Dynamite

I don’t want to speculate as to what kind of diet Alistair Overeem has been on, but as Robert from Free Fight Videos points out with this helpful timeline, dude has gotten progressively bigger over the last few years.  He dwarfed Badr Hari when they squared off at Fields Dynamite, weighing in at 254.3 lbs for the fight.  This is a guy who used to be tall and lanky.  Now he’s a mountain of muscle, with a noticeably bulkier face, and the transformation has happened mostly while fighting in Japan.  There, I said it.

Just take a look at this video of Overeem’s fight with Chuck Liddell back in 2003.  He looks like a beanpole compared with the monster who knocked out Hari.  They must have some really excellent weight-gainer shakes in Holland...

Wow.  Who would have thought that a) we'd ever see Mark Hunt get knocked out by something as simple as a left hook-straight right combo, b) in the opening seconds of a fight, and c) by a middleweight.  This is the guy who walked right through a Cro Cop high kick.  Hats off to Melvin Manhoef.  Maybe now he'll get that fight with Kimbo Slice that he wants. 

More videos from Fields Dynamite 2008 after the jump.

(Now that I think about it, Kinnikuman would fit in perfectly with the TapouT crew.  Somebody get Punk-Ass to bring the bus around and pick him up.)

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you really want to bet on K-1 Dynamite 2008 tonight, which you probably won’t get to watch until tomorrow and which may or may not turn out to be a total shitstorm.  First, you’re a crazy son of a bitch, you know that?  Second, we got you covered.  Here are the best odds on the ‘net, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Joachim Hansen (+150) vs. Gesias Cavalcante (-105)
Kazushi Sakuraba (-125) vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (+120)
Eddie Alvarez (-105) vs. Shinya Aoki (+120)
Semmy Schilt (-531) vs. Siala Siliga (+450)
Hong Man Choi (+160) vs Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic (-155)
Daisuke Nakamura (-110) vs. Hideo Tokoro (+135)
Alistair Overeem (+270) vs. Badr Hari (-250)

Thoughts…

('It's not a skirt, you assholes.  The Romans wore these. Read a book.')

The surprises just keep coming for the New Year’s Eve K-1 Dynamite show.  Jerome Le Banner is sick with the flu and has been forced to pull out of his fight with Mark Hunt, and Melvin Manhoef has agreed to take his place.  Despite the incredible weight difference between the heavyweight Hunt and the sort of middleweight Manhoef, the two will fight an MMA bout under “Dream rules” for three five-minute rounds.  

Is it a good idea for Manhoef, a vicious striker with an almost non-existent ground game to face a much heavier and damn near impossible to knock out fighter like Hunt, who also packs a serious wallop of his own?  Short answer: no.  No, it is probably not a good idea.  Especially on short notice.  But unlike many of the other bad ideas on the Dynamite NYE show, this one I’d actually love to see. 

Dammit, Japan.  Just when I want to curse your lack of rules and regulations, you go and do something like this to leave me more conflicted than ever.  I just can’t quit you.

In other news…

(Props: URDirt.com)

The big news out of Japan today is that Hayato “Mach” Sakurai, who is scheduled to take on Katsuyori Shibata on the New Year’s Eve Dynamite card, has unwittingly become a porn star.  A Japanese website has screen shots from videos featuring Sakurai and as many as three women who are not his wife.  One of them is allegedly the yoga instructor from his gym.  One of them is also pretty hot.

We don’t want to jump to any conclusions (yes we do), but we would like to point out that this is exactly why you don’t make sex tapes if you’re even remotely famous.  It's tempting, yes.  You're just dying to see what your patented "Carpet Bomber" technique looks like on film (the answer is, inevitably, not as cool as you think) but if you make a sex tape and don't immediately erase it, somehow, eventually, it will get leaked.  And odds are it will be a most inopportune time for you, such as a couple days before a big fight.  

But now that I think about it, maybe this all a calculated ploy by Sakurai.  Maybe he’s MMA’s Kim Kardashian.  This puts him back in the news and adds some new interest to a fight that has been largely ignored, what with the freak shows and the big fights and the other freak shows that are oddly meaningful.  Now, suddenly, here we are talking about Sakurai and who he’s banging.

God, I hope this doesn’t become a popular publicity stunt for fighters who want a fast ticket back to the spotlight.  The last thing any of us needs is a Houston Alexander sex tape.  We already know that once the action hits the ground he's clueless.