FanHouse Joe Warren

On his way to winning the DREAM Featherweight Grand Prix, Bibiano Fernandes advanced past Joe Warren with an armbar 42 seconds into the DREAM.11 fight, but the semifinal win wasn't without controversy.

FanHouse has DREAM results of DREAM.11 taking place at the Yokohama Arena in Yokohama, Japan.

DREAM.11, the first of two DREAM events for October, will crown a featherweight champion between Hiroyuki Takaya vs. Hideo Tokoro and Joe Warren vs. Bibiano Fernandes. Also, Joachim Hansen returns to defend his lightweight title against Shinya Aoki.

World Extreme Cagefighting is home to the best featherweights in MMA. Mike Brown is the undisputed champion of the world, he should have a great fight with Jose Aldo late this year, and Urijah Faber, the man Brown beat twice, is still probably the WEC's biggest draw.

But there's one problem with the WEC's featherweights: They're not doing enough to promote Wagnney Fabiano. You could make a case that Fabiano is more deserving of a title shot against Brown than Aldo is, and Fabiano certainly deserves to be heavily promoted as a future title contender. Instead, Fabiano's fight with Erik Koch next month isn't even on the live TV portion of the card.

The pairings have been revealed for both the Featherweight GP and Super Hulk tournaments taking place at DREAM.11 on Oct. 6 in Yokohama, Japan.

Ron Kruck of HDNet's "Inside MMA" confirmed the matchups in a taped segment on the channel during the intermission of DREAM.10 Monday in Saitama, Japan.

We've been handing out our half-year MMA awards, so here's my take on the biggest upset of the last six months.

As is often the case in MMA, there were plenty of upsets to choose from. But at the end of the day, I had to go with Joe Warren defeating Kid Yamamoto via split decision at Dream.9 on May 26 (part one of the fight is above; part two is here.)

The year is half over, and we're recognizing the best in MMA in the first six months of 2009. Up first is our Fighter of the Half Year, Lyoto Machida.

It's still a shock to MMA fans around the world that Joe Warren, an American Greco Roman wrestler in only his second pro fight, defeated Kid Yamamoto, one of the sport's all-time greats, last week in the Dream Featherweight Grand Prix. But it's not a surprise to Warren.

In an interview with FanHouse, Warren said he expected to beat Yamamoto, and that he expects to win two more fights at Dream 11 in September to be crowned Dream's featherweight champion. He also talked about potentially returning to Greco-Roman wrestling for the 2012 Olympics, and about whether he wants to move his MMA career to the United States. The full interview is below.

On today's conference call to promote WEC 41, World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion Mike Brown and former champ Urijah Faber both insisted that they don't care about rankings. And for the two of them, that makes sense: They're fighting on June 7, and whoever wins is, without a doubt, the No. 1 featherweight in MMA. But rankings are still fun for fans and useful for identifying the top fighters in the rest of the featherweight division, and my own featherweight Top 10 is below.

Just about every MMA fan would agree that Urijah Faber and Mike Brown, who will battle for the World Extreme Cagefighting title on June 7 at WEC 41, are the two best featherweights in mixed martial arts. But for a long time, a large contingent of MMA fans would have argued that Japan's Kid Yamamoto is actually the best.

That changed Tuesday, when Yamamoto was defeated by the unheralded American Joe Warren. And although that result surprised most of the MMA community, Faber told me on Wednesday that it didn't surprise him.