Minowa was wondering where he was...
Then he realized this was DREAM's first ever fight, and he was all business. The fight was, as expected, very quick.
Monma entering the ring for his fight against crowd favorite Sakurai "Mach"
Hayato "Mach" Sakurai making his way to the ring.
"Mach" and Monma as the fight starts. As you can see, the disadvantage with the bigger organizations is the distance to the ring. It is very hard to get good action shots... As a consequence, there will be few good ones.
Then it was time for my personal favorite. Hellboy was facing a very strong opponent in Boku. I have read an interview that Hansen was almost KOed. Just to put the record straight, he was never close to being KOed in this fight, and from where I was sitting, never threatened. This is most likely a translation issue, things can very easily get lost when translating from English to Japanese and back...
It was a question of how long Boku could resist the attack from Hellboy. He lasted the duration of the fight and should be credited for the defence.
A man on a mission!
Then it was time for "Buscape" to face the underrated Miyata.Miyata has a lot of potential, but is yet to show too much. This time, "Buscape"'s ju jitsu skills were too much.Miata vs. "Buscape"
"Buscape" was very happy to secure his place in the next round.Artur Oumakhanov fought Katsuhiko Nagata, and he has lost 3 of his last 5. I am sure he was disappointed, and this was the weakest fight in the tournament (IMO).
Korean Bu Kyung Jung is a much better fighter than his record. It is a question of time before he upsets someone big. It was not to be this time though.Ishida walked into the ring as one of the favorites for the tournament. Ishida took the decision, and I hope we get to see more of Bu Kyung Jung in the near future.
The ring-girls went through their routine during the intermission.
Murilo Bustamante took time to sign some autographs and talk with fans.Then it was time for the big one, CroCop's back! The fight was more about his return to Japan than the result, but he got his win.Eddie Alvarez has arrived in Japan!
Alvarez took on "Dida", who was full of confidence after his performance in HERO's last year.Alvarez got an impressive win, and is definitely an outsider to this title.
At this point, I was running out of batteries, and wanted to make sure I got some pictures of Aoki vs. JZ. That meant that I didn't get any pictures of Kawajiri vs. "Black Mamba". I will check with friends and see if they have some good ones.
Anyway, it was time for the main event!
Aoki made his entrance. As always to "Baka survivor".J.Z. made his entrance. The Japanese crowd was very excited about this fight.
The fight started good, but ended way to quick, the result was a No Contest... Hopefully these fighters get another chance to face each other.
As you saw by my post yesterday, I was a little disappointed. Now that I look back, it was unfortunate that it ended the way it did. But this was the beginning of something REALLY good!! For me, it was good to see Hellboy as we know him, entertaining the crowd, he was dominating and very agressive. But there are so many good fighters in this tournament! I can't wait to see how the fighters match up in the next round!
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