K-1 Dynamite and Yarrenoka: Japanese MMA Ends 2007 On High Note

While I find dealing with the time difference when watching Japanese MMA live to be beyond tedious, I'd say if you're going to actually go through with it tonight/tomorrow is an excellent opportunity to do so. Between the Yarrenoka and K-1 cards, there is excellent MMA matchmaking to please most fans, casual and hardcore alike (although I'd also say it's more suited for the hardcore).

For starters, we have the return of Fedor. As anticlimactic as a fight with Hong Man Choi actually is, at least we get to see the man who is ostensibly the greatest fighter on the planet compete. Secondly, and more importantly, some of Japan's best and brightest MMA fighters will be putting their talents on display against one another. If you've never seen Akiyama, Misaki, Kawajiri, Yamamoto, Aoki, Ishida, or Sakurai fight, you're truly missing out.

And this night is also an important night for the Japanese scene in general. After the collapse of PRIDE, the vacuum left in the wake created somewhat of a blackhole. Tonight's events are hardly the antidote to what ails the Japanese scene, but it's an excellent step forward to see former PRIDE executives and movers/shakers work to preserve premier-level MMA in Japan. Events like GCM, ZST, DEEP, and Shooto are alive and well. And while K-1 has been doing well of late, 2007 in Japan was marked by a noticable lack of high-level Japanese events. For what it's worth, some of that comes to an end tonight.

We'll be covering the events here, so check back for all the content you crave.  

Yarrenoka fight card:

Roman Zentsov vs. Mike Russow
Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Luiz Azeredo
Murilo Bustamante vs. Makoto Takimoto
Mitsuhiro Ishida vs. Gilbert Melendez
Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Kazuo Misaki
Hayato Sakurai vs. Hidehiko Hasegawa
Shinya Aoki vs. Jung Bu Kyung
Fedor Emelianenko vs. Hong Man Choi

K-1 Dynamite card:

Norifumi Yamamoto vs. Rani Yahya
Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Masakatsu Funaki
Sergei Kharitonov vs. Siala Siliga
Joachim Hansen vs. Kazuyuki Miyata
Melvin Manhoef vs. Yosuke Nishijima
Ikuhisa Minowa vs. Zuluzinho
Masato vs. Yong Soo Choi
HIROYA vs. Tsukasa Fuji
Kenji Kubo vs. YUDAI