When I went to sleep last night, I was fairly certain we'd already heard all the big news that was going to come out of Japan this week. Many offices and businesses have closed down for the Golden Week holidays, and besides, what could possibly top Wednesday's Fedor-Aoki Sambo spectacle? Then I woke up this morning and DREAM Event Producer Keiichi Sasahara shattered my brain.

- With a middleweight championship bout, a lightweight title eliminator and the second round of a loaded Featherweight Grand Prix, DREAM.9 was already going to be big. But today, things got huge. What Sasahara had originally referred to as a "Superdreadnought GP" has been re-christened the "Super Hulk Tournament" - Marvel Comics surely has a cease-and-desist in the mail already - and will feature opening round bouts such as Jose Canseco (0-0) vs. Hong Man Choi (1-2) and Bob Sapp (10-3-1) vs. Ikuhisa Minowa (41-30-8). Originally thought to face one another in a lightheavyweight bout, Gegard Mousasi (24-2-1) and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou (5-4) will now take on K-1 fighters Mark Hunt (5-5) and Jan "The Giant" Nortje (2-5), respectively. The tournament bouts will have modified rules (shorter rounds, no knee strikes to grounded opponents' heads) and the semifinals and finals of the tournament will not take place on the same show, which leads me to believe the Super Hulk champ will be crowned on a ridiculously stacked New Year's Eve Dynamite!! card.

These matchups hearken back to the days of PRIDE FC (when Japanese MMA piggybacked off the puroresu craze of the 90s) and, along with the attention-grabbing lead-in of Daisuke Naito, are almost guaranteed to draw some much-needed extra eyes to May 26's primetime broadcast on TBS. What's more, Sasahara says today's announcement isn't all - he's still got a trump card to play. But what could trump this?

UPDATE: Minutes after I posted this, HDNet Fights CEO Andrew Simon made the no-brainer announcement that DREAM.9 will air live in North America. The past two DREAM events had been aired on tape delay.

Here's how the DREAM.9 card currently stands:

HEIWA DREAM.9
May 26, 2009
Saitama Super Arena
Saitama, Japan

DREAM Middleweight Title Bout
Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (10-2) vs. Jason "Mayhem" Miller (22-6)

DREAM Lightweight Title Eliminator Bout
Gesias "JZ" Cavalcante (14-2-1) vs. Tatsuya Kawajiri (23-5-2)

Featherweight GP Quarterfinal Bouts
Norifumi "KID" Yamamoto (17-1) vs. Joe Warren (1-0)
Masakazu Imanari (16-6-1) vs. Bibiano Fernandes (4-2)
Yoshiro Maeda (24-6-2) vs. Hiroyuki Takaya (10-6-1)
Hideo Tokoro (21-16-1) vs. Abel Cullum (14-2)

Super Hulk Tournament 1st Round Bouts
Ikuhisa "Minowaman" Minowa (41-30-8) vs. Bob Sapp (10-3-1)
Jan "The Giant" Nortje (2-5) vs. Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou (5-4)
Gegard Mousasi (24-2-1) vs. Mark Hunt (5-5)
Hong Man Choi (1-2) vs. Jose Canseco (0-0)

Rumored Participants
Paulo Filho (16-1)
Melvin Manhoef (23-5-1)

- K-1 opened up a fan poll this week to help determine the retiring Masato's next-to-last opponent at the K-1 MAX Final 8 in July. (The "Silver Wolf's" final bout will be on New Year's Eve against the winner of this year's MAX tournament.) It features some legit candidates like Takanori Gomi and Juichiro Nagashima, as well as far-fetched options like Oscar De La Hoya, Akebono and Mirko "Cro Cop." Nightmare Of Battle has translated the options here in case you care to vote, though the poll is mostly for show and probably won't have much influence in FEG's decision making. Regardless of the outcome of his Shooto bout with Takashi Nakakura on May 10th, I'm personally hoping for Gomi.

- Yoshihiro Akiyama announced a new addition to Team Cloud on his blog today: DEEP light heavyweight Yusuke Sakashita (5-1). The 6-foot, 33-year-old Sakashita formerly trained with PUREBRED Kyoto, and the only blemish on his record stems from a 2005 bout with Poai Suganuma. Akiyama has said that he hopes that his own newfound association with the UFC will lead to more Team Cloud members getting a shot at the big stage.

- A source at HDNet tells me that top featherweight prospect Shigeki Osawa's (1-0) bout with Kota Ishibashi (0-3) will not be part of the live broadcast for Sengoku VIII this Saturday. It's one of two dark matches that will take place before the opening ceremony; the other is the Pancrase vs. ZST matchup of Hirotoshi Saito (2-1-1) vs. Yoshitaka Abe (2-2-1). Nonetheless, the FWGP quarterfinals are going to be fantastic, and we're hoping to have a good sized crowd joining the BE Night Crew for this weekend's liveblog (Saturday @ 3AM ET).

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This is the first in what will hopefully be a regular series here on Bloody Elbow, a place to gather up the myriad notes and bout announcements from the Japanese scene every few days (or weekly, as the news dictates). I hope you dig, and feel free to let me know about anything I may have overlooked.

- DREAM may have found its ratings savior, and it's... a boxer? According to Nightmare of Battle, WBC Flyweight Champion Daisuke Naito (34-2-3) will defend his title in China against Xiong Zhao Zhong (12-1-1) on May 26th, and the fight will be broadcast on TBS as a lead-in to the live DREAM show. Last time DREAM had a live show on TBS (September's DREAM.6), they pulled a 9% rating. The ratings for Naito's last four bouts? 40.9%, 26.3%, 18.3% and 25.6%.

- Popular 6-foot tall JEWELS fighter / ex-dominatrix Yuko "HIROKO" Yamanaka (6-1) will face the Josh Barnett-trained Shannon Hooper (0-2) in an openweight bout at the promotion's "3rd Ring" show on May 16th. I've yet to see any tape on "HIROKO," but from what I hear, I wouldn't be surprised if Strikeforce was offering her a bundle of money this time next year. Prized prospect Shizuka Sugiyama (2-0) will also be in action, facing a member of Joachim Hansen's Team Hellboy named Celina.

- Pancrase added three fights to its June 7th card, which features the return of Sengoku lightweight champ Satoru Kitaoka. The first ever Flyweight King of Pancrase will be crowned in a bout between Mitsuhisa Sunabe (8-5-3) and Takuya Eizumi (5-1), the company's #1 and #2 ranked 127-pounders respectively. In a match-up of recent "King Mo" victims, Light Heavyweight King of Pancrase Ryo Kawamura (9-4-2) will face fellow Sengoku vet Yukiya Naito (15-5-2) in a non-title bout. Meanwhile, Seiya Kawahara (6-2) moves back to bantamweight following his Sengoku Featherweight GP opening round loss to Nick Denis; he'll square off against Tatsuya So (3-2-1)

- The "Olympic Combination" of wrestler Katsuhiko Nagata (4-5-1) and Kazuyuki Miyata (6-7) will join forces for a 15-minute tag team grappling match at ZST 20 on May 24th. They'll face "Team ZST" - "Super High School Student" Tetsuya Yamada (3-1) and Masayuki Okude (5-6-5)

- Megumi Fujii (16-0) has a new opponent for Shooto's massive May 10th show. Japan-MMA had originally reported that "Mega Megu" would face an unknown Korean fighter named Kim Don Hee, but now says that Hee is injured and has been replaced by Chu Won Bun, an MMA debutante with a 10-3 Muay Thai record.

- Yusuke Masuda (2-5-2) has officially been announced as Riki Fukuda's replacement in the 84kg weight class on Team Japan for Wedneday's DEEP/M-1 Challenge card. He'll face Team England's Matt "12 Gauge" Thorpe (10-7), who hasn't fought since last July, when he was submitted in under a minute by Team Hellboy prospect Simeon Thoresen.

- In his latest blog, Shinya Aoki says he's excited to watch the 2009 All Japan Judo Championships, which start this week (the Golden Week holiday) in Tokyo. He was unable to attend last year because of his rematch with "JZ" Cavalcante. He also takes (mock) offense at statements made by DEEP boss Shigeru Saeki that tickets are selling fast to the DEEP/M-1 Challenge show because of Fedor Emelianenko's appearance (and not Aoki's).