Ryan Schultz vs. Jorge Masvidal

Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos vs.Siyar Bahadurzada

Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal vs. Travis Wiuff

More after the jump.

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Xande Ribeiro (92.6 kg / 203.7 lbs) vs. Takashi Sugiura (92.7 kg / 203.9 lbs)
Muhammad "King Mo" Lawal (99.8 kg / 219.6 lbs) vs. Travis Wiuff (111.9 kg / 246.2 lbs)
Yuki Kondo (82.8 kg / 182.2 lbs) vs. Yuki Sasaki (82.9 kg / 182.4 lbs)
Kazuhiro Nakamura (82.9 kg / 182.4 lbs) vs. Paul Cahoon (81.9 kg / 180.2 lbs)
Jorge Santiago (82.3 kg / 181.1 lbs) vs. Logan Clark (82.7 kg / 181.9 lbs)
Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos (81.7 kg / 179.7 lbs) vs. Siyar Bahadurzada (82.5 kg / 181.5 lbs)
Kiuma Kunioku (69.7 kg / 153.3 lbs) vs. A Sol Kwon (70.8 kg / 155.8 lbs)
Ryan Schultz (71.2 kg / 156.6 lbs) vs. Jorge Masvidal (69.6 kg / 153.1 lbs)

According to Nightmare of Battle, both Kwon and Masvidal needed two attempts to make weight. Ribeiro is the 2008 BJJ World Absolute champion and is making his MMA debut. And I have no idea what's up with the chick holding an umbrella over "King Mo" Lawal.

MMA Weekly has video and more photos.

I talked about "Mo" Lawal months ago in relation to him being the next big prospect in MMA and now he's ready to make the jump into the deep end of the MMA pool:

Travis Wiuff confirmed to MMAWeekly.com that his new opponent for the upcoming Sengoku 5 event in Tokyo this weekend will be recent Team Quest (Murrieta) acquisition Muhammad "Mo" Lawal.

Lawal has an impressive freestyle amateur wrestling background, with accolades including the 2002 NCAA Division II National Championship, and First Place finishes at the 2006 U.S. Open and 2007 Pan-American Games.

Most recently the native Coloradan finished second at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, just missing out on an opportunity to compete in recent Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

This will be Mo’s first MMA bout, as he joins Team Quest (Gresham) lightweight Ryan "The Lion" Schultz on the card.

It's hard to guage how this fight will go given that all we know of Lawal is he is a phenomenal wrestler and exceptional athlete. Still, though, you have to think Team Quest would exercise some discretion and wouldn't accept this fight unless they thought Lawal had a decent chance at winning. Wuiff isn't the wrestler Lawal is, but does have enough stand-up skills and fights under his belt to give neophytes a tough test. But if Team Quest is good at anything, it's converting top-level wrestlers into top-level MMA fighters. Exciting news all the way around.

It's now looking even more likely that Sergei Kharitonov and Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic will be the ones squaring off for a DREAM heavyweight title at Fighting & Entertainment Group's New Year event, as Filipovic prognosticated in a Croatian TV interview last week. MMARated's Ariel Helwani was first to report on Friday that Kharitonov's opponent for Tuesday's DREAM.6, "Mighty Mo" Siliga, had withdrawn from the bout for unspecified reasons; now, he's been removed from the fight card on the official DREAM site. Agent Ken Pavia tells Punch Drunk Gamer that one of his fighters - journeyman Jimmy "The Titan" Ambriz (pictured) - will step in to face the Russian on less than a week's notice. Ambriz most recently fought (and won) on a Rumble In The Cage card in May, though his last high profile fight was an MMA rules match against Jerome Le Banner at K-1 Hero's in 2006 where he was knocked out in two minutes. Mighty Mo would have been a solid challenge for the returning Sergei (at least until it went to the ground); now he's simply tuning up for Mirko against a guy who made #3 on Cage Potato's list of 10 Fighters Who Should Hang Up Their Gloves.

Another interesting DREAM.6 note: Japan-MMA is reports that the ratings-challenged show will not be airing live in its home country, but instead will air in edited form later in the evening (9PM) and as an uncut Pay-Per-View beginning at 11PM that night. This could very well mean nothing except that FEG and TBS want the show to go off without a hitch in order to secure better ratings now and in the future. The HDNet broadcast is still expected to air live.

Meanwhile, on World Victory Road, the semifinal match-ups for the conclusion of the Lightweight Grand Prix at Sengoku VI on November 1st have been unveiled:

Satoru Kitaoka vs. Eiji Mitsuoka

Mizuto Hirota vs. Kazunori Yokota

If the opening round was any indication, these bouts (not to mention the finals later that night) could be some of the most explosive lightweight matches of the year. Jorge Masvidal  and Ryan Schultz will square off at Sengoku V next Sunday to determine which fighter will move on to the GP's reserve bout.

WVR also announced today that Josh Barnett will participate on the November 1st card, though an opponent has not yet been selected. Barnett had been slated to face Andrei Arlovski at the now-rescheduled "Affliction: Day of Reckoning" show in October, a fight which Tom Atencio says is still happening in January.

UPDATE: DREAM exec Sasahara announced at a press conference today that Mighty Mo was injured in training and that FEG is still searching for an opponent. Cro Cop then offered to fight twice in one night, to which Kharitonov responded " I am appreciative of Mirko, yet I would like to fight you another time."

I've been meaning to post an update about all the fights that have been added to the upcoming DREAM and Sengoku cards, but I'm going to lead with the dirt -- from FightOpinion:

According to a report at Sports Seoul, there is growing criticism about FEG delaying or not giving fighters money that they owed. "Fighter A" claimed in the article that he didn’t receive money for his last two fights, and "Fighter B" who is preparing for an upcoming fight also is claiming they didn’t get some fight money. "Fighter C" claims that he had to wait three months to get his fight salary.

The article quotes a source as saying, "There’s many fighters who don’t get paid. Especially DREAM fighters, foreigners mostly." The article claims that the reason in the alleged delaying of payments is due to DREAM’s financial situation and the situation regarding Kazuyoshi Ishii.

This adds to the ominous feeling that DREAM is not doing well and we will soon be without major MMA in Japan if something doesn't change for the better. UPDATE: I'm hearing that this is standard operating procedure in the Japanese fight and wrestling world. Yeesh.

Meanwhile World Victory Road has announced that their Sengoku promotion won't be holding their New Year's show on New Year's Eve. That event WILL feature Takanori Gomi vs the winner of their lightweight tournament however. Also they announced they'll be holding Sengoku VI in Saitama Super Arena on Nov. 1st and it will feature the finals of BOTH their lightweight and middleweight tournaments.

Not good news about the non-NYE event from the business side, but they didn't have TV anyway. WVR seems to be limping along, we'll see how long their big money backers keep propping them up.

In other news, World Victory Road has an opponent for Roger Gracie on its Sept 28 Sengoku 5 card, YAMMA champ Travis Wiuff. This is actually a good matchup for Gracie and WVR to make. Wiuff is a skilled and game journeyman, a little small as a heavyweight but still someone who's won fights at that level and is meta-ranked at #25 as a light heavyweight. He's a step up in competition for Gracie, but not a huge leap. Should be a good fight and a good career step for the heavyweight prospect Gracie who will be a huge draw should he prove himself as a legit heavyweight. WVR has hinted that if Gracie can beat Wiuff he'll be taking on Josh Barnett next. Wow, that's a big step.

Meanwhile DREAM has finalized their DREAM.6 card for the 23rd. Controversial star Yoshihiro Akiyama will take on 1-1 karateka Masanori Tonooka to headline the card. This is the second straight can they're feeding to Akiyama this year. He barely escaped a surprisingly tough Katsuyori Shibata in July.

In other fights, Braziliian lightweight Adriano Martins will be making his Japanese debut against UFC vet Keita "K-Taro" Nakamura. Nakamura had been rumored to be considering retirement after losing to Rob Emerson and sustaining an eye injury. Glad to see K-Taro getting back in the ring, he had some close losses in the UFC that impressed me (against welterweights Brock Larson and Drew Fickett). If he figures out how to cut weight right he should be a threat at lightweight.

There's also a very intriguing Hayato Sakurai vs Kuniyoshi Hironaka match. Hironaka is back to his winning ways after washing out of the UFC and Sakurai will be looking to get back on track after a stunning loss to David Baron. 

Honestly I'm excited about both cards. The Sengoku middle-weight tournament will kick off and while its not as strong a field as the DREAM tourny now going into its semi-final round, its still good. I'm excited to see Evangelista Cyborg vs. Siyar Bahadurzada, Jorge Santiago and the middleweight debut of Kazuhiro Nakamura.

And the DREAM middleweight tourny speaks for itself with Gegard Mousasi vs. Melvin Manhoef and Ronaldo Jacare vs. Zelg Galesic plus the final round pitting the winners together. I wonder what the possibility of alternates Yoon Dong Sik or Andrews Nakahara coming in as alternates and pulling a Joachim Hansen are?

All that plus Cro Cop vs Alistair Overeem and the return of Sergei Kharitonov. Makes me want HDNet real bad and to keep hoping against hope that DREAM won't be biting the dust at the end of the year.

UPDATE:  Sengoku has announced a new deal with TV Tokyo. Any word on how big a network that is? Apparently they will be airing the New Year's event (although not on NY's Eve and not sure it'll be live). This seems like a big step forward for WVR. Well done!