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The gargantuan DREAM.9 airs Tuesday morning at 5AM Eastern / 2AM Pacific on HDNet, and as always, BloodyElbow.com will bring you live play-by-play and results (along with the usual semi-coherent ramblings from the Bloody Elbow Night Crew in the comments). We'll see the second DREAM Middleweight Champion crowned, find out who will face the winner of Aoki-Hansen III later this year, and the semi-finalists in both the 2009 Featherweight Grand Prix and Super Hulk Tournament will be decided.

While you're waiting for the show:

-Sherdog has extensive coverage: Breen and the Beatdown guys' DREAM.9/UFC 98 roundtable on Frday, a pre-event presser rundown plus Hiroyuki Takaya training shots by Daniel Herbertson, pics of "JZ" prepping for Kawajiri at ATT in Florida by Dave Mandel, and an exclusive "Mayhem" gallery by Esther Lin of AllElbows.

- Speaking of AllElbows, make sure you watch Kingdom of Mayhem, their excellent (and beautifully-shot) three-part series chronicling Mr. Miller in the lead-up to his title fight with "Jacare." Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here.

- Here at BE, we've got Leland Roling's gambling tips and Nick Thomas' weigh-in results post (with great pics). I'll throw my predictions in the comments below before showtime.

- And Nightmare of Battle has their usual "Final Preparations" post, collecting up some of the finer pre-show details that other sites have missed - such as Jose Canseco's one-on-one with "Daimajin" Sasaki at Yokohama on Sunday, or Jan Nortje telling reporters that his main advantage in the Super Hulk tourney will be his "cute face."

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Arguably the most talked-about and easily the most maligned of the participants on this Tuesday's DREAM.9 card, 40/40 clubber turned steroid snitch Jose Canseco touched down at Narita Airport outside of Tokyo earlier today. There had been speculation as to whether Canseco would back out of his fight with 7'2" Hong Man Choi.

Canseco was all smiles as he greeted a throng of press, exclaiming how happy he was to be in Japan. He also briefly discussed his training and gameplan for his Super Hulk Tournament opponent:

“I don’t even know whether my punches can reach Choi’s head or not. While having a tight defense and using my footwork well to move around, I will take him down and end it on the ground with a submission.”

He also said that he has trained his punches, kicks, etc. at 3, 4 gyms near his house and has focused especially on stamina because of the 10 minute first round.

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"A lot of people, they don't know that I'm gonna be the next world champ at 63 kilos in a few months, and come back [to the States] and rip a hole through whoever wants to fight me here... We plan on putting my kneecap through ["Kid" Yamamoto's] temple, that's what we plan on doing. Front headlocking him and kneeing him until my knee goes through his face. And then, if he doesn't stop, they're gonna have to stop it."

-- Joe Warren talks skull crushing at the DREAM Featherweight Grand Prix in the Royal 'we' on yesterday's Jordan Breen Show. (The segment begins around the 42 minute mark and is definitely worth a listen, along with the Tyron Woodley interview.) The 1-0 Greco-Roman wrestling convert sounds supremely confident going into his Tuesday match with "Kid," and wants to make the tournament favorite pay for hand-picking him as an "easy" opponent. First time out, Warren promised to rip out former WEC bantamweight champ Chase Beebe's heart, and promptly did.

Bob Sapp held a press conference at TOTAL Workout Roppongi Hills in Tokyo on Tuesday which was slightly better attended than fellow Super Hulk Tournament participant Jose Canseco's Bevery Hills presser of last week. Sapp destroyed his tournament opponent, Ikuhisa Minowa, in effigy - no doubt in retaliation for Minowaman's assault on his own cardboard likeness - but was also on hand to promote his new "BEAST BEAT" exercise dance DVD. Photos via DREAM; "BEAST BEAT" trailer in the full entry.

Also, DREAM Event Producer Sasahara indicated at another press conference this week that there could still be one more bout added to next Tuesday's DREAM.9 card.

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Jake Rossen caught this little detail:

The Globe and Mail  quotes Jose Canseco's manager, Dennis Holahan, as saying Dream might have jumped the gun a bit in announcing the excommunicated baseball star's ring appearance against Hong-Man Choi on May 26.

"It probably won't be a sure thing for another week or 10 days," Holahan said.

I couldn't find that quote at the link Jake cites but I'm not surprised at all to hear that DREAM is once again announcing fights they haven't signed.

Since Jose is infamously desperate for money, I expect this fight to be signed, but just want to remind my fellow fanboys that some promoters blow more smoke than others.

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).

First I felt that the speed and explosiveness weren’t as good as they were before but it all came back by now. I feel stronger than ever. Definitely, it took some time but I feel myself very confident at this weight so I don’t think I will have problems in my future fights. I could have gone to Russia to train with Fedor but it turned out otherwise. I’d like to test myself with him now that I weigh more.

-- Gegard Mousasi, talking with M-1 Global about his move up to light heavyweight from middleweight and ultimately to heavyweight.

As a side note, Mousasi stated that he currently weighs approximately 216 pounds. And though the fight has yet to be confirmed, he says that Sokoudjou will likely be his next opponent at DREAM.9.

The news and fight announcements just keep flowing out of Japan this week. I'm not sure how anyone can train at the DEEP Gym with all the press conferences they've been holding on the mats there lately. Today, it was DREAM Event Producer Keiichi Sasahara and Tatsuya Kawajiri (23-5-2) addressing the media and confirming a May 26th DREAM.9 lightweight dance for "Crusher" with former K-1 Hero's champ Gesias "JZ" Cavalcante (14-2-1). Sasahara also outlined a tentative plan for the lightweight title, which has gone undefended since Joachim Hansen defeated Shinya Aoki in last July's Lightweight Grand Prix finals: the winner of Kawajiri-Cavalcante will challenge the winner of Hansen-Aoki III (currently penciled in for July 20th at DREAM.10) on FEG's annual Dynamite!! New Year's Eve mega-card.

World Victory Road, meanwhile, added the finishing touch to next weekend's Sengoku VIII show: Pancrase's Hirotoshi Saito (2-1-1) and ZST's Yoshitaka Abe (2-2-1) will face off in an evening-opening featherweight scrap. Both men are coming off of losses and will no doubt look to throw down and secure further employment in the big league.

Don't forget to join the Night Crew here at BloodyElbow.com for the Sengoku VIII liveblog. The show airs live on HDNet next Saturday at 3AM ET. Here's the final card and bout order:

Sengoku VIII
May 2, 2009
Yoyogi National Stadium
Tokyo, Japan

FWGP: Hatsu Hioki (18-3-2) vs. Ronnie "Ushiwaka" Mann (17-1-1)
FWGP: Michihiro Omigawa (5-7-1) vs. Nam Phan (15-5)
LW: Kazunori Yokota (8-2-3) vs. Leonardo Santos (6-2) - Title Eliminator
LHW: Alexandre "Xande" Ribeiro (1-0) vs. Keiichiro Yamamiya (34-23-9)
FWGP: Masanori Kanehara (12-5-5) vs. Chan Sung Jung (3-0)
FWGP: Marlon Sandro (13-0) vs. Nick Denis (7-0)
WW: Makoto Takimoto (4-5) vs. Michael Costa (9-4)
LHW: Travis Wiuff (54-12) vs. Stanislav Nedkov (5-0)
LW: Maximo "Makishi" Blanco (2-1-1) vs. Akihiko Mori (6-6-1)
FW: Shigeki Osawa (1-0) vs. Kota Ishibashi (0-3)
FW: Hirotoshi Saito (2-1-1) vs. Yoshitaka Abe (2-2-1)

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