FanHouse AlistairOvereem

A heavyweight bout between Fedor Emelianenko and Alistair Overeem is increasingly looking like it will be one of the big MMA fights of 2010. The question is whether it will happen in the United States in the Strikeforce cage, or in Japan in the Dream ring -- and Dream Event Producer Keiichi Sasahara says he's hoping to get the deal done in his promotion.

After beating James Thompson in a Dream 12 squash match Sunday, Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem said he wants his next MMA fight to be against a much, much tougher opponent: The best fighter in MMA, Fedor Emelianenko.

Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem tapped out British veteran James Thompson with a first-round standing guillotine in the main event of Sunday's DREAM.12 at the Osaka-jo Hall in Osaka, Japan.

Thompson immediately tried to rush Overeem, but was shrugged off. Overeem launched a high flying knee that almost caught his own left arm on the top of the cage. Thompson rushed Overeem once more but was caught in Overeem's trademark choke.

FanHouse has live results of DREAM.12 at the Osaka-jo Hall in Osaka, Japan.

DREAM.12 marks the first time ever that a major Japanese promotion will utilize a cage, a hexagon dubbed as the "White Cage." A trifecta of titleholders are scheduled for action: Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem, Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and DREAM's own welterweight champion Marius Zaromskis.

The live blog is below.

James Thompson is best known to American MMA fans for having his ear blown up on national television in an ugly loss to Kimbo Slice last year. As he prepares to fight Alistair Overeem in Japan on Sunday morning, his cauliflower ear looks good, and he says he feels great and is ready to fight Overeem. Unfortunately for Thompson, Overeem is likely to bust him up a lot worse than Kimbo did.

UFC 104 and Dream.12 are both in the news with the events taking place on back-to-back days this weekend.

With an action-packed weekend ahead, SI.com's Ben Fowlkes and I discuss some of the key storylines, including the UFC light heavyweight title matchup, whether Cain Velasquez is a legitimate title contender, what Dream hopes to gain from introducing a cage and if Alistair Overeem has any idea where his career is headed.

Check it out below.

Tim Sylvia has verbally agreed to make his Japanese MMA debut for DREAM on New Year's Eve. Sylvia's agent Monte Cox confirmed the news with FanHouse.

The former UFC heavyweight champion will be a part of the Dynamite!! 2009 MMA/K-1 hybrid show, which has become a yearly tradition in Japan.

Alistair Overeem hasn't fought for Strikeforce since winning its heavyweight championship two years ago. But after winning an easy fight over the weekend, he'll fight again after just a week off, stepping into the cage to take on James "The Collosus" Thompson at Dream 12 on Sunday.

Dream has not yet announced the fight, but a source with knowledge of the situation tells FanHouse that it will take place on the card, which is noteworthy as the first time the Japanese Dream promotion will use a cage instead of a ring.

Only the hardest of the hard-core fans watched it, but the Ultimate Glory MMA and kickboxing event in Amsterdam Saturday featured four of the eight participants in December's K-1 World Grand Prix Final 2009: Errol Zimmerman, Ruslan Karaev, Alistair Overeem and Semmy Schilt. So what did that event tell us about what we should expect from the year's biggest and best kickboxing event?

Alistair Overeem hasn't fought in the United States since winning the Strikeforce heavyweight championship two years ago, but on Saturday he beat an overmatched American, Tony Sylvester, in Golden Glory's Ultimate Glory 11 event in Amsterdam.

Overeem's first-round submission win was short and not particularly good: Overeem landed a hard knee to Sylvester's face, knocked him to the ground, landed a couple of punches, let him back up, and then forced him to tap with a standing guillotine choke. The whole fight lasted just under a minute and a half. Sylvester never went on the offensive at all.