Barnett In, Akiyama Out

by Kid Nate on Apr 21, 2008 9:30 AM EDT in MMA News

The big news out of Japan this morning is that Josh Barnett will be fighting an opponent to be named later on the May 18 card.

Here's the card as it stands now:

Eiji Mitsuoka 12-5-2 vs. 5-0-0 Kwang Hee Lee
Satoru Kitaoka 19-8-9 vs. 7-4-1 Ian Schaffa
Yuki Sasaki 21-13-1 vs. 16-7-0 Jorge Santiago
Yoshihiro "Kiss" Nakao 6-1-0 vs. 9-1-0 Big Jim York
Mike Pyle 15-5-1 vs. 15-1-0 Dan Hornbuckle

Participating:
Josh Barnett 21-5-0
Roger Gracie 1-0-0
Kevin Randleman 16-12-0

Rumored:
Jeff Monson 24-7-0

Barnett vs Monson has a nice ring to it, don't ya think? ADCC News has more info on the fighters on the card.

In other Japan news, Akiyama will NOT be participating in the DREAM middleweight tournament. Pretty disappointing. They've lost Misaki to SENGOKU and now their #1 183lb'er is sitting out the big tourny with injuries:

Today it is confirmed, Akiyama will not be participating in DREAM 2 and the middleweight GP. Reason is not only a knee injury that was earlier reported, but also fracture in the nose. It seems the knee was ok, but the nose injury is the reason the doctor but a stopper for him entering the tournament.

Here's the current card from DREAM 2:
Tournament Fights:
Ikuhisa Minowa 39-27-8 vs. 2-2-0 Taiei Kin
Magomed Sultanakhmadov 4-1-0 vs. 7-3-0 Zelg "Benkei" Galesic
Yoon Dong Sik 3-4-0 vs. 7-10-0 Shungo Oyama
Ronaldo Jacare vs. 16-6-0 Frank Trigg*
Kazushi Sakuraba 23-10-1 vs. Andrews Nakahara
Kiyoshi Tamura 28-14-0 vs. 38-12-1 Masakatsu Funaki
Denis Kang 29-9-1 vs. 20-2-1 Gegard Mousasi

Non-Tournament:
Shinya Aoki 14-2-0 vs. 14-1-1 Gesias "JZ" Calvancanti
Also rumored: Nick Diaz

* Note that Frank Trigg has denied that he'll be fighting on the card.

Suki has some interesting stuff from Friday's Press Conference:

Kuniyasu(Sengoku Press Representative): We picked 1 Japanese and 1 foreign fighter for Roger Gracie, however, both of them were injured. He has requested us to notify him of his opponent soon and now we are negotiating with another guy. Though Kevin Randleman canceled fighting IGF, I believe he can fight in Sengoku and we will announce his opponent next week. We are negotiating with a famous heavy weight foreign fighter and may be able to give you a big surprise. If this fighter sign up with us, he will fight in a main event. As for Yoshida, I hope he is ready to fight in June though we are too busy working on our upcoming event to talk the detail about his next fight. Regarding Kazunori Yokota who is a DEEP lightweight champion and requests to fight Gomi, Gomi's manager said he is pleased to hear about Yokota. We will definitely work on arranging their fight.

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