Shinya Aoki

As promised, here's the Shinya Aoki-Joachim Hansen bout from last night's Dream event, though watching the whole thing is going to take a decent chunk out of your afternoon.  In the interest of making the most of your time, you might just want to skip to the 10:58 mark to see the upkick to the groin, followed by the upkicks to the face from Hansen.  Guy Mezger and Michael Schiavello seem ready to assume that Aoki is faking it, and although he does seem to get some preferential treatment from the ref at times in this fight, the replays confirm that he got kicked in the pills before taking the shots to the head.  So give him a break, would you? 

After you've lived through that fiasco, you might as well move on to the second round.  In the last two minutes Hansen is unlucky enough to end up with Aoki mounted on him, and that rarely leads to anything good.  His calm demeanor after getting stuck in the armbar makes you think he's going to last until the end of the round with no problem, but that Aoki is a slick one.  Up next for him?  Probably a showdown with Tatsuya Kawajiri on the New Year's Eve show.  Also expected for that event is Bob Sapp vs. a puppy.  No word yet on the breed of the puppy, but it is thought to be adorable.  Oddsmakers have pegged it an early -175 favorite over Sapp. 

Bibiano Fernandes vs. Hiroyuki Takaya, plus some press conference footage, is after the jump.

(Props: YouTube.com/UFC)

After two consecutive knockouts over Thiago Silva and Rashad Evans, Dana White can finally start referring to Lyoto Machida as fighter who "loves to stand up and bang." Which is a good thing, because it might be hard to sell UFC 104's main event otherwise: Two Brazilians, one of them an elusive karate practitioner, the other a former PRIDE champ on the decline who got his title shot out of convenience and who will probably lose this fight. In the above preview, Joe Rogan makes sure to remind us of Shogun's glory days, and Dana White reminds us that Rua most recently knocked out Chuck Liddell ["Chuck Liddell, Chuck Liddell"]. Still, Lyoto is impossible to hit and incredibly efficient with his attacks. Can Rua be a legitimate threat to his title, or will he be dominated and demoralized like everyone else the Dragon has faced in the Octagon? Also, Cain Velasquez gets props for the way he rebounded from abuse in his last fight against Cheick Kongo, but Ben Rothwell guarantees that Mr. Brown Pride has never been hit as hard as he's gonna hit him. I mean, just look at those clips of Rothwell beating the crap out of Andrei Arlovski. (Rothwell won that fight, right?)

(Props: spicadocious via Fightlinker)

This kickass highlight reel — which could also be titled "Rise of the Whitemare" — covers DREAM's welterweight grand prix from earlier this year, in which Marius Zaromskis smashed his way to the top of an eight-man field that also included such notables as Hayato Sakurai, Shinya Aoki, and Andre Galvao. Highlights include Zaromskis's fake-flying-knee superman punch at the 2:39 mark, and of course his knockout-of-the-year candidate against Jason High at the 4:19 mark. DREAM returns on October 8th with the semifinals and finals of its featherweight grand prix, the second round of the Super Hulk Tournament, and the lightweight title fight between Joachim Hansen and Shinya Aoki.

After the jump: Anderson Silva shows off his boxing skills against a local pugilist at Freddie Roach's boxing club.

(More oddball grappling exhibitions between fighters separated by four weight classes? Yes please! Photo courtesy of Sportsnavi)

From MMA Fanhouse:

(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.