FanHouse Dynamite

Gegard Mousasi finished 2008 with a bang, beating Musashi with a first-round KO today in a K-1 match at FieLDS Dynamite!:

If you're looking to pick one athlete for Fighter of the Year -- be it in boxing, K-1, MMA or any other combat sport -- I think you could make a pretty good case that Mousasi deserves that honor. He went 6-0 in MMA in 2008, winning the Dream middleweight tournament in the process. And now he concludes the year with a dominant K-1 victory.

Mousasi is just 23 years old, and I look forward to big things coming from him in 2009.

It's hard to explain Japanese MMA to Americans who aren't familiar with it, but the few Americans who managed to see the New Year's Eve Dynamite show got a taste of what it's like. On the one hand, there are some legitimate matches between great athletes. On the other hand, there's this:

That was Bob Sapp, a former NFL offensive lineman, fighting a guy dressed like the cartoon character Kinnikuman. The guy in the costume was actually a wrestler named Akihito Tanaka. Sapp beat him with a first-round TKO.

If you want to get an idea of who/what Kinnikuman is, another video is below.

Alistair Overeem knocked out Badr Hari in the first round of their K-1 fight today at FieLDS Dynamite 2008. Here's the video:

Hari was making his first appearance in the ring since he was disqualified in the K-1 World Grand Prix 2008 Final for punching and stomping on a grounded Remy Bonjasky.

Overeem and Hari may fight each other in an MMA match at some point in 2009.

Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic defeated the 7-foot Korean kickboxer Hong Man Choi in an MMA match today at the K-1 Dynamite show in Japan, and now it's time to start looking toward Cro Cop's future.

For starters, Cro Cop confirmed after the fight (via Sherdog) that he needs knee surgery and will be off for the next six months. So we won't be seeing him in the first half of 2009.

But where will we be seeing him beyond that? There's been a lot of speculation that he might return to the UFC, which dropped him after he lost back-to-back fights to Gabriel Gonzaga and Cheick Kongo. I have no inside information about whether that's close to happening, but I'd be in favor of it. Although the 34-year-old Cro Cop isn't the same fighter he was a few years ago, he could still provide a stern test to the UFC's younger generation of heavyweights. If he's willing to come back with the understanding that he's not close to a title shot, I'd love to see Cro Cop back in the Octagon.

Below are the full results for the New Year's Eve FieLDS K-1 Dynamite! 2008 show from Japan, which includes a very good lightweight MMA fight between Japan's Shinya Aoki and Philadelphia's Eddie Alvarez.

Although there's no live TV broadcast of this show, you might be planning to watch the fights on tape delay, in which case you might not want any spoilers. If that's the case, you don't want to read the results below, which started coming in very early Wednesday morning in the United States.

If you just want to know who won and how, you can find out below.

We've known for a couple of weeks that the New Year's Eve Dynamite show in Japan might not be available to American viewers, but the confirmation that the show definitely won't be shown live in the U.S. is very bad news.

The Dynamite show has 19 fights, and there are very, very few American fans who would actually want to watch all 19 of them in the wee hours of New Year's Eve morning. But the two best fights on the card -- Eddie Alvarez vs. Shinya Aoki and Gesias "JZ Calvan" Cavalcante vs. Joachim Hansen -- are the two best lightweight fights we're going to get as long as B.J. Penn is fighting at welterweight. It sucks that we can't see them.

Whatever the reasons that negotiations to show Dynamite in the U.S. broke down, this is a major letdown for subscribers to HDNet. I've heard from a lot of MMA fans who pay extra for HDNet solely for its MMA coverage, and it's hard to justify that expense when HDNet isn't showing Alvarez-Aoki and Calvan-Hansen.

When Mirko Cro Cop fights Hong Man Choi in an MMA match on New Year's Eve at the K-1 Dynamite show in Japan, it figures to be a mismatch: Cro Cop is one of the best heavyweights in the history of the sport, with a pro MMA record of 23-6-2, while Choi's record is 1-1.

But as Cro Cop tries to promote the fight, he's claiming that he sees Choi as a real challenge.

"A man his size is very dangerous even without MMA experience," Cro Cop said in a Croatian TV interview. "He is skilled, relatively mobile for his height and very strong. ... He displayed his incredible strength in the Fedor Emelianenko fight. When Fedor got a hold of his arm he was twice able to simply shrug him. He had him in some difficult positions."

Video of the Croatian TV story is below.

The upcoming K-1 Dynamite 2008 show has something for everyone. Like MMA? Two of the best lightweight fights of the year are on the card, in Shinya Aoki vs. Eddie Alvarez and Joachim Hansen vs. JZ Calvan. Like kickboxing? They've got several fights with well-known veterans, plus a four-man under-18 tournament. Like freak shows? Hong Man Choi is rumored to be taking on Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic.

But there's just one problem: If you're in the United States, you might not be able to see it.

Although HDNet is usually the go-to place for Japanese MMA in the U.S., and although the network just signed a new deal to televise K-1 events as well, HDNet Fights CEO Andrew Simon tells me that there's a chance the Dynamite show won't be televised at all in the U.S. The show isn't considered a K-1 event and therefore isn't covered by HDNet's contract with K-1. Right now it's unclear whether the Dynamite show will be available to American viewers.

If the show isn't televised here, it would be a major disappointment. MMA fans are increasingly relying on HDNet to bring them the best fights outside the UFC, and missing out on the Dynamite show would be a bad way to end the year.

The New Year's Eve K-1 Dynamite mixed martial arts and kickboxing show has added two big MMA fights: Jerome LeBanner vs. Mark Hunt and Shinya Aoki vs. Eddie Alvarez.

Both LeBanner and Hunt are more accomplished as kickboxers than as mixed martial artists, but their heavyweight battle will apparently be conducted under MMA rules, not K-1 rules. It should be a good fight.

And Aoki vs. Alvarez should be a great fight. It's the fight that was supposed to happen as the final of this year's Dream Lightweight Grand Prix, until an eye injury suffered by Alvarez kept him out of the final. MMA fans have been clamoring for Aoki and Alvarez to get into the ring together ever since, and now Dream has officially announced that the fight will happen. With Joachim Hansen vs. JZ Calvan also scheduled for Dynamite, this card has two great lightweight fights.

(Via Fight Opinion)