between DREAM fighters so it’s not only SENGOKU vs. DREAM on the MMA side. Kawajiri and KID couldn’t attend the press conference because they were out on other business.

About SENGOKU only fights (besides Ishii vs. Yoshida) the WVR GM said that it’s yet to be decided if there will be any.

Misaki’s participation is also yet to be decided. There will be a meeting about if his suspension will be lifted or not. Misaki himself said: “I want to obey the instruction of the SENGOKU side.”

There will be foreign fighters competing as well, but the Japanese fighters will be the focus.

Tanigawa wants to match the champions with each other. The rules might depend on the fight.

About a future merger, Tanigawa said that Dynamite!! is mainly TBS’s event so there’s nothing like that.

The plan is for a double main event but Masato’s fight will probably be last since they’ll have a retirement ceremony after the fight. The event will start at 3 PM.

About K-1 fights besides Masato’s retirement fight and the Koshien finals Tanigawa said that there might be. It depends on what happens on December 5th.

Dynamite!! 2009! Press Conference Has Arrived Part 2

NYE 2009: DREAM Vs. SRC - Kamipro.com

Time to get information from the big sites (GBRing.com, Sportsnavi.com, and Kamipro.com) reporting this and who get to ask questions. Most information usually come from these post-press conference Q&A’s.

Satoshi Ishii wasn’t present since he is currently training in Las Vegas. The plan is 7 DREAM Vs. SRC fights. The fights will be announced one of these days. Yoshida said that he hasn’t heard who he’s fighting in this event yet, implying that his fight with Ishii isn’t officially announced yet. Tanigawa said consider what direction we’ll take at the press conference.

However, after the press conference Tanigawa said that they’ll do Yoshida vs. Ishii. That fight and Masato’s retirement fight will be a double main event.

“Mach” didn’t know about any of this since he hasn’t been on the Internet lately. In his comment he said that he’s hungry since he woke up at 12 PM and hasn’t had breakfast yet. The press confernce was moved back 20 minutes because he was late.

Shibata is excited about fighting a SENGOKU fighter, mentioning that there are a lot of Judo medalists there. He wants to fight someone outside of his weight class and he’ll beat him up.

Dynamite!! 2009! Press Conference Has Arrived

The press conference has started. The trailer is currently being played.

Sasahara and Tanigawa present.

Tanigawa announced that they will hold the event together with SENGOKU on NYE.

Announcement of Ishii vs. Yoshida and DREAM vs. SENGOKU fights as well. The full card is currently being worked on.

Japan Martial Arts Federation president Fukuda has entered.

The World Victory Road general manager as well.

The DREAM army is entering the stage.

Kazushi Sakuraba, Hayato “Mach” Sakurai, Katsuyori Shibata, Hideo Tokoro, Hiroyuki Takaya, and Shinya Aoki from DREAM and Kazushisa Watanabe from K-1.

The SENGOKU army entering the stage.

Hidehiko Yoshida, Kazuo Misaki, Hiroshi Izumi, Sanae Kikuta, Akihiro Gono, Kazunori Yokota, Mizuto Hirota, Masanori Kanehara, Eiji Mitsuoka, and Yoshihiro “KISS” Nakao.

Both Watanabe and Tokoro said that they want to fight KID.

Sakuraba with a mask on: “Hi, I’m Hikari Shinji (a character from Evangelion). Please put me against KID who’s in the same weight class as me.”

Nakao asks Tanigawa for Mirko. Gono hinted at Sakurai.

Hirota wants to fight Alvarez. “Don’t you want to see Alvarez get KO’d?”

Yoshida apologized to everyone who was preparing for the Ariake event and asked all fighters present to fight their hearts out on NYE.

Video message from Ishii: “Please be gentle on NYE, Yoshida.”

Sasahara said that rules, the fights, the weight of the fights, etc. are currently being discussed. The only thing certain is that KID won’t fight Sakuraba.

WVR GM said that SENGOKU is planned continue from next year as well. Though I wouldn’t believe what most people say about this right now.

FieLDS Dynamite!! ～The Power Of Courage 2009～
Date: December 31st, 2009
Place: Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan

K-1 MAX Fight (5×3 minutes, 1×3 ext.):
Masato vs. Andy Souwer

Super Hulk Tournament Final:
Minowaman vs. Sokoudjou

The Time Has Finally Come! November 25th, 13:30

FEG will hold a press conference tomorrow at 13:30 with a few of the sources being user Rictor, photographer Dan Herbertson, and SRC fighter Eiji Mitsuoka writing on his blog that there will be a press conference tomorrow.

The Truth?! Don Quijote Buying FEG’s MMA Branch?

There’s a new article on cyzo.com touching on what might be the truth of this whole FEG/WVR thing that’s been going on.

According to the article (which doesn’t say that this is 100% true but it’s from people involved) as SENGOKU didn’t get a TV deal (plus their bad attendance), things were getting tough, so Don Quijote’s Yasuda arranged some very secret meetings with FEG President Tanigawa to discuss a union angle which would excite MMA fans.

FEG were however originally not going to agree to this and just leave SENGOKU be until a possible death and then maybe try to sign Ishii.

However, talks came up that FEG’s sponsor, pachinko manufacturer FieLDS, will not renew their contract next year (I think the pachinko industry is doing really bad right now so FieLDS itself might be in a lot of trouble).

The article states that currently there is not just discussion about Don Quijote becoming a sponsor of FEG’s MMA branch, but buying it. The article also goes on about how things are currently difficult for K-1 as well.

Source: NHBNews PRO

RISE 60! TATSUJI Sends HAYATO Off With A Loss

Final Fight - Sportsnavi.com

RISE 60 took place on the 22nd in Japan and it consisted of some important fights.

In HAYATO’s retirement fight he faced fellow K-1 MAX veteran TATSUJI. TATSUJI won big on points after getting two downs in the first round.

After the fight, TATSUJI thanked HAYATO who fought hard until the end and congratulated his dad on his 60th birthday. He also said that next year he’ll capture the World MAX.

DREAM, HERO’S, and legendary K-1 fighter Kin Taiei defated Magnum Sakai by decision in the extension round after the first three rounds resulted in a draw.

Kan Itabashi successfully defended his RISE 60 kg title after defeating K-1 MAX veteran Keiji Ozaki in the second round after three knockdowns.

In the main event of the evening, for a spot in next years K-1 MAX Japan Tournament and to decide the new RISE 70 kg champion, RYUJI won unanimously after 5 rounds as he defeated Yasuhito Shirasu.

RYUJI said after the fight that in February of next year in MAX, he’ll fight a fight which won’t be embarrassing as a RISE champion.

K-1 Twitter! Tanikawa Shopping At Don Quijote

There were no announcements at all today. In related news however, K-1 have entered the twitter world and K-1 Producer Tanikawa has also started his own.

One hour ago (2 AM Japanese time) Tanikawa updated his twitter from his cellphone, writing that he went shopping at Don Quijote today (Don Quijote as you might now is a chain store which is available at a lot of locations in Japan).

Also check out the K-1 WGP 2009 Finals site which contains a lot of fighters prediction videos and other things.

New Years Eve 2009! Thoughts

It’s quite clear now that something will happen on NYE. I think the likely scenario that has happened is that WVR with Ishii couldn’t get a deal for his NYE fight, so Don Quijote, main sponsor of SENGOKU, jumped ship to FEG. That’s how simple it might be. However, there are some questions on my mind.

Will SENGOKU minus Don Quijote continue after this but be a smaller event? What will J-Rock (management company of Yoshida, Nakamura, etc., a lot of the J-Rock people are WVR staff) do?

Did WVR really have no idea that Don Quijote would jump ship when they entered the new Martial Arts Federation and did other such things? Or are WVR staff also following to FEG?

If only Don Quijote jumped ship, can Yoshida vs. Ishii happen at Dynamite!! just like that without any talk/agreement with WVR?

Will Don Quijote continue supporting the small organizations in Japan? Pancrase would probably be dead now without Don Quijote’s help.

Real Sports wrote an article yesterday that Masato’s retirement might be a lie and that there will be a “retirement withdrawal angle” at some point. Masato not having fought Petrosyan before retiring is a good excuse for him coming back. Also, Masato announced his retirement on April 1st this year.

It makes you wonder about Japanese MMA and how much is true. Is Petrosyan really injured? They said that Mousasi got injured before the Super Hulk semifinals, but some people said that he didn’t participate because of money issues.

Referee Kakuda Suspended! 3 Months

K-1 referee Nobuaki Kakuda was on the 11th suspended from refereeing for 90 days. Which means that he won’t referee at the K-1 Finals or on NYE.

The reason for the suspension is the Takeda vs. Kraus K-1 MAX fight, in which the K-1 rules director thought Kakuda didn’t do a good job between thinking of the fighters damage and the fight being on primetime TV.

Souwer Is Masato’s Opponent! 5 Rounder

Masato Vs. Souwer - Kamipro.com

It was announced today that the final opponent of Masato will be Andy Souwer, who Masato has never beaten. The fight will be a 5 round fight with a possible 1 round extension in the case of a draw.

About the joint event on NYE, DREAM EP Sasahara commented: “At the present time we haven’t been able to have any talks.”

Update: I almost forgot but it’s so obvious now.

Last week before the additional fights for the K-1 WGP Finals event were announced, Tanigawa changed the time of the press conference from 11:30 to 13:00. However, when the time was already past 13:00 he hadn’t arrived yet.

According to the FEG staff there: “An important meeting is being prolonged”. Eventually another FEG staff member held the press conference since Tanigawa didn’t show up.

And guess which date the “prolonged meeting” and press conference was on?

Yes, November 6th.