DREAM 4 Middleweight Grand Prix

4 Japan’s DREAM (4) on June 15th has (4) exciting fights for the quarterfinals of the middleweight Grand Prix.

1 It also features (1) second round match up from the lightweight tournament when Shinya Aoki takes on Katsuhiko Nagata. The fight is scheduled on this card due to Aoki’s first bout with Gesias Calvancante ending in a no contest. The second time around, at DREAM 3, Aoki got the best of “JZ” to advance and improve to 15-2. Nagata, who is 4-2, advanced by decisioning Artur Oumakhanov.

Back to the middleweights....

708 Percentage (70.8) of legend Kazushi Sakuraba’s victories to come via submission. Coming into his bout with Melvin Manhoef, Sakuraba is 24-10-1 with 17 subs and 3 (T)KO’s. Manhoef is pretty much the opposite when it comes to finishing fights. The famed Dutch striker is 21-4-1, and he’s finished 20 of his opponents by (T)KO. This is such an intriguing match up because Sakuraba will probably try desperately to get the fight to the floor and Manhoef will do everything in his power to keep it standing.

81 Record (8-1) of Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, all eight of his victories have come via submission. His opponent, Jason “Mayhem” Miller is 21-5, and does just fine on the ground too. In those 21 wins he has 12 submissions with four (T)KO’s. Souza’s lone loss came in his debut, when he was KO’d by Jorge Patino back in September of 2003. It will be interesting to see if Miller tries to keep it standing or doesn’t mind rolling with Souza. Most likely he’ll do what he thinks is most exciting, in a recent interview at Sherdog.com he said, “I'd rather not win than be boring. I think the promoters respect that. On top of that, I have no fear whatsoever of getting into the ring, no nervousness. So it allows me to act a fool during a press conference, act a fool when I'm cutting weight. I don't care. I think at the very least I'm entertaining, regardless of whether you like me or not.”

36 Croat, Zelg Galesic and Taiei Kin fought in October of 2007. In that match up it was Galesic who got the TKO due to doctor stoppage at only (0:36) of round one. The quick stoppage obviously wasn’t satisfying and now they’ll get to do it again, Galesic will look to improve upon his 8-3 mark, while Kin, who is 3-2, will look to do the same.

4 Korean, Dong Sik Yoon is 4-4 and comes into his bout with Gegard Mousasi riding a (4) fight win streak. During the streak he knocked off two other guys who are still in the middleweight tournament, Melvin Manhoef and Zelg Galesic. Yoon will have his hands full against Mousasi who has a nice eight fight winning streak of his own, and is currently 21-2-1. He has also stopped 20 of his opponents, his last Denis Kang in the opening round of the Grand Prix.

3 There will be (3) non-tournament fights. Hideo Tokoro, 19-13-1 against Darren Uyenoyama, 4-1. Alavutdin Gadzhiyev, 7-1 against Ralek Gracie, 1-0. Alistair Overeem, 26-11 against Tae Hyun Lee 1-1.