FanHouse JZ Calvan

After a weekend in mixed martial arts that saw big lightweight fights in both the UFC and Dream, it's time to revise our list of the Top 10 lightweights in MMA. Frank Edgar is new on our list after his impressive UFC 98 win over Sean Sherk, while Gesias "JZ Calvan" Cavalcante has dropped off the list after a disappointing loss to Tatsuya Kawajiri at Dream 9. The full Top 10 is below.

Jose Canseco has been retired from Major League Baseball for eight years, but he keeps finding ways to put himself into the headlines. The latest example? He has agreed to fight the 7-foot-2 Korean kickboxer Hong Man Choi in a mixed martial arts tournament in Japan.

Although hardly anyone in the United States saw the fights, two of the top five lightweights in MMA were in action this weekend, as Shinya Aoki lost at Dream 8 and Eddie Alvarez won in the debut of the new Bellator promotion. That means it's time to revisit our list of the Top 10 lightweights in MMA.

The first question is whether it's fair to drop Aoki on the lightweight list when he lost to a bigger opponent in the Dream Welterweight Grand Prix. I think it is fair. I'm not impressed with Aoki's performance, and I can't pretend the fight didn't happen just because it didn't happen at lightweight.

B.J. Penn was thoroughly manhandled by Georges St. Pierre when he tried to move up to welterweight at UFC 94, but he's still the best lightweight in mixed martial arts, and he has a big lightweight title fight against Kenny Florian coming up this summer.

On my list of the 10 best lightweights in MMA, Penn is first and Florian is fourth. Second on the list is Shinya Aoki, who is about to follow in Penn's footsteps and try moving up to welterweight, in Aoki's case to participate in Dream's upcoming welterweight tournament. The full lightweight Top 10 is 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.

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)

In a piece of great news for MMA fans, the New Year's Eve show in Japan has just added a tremendous lightweight bout between Shinya Aoki and Eddie Alvarez.

Sherdog reports that Aoki, a great Japanese submission specialist, and Alvarez, an exciting brawler from Philadelphia, have verbally agreed to fight each other at the K-1 Premium 2008 Dynamite show on December 31 at the Saitama Super Arena.

Aoki vs. Alvarez would have been the final of this year's Dream lightweight tournament, but fans were denied the chance to see that fight when Alvarez suffered a nasty eye injury in the semifinal. Aoki ended up losing the final to Joachim Hansen, who had lost to Alvarez earlier in the tournament.

Hansen is scheduled to fight JZ Calvan on New Year's Eve, which means the Dynamite show has the two best lightweight fights MMA fans are going to see for the foreseeable future. With UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn moving up to welterweight to fight Georges St. Pierre next month, the balance of power in the MMA lightweight division has shifted decisively to Japan. Aoki-Alvarez is the latest example.

UPDATE: Sherdog is now reporting that the fight is not a done deal. Stay tuned.

We're starting to see more mainstream media coverage of the sport of mixed martial arts, which is good. But a lot of that coverage comes from people who don't know much about the sport, which is bad. So I'd like to offer a few suggestions:

Don't call it "ultimate fighting." The name of the sport is mixed martial arts, or MMA. The most popular organization within MMA is Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. The phrase "ultimate fighting," with those two words lower case, should never appear in your articles. Ultimate Fighting, a phrase that is a registered trademark of the UFC, can appear in your articles, but it should be followed by Championship -- and in general, you can just say UFC.