DREAM 15

Aftermath: Aoki, Mousasi Go Back To Japan, Where the Competition is a

Little Easier

(VidProps: YouTube/evilbyte)

Give the DREAM bosses some credit, these guys sure know how

to build suspense into what otherwise might be a fairly straightforward

and pleasing night of MMA fights. As it turned out, there was no

surprise run-in from Alistair Overeem and the Japanese promotion with the

fly-by-the-seat-of-its pants matchmaking style never

found a fight for Ricco Rodriguez. We hope it paid for the flight

and the sushi, at least.  On the bright side, DREAM finally did manage

to convince Gegard Mousasi to put in the 31 seconds of work it

took to defeat an overweight Jake O’Brien and Shinya

Aoki likewise bounced back from an embarrassing loss in Strikeforce

a few months ago to put a quick and typically stoic beating on Tatsuya Kawajiri.

Like “Sweet and Sassy,” Aoki called it an early night, withstanding

some heel kicks to the face as he locked up an Achilles lock that

secured the tap and appeared to damage his Kawajiri’s leg in just one

minute, 53 seconds. A couple of days after possibly declaring his bi-sexuality at the event’s

weigh-in (we assume he was being ironical), Aoki ditched his trademark

colorful tights for relatively conservative board shorts and rushed from

the ring following his win to get some lovin’ from his (possibly

female) fiancé.

After the jump, O’Brien vs. Mousasi, where it will take you all of

the first 15 seconds to see why the American had a little trouble making

weight …

O’Brien begins the bout with an automatic yellow card and a 10 percent

purse reduction for excessive fatness. He also tries to take heed of

Mousasi’s comments after his recent loss to Muhammed Lawal that he

“didn’t know a lot about takedowns” by shooting immediately.

Unfortunately for O’Brien, neither works out too well for him, as

Mousasi quickly puts him out with a standing guillotine.

Play-by-play man Michael Schiavello, naturally, yells his “Good

night, Irene!” catchphrase after O’Brien slumps to the canvas, which

seems more applicable than the three times Schiavello yells it

after Aoki’s submission win. At least O’Brien appears to lose actually

consciousness for at least a few seconds.

After he recovers a bit, O’Brien gets to his knees and drops a

frustrated F-bomb, as if to say: “Man, I wish I would’ve trained, or

even put forth any of the effort  – before or during – that it would’ve

taken to win this fight.” 

In other action, Melvin Manhoef appeared game for his fight against

Tatsuya Mizuno … until Mizuno took him down and tapped him out with a

kimura in the first round. Seriously Melvin, if you’re going to keep

going with this whole “MMA” thing we must insist that you make at least

some pretense of trying to learn a bit of ground.

Recent Strikeforce signee Gesias "JZ" Cavalcante snapped a two-fight

losing streak and got his first win since 2007 by earning a split

decision over Katsunori Kikuno.

Complete results:

Shinya Aoki def. Tatsuya

Kawajiri via submission (Achilles lock), round 1, 1:53

Gesias "JZ"

Cavalcante def. Katsunori Kikuno via split decision

Gegard Mousasi

def. Jake O'Brien via submission (guillotine choke), round 1, 0:31

Tatsuya Mizuno def. Melvin Manhoef via submission (kimura) round 1, 7:38

Michihiro Omigawa def. Young Sam Jung via submission (guillotine choke)

round 1, 7:31

Mitsuhiro Ishida def. Daiki "DJ.taiki" Hata via

unanimous decision

Kazuhiro Nakamura def. Karl Amoussou via

unanimous decision