Hong Man Choi

('This guy's totally rich or something, right? Right?')

Wouldn’t you know it, the same day we dance on Tim Sylvia’s MMA grave, his name pops up in the news again, this time to say he may have either a very legitimate or very ridiculous fight in the works.  According to Sylvia’s manager, Monte Cox, Big Tim is in talks to head to Japan for a New Year’s Eve fight and Cox says he’s “pretty confident that he is going to fight there.”

What they don’t know is whether he’ll fight for Dream or Sengoku, but apparently Dream contractees Alistair Overeem and Hong Man Choi have both been discussed as possible opponents.  That means that he might get a real fight against the Strikeforce heavyweight champion (who, again, is avoiding fighting in the U.S. like he’s got some kind of Roman Polanski-esque legal troubles over here), or he’ll do the typical NYE freak show fight against Choi.  Those are two very different potential futures for Sylvia.  You’d hope that he would rather go the serious route if given the choice, but as we’ve seen in the past, Sylvia is not above taking a bout that makes no sense at all.

What do you say, would you rather see Sylvia in an absurd fight against Hong Man Choi, just to keep the New Year’s Eve tradition intact, or does Sylvia-Overeem really get your heart pumping?  Side question: if he does fight HMC, what are the odds that he joins Jose Canseco and Bobby Ologun on the “Techno Goliath’s” list of MMA victims?  Just saying, this is the guy who couldn’t close the deal with a hard-drinking strip club bartender on Blind Date,  so you better believe he knows how to screw up a sure thing.

(Props: YouTube.com/DREAM)

What do you do when you're a broken-down Japanese MMA legend and you've been booked against an unknown American boxer in a meaningless exhibition? Make an absolute farce out of it, obviously. Check out Kazushi Sakuraba get his physical-comedy on during the DREAM.11 weigh-ins today (starting at the 0:59 mark). Despite the bizarre behavior, Rubin Williams was nice enough to shout out Saku as a "great champion," and referred to himself as a former world champion boxer, which may not be true. During a pre-fight interview, Williams told media that "I had a guy that was working with me on some MMA moves back in Detroit...As far as the ground game, I've been getting pretty good at it over the last year. So I'll display what I've learned in the fight Tuesday." Yikes. Rubin, you may be able to pass guard on a training dummy, but that's not going to help you against one of the best grapplers in the history of the sport. Don't overthink it — just throw that overhand right and hope for a miracle.

After the jump: Full weigh-in results, and video of the Super Hulks hitting the scale. Nice t-shirt, Hong — was it laundry day?

(In the animal kingdom, playing dead can be considered an intelligent defense. In an MMA fight, not so much. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Yesterday's event may have been low on spectacle, but DREAM plans to come back strong for their next show. Here's what's on the card for DREAM.11 (October 6th, Yokohama):

— The long-awaited rubber-match between Shinya Aoki and Joachim Hansen. The two top-ten lightweights first met at PRIDE Shockwave 2006, where Aoki took out Hellboy via gogoplata. But Hansen got revenge last July, scoring a brutal TKO over Aoki at DREAM's lightweight GP finals. Hansen has been inactive since that fight, while Aoki has gone 4-1, earning victories over Eddie Alvarez and Vitor Ribeiro, with his only loss to Hayato Sakurai in an ill-advised welterweight match.

Shaq Wants to Fight Chuck Liddell and Hong Man Choi - Watch more Funny Videos
(Props: the6levels.com)

The chances of Shaquille O'Neal taking on Chuck Liddell in an MMA match? Still not very good. But it seems that Sweaty Shaq has another fighter in his sights these days: "The big boy that knocked out Jose Canseco." O'Neal has been training hard at The 6 Levels, and wants to avenge the reputation of American pro athletes by whupping Hong Man Choi after he retires from basketball in a year or two. We hope DREAM is still around by then to put this match together, because it sounds like the ultimate freak-fight. Shaq already has a way with trash-talking Asian opponents, and with Bob Sapp's star power fading, someone needs to fill the role of "huge crazy black guy who fights in Japan and beats up cardboard cutouts." Anyway, Shaq vs. HMC: Who takes it and how?

Ah, the freak show.  Where honest competition meets the insatiable human desire to see something weird, typically in Japan.  In light of the events at this week's Dream "Super Hulk" tournament, we thought we'd take a look back and count down the ten craziest, most outlandish freak show fights in MMA history.  Some are bizarre enough to be fun.  Some are just horrible.  At least one is actually kind of good.  All are totally insane.  Enjoy.

#10: Fedor Emelianenko vs. Zuluzinho
Pride Shockwave 2005, 12/31/05

Zuluzinho (real name Wagner da Conceição Martins, which explains why he goes by Zuluzinho) got his shot at Fedor for two reasons: 1) he is the son of the now legendary Zulu, the Brazilian beast of a man who should be familiar to anyone who has seen “Choke,” and 2) because at 6’7” and nearly 400 pounds, he’s a big, scary-looking fat dude.  What he isn’t is quality competition for Fedor, and that’s why he got the fight on December 31.  Everyone knows Fedor loves to beat a freak’s ass to ring in the New Year, the bigger and freakier the better.  

Just in case there was any doubt that this was an almost criminal mismatch, Zuluzinho erased it by going down with the second punch thrown in the fight.  We like to think that as he was falling time slowed down like in the movies and Zuluzinho allowed himself to wonder just for a moment, 'Is there a chance that the Pride matchmakers haven’t been taking me seriously?'