The Blog of Doom

Jacare Souza vs. Ian Murphy

Hmm, one of the great BJJ practitioners in the world against an amateur wrestler? 

Prediction: Jacare either by submission or absolute beatdown from dominant position.

Masakatsu Funaki vs. Kiyoshi Tamura

Tamura was the workhorse for RINGS, Funaki the innovator and star of Pancrase.  Funaki had been retired since 2000, but came out of retirement at Dynamite! last year against Saku. He was in there just long enough to give an allergic reaction to the audience with all the dust he was carrying.  Funaki ceased his hyper conservative style long enough for Saku to drop levels and score a double leg.  Funaki did what he could to score a toe hold, but once Saku got side mount, the Kimura was academic. 

Prediction: Tamura via KO Rd. 1, though Funaki will still have awesome hair.

Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Andrews Nakahara

Sakuraba’s place as a true legend and pillar of MMA is firmly in place.  Nowadays he is old and has some bleeding on the brain issues. 

This is karate practitioner Nakahara’s first MMA fight.  You know what that means?

Prediction: Sakuraba via armbar Rd 1.

JZ Calvan vs. Shinya Aoki

This of course is the threematch.  The Yarennoka! New Year’s fight was canceled due to JZ’s knee injury, the DREAM.1 fight was thrown out after JZ landed an illegal elbow strike to Aoki’s spine, and here we are now. 

What we learned from the first fight:  That we knew what we were talking about going into the first fight.  Aoki can’t handle JZ’s raw strength.  Even with a conservative strategy, you could see JZ’s superiority.  With Aoki’s magical rainbow submission tights, often all logic can be turned on its head.  JZ shouldn’t have any trouble defending submission attempts, and he shouldn’t even worry about the ground.

Prediction: Aoki has a mountain to climb.  JZ via KO Rd. 1

Other picks:

Zelg TKOs Sultanakhmedov

Dong Sik via dongbar over Oyama.  How could I not predict the dongbar?

Minowaman can pull a sub, but I like Kin to score a KO.