It will be officially announced on the 18th at Akasaka Sacas (home of the TBS TV station) that there will be a K-1 DYNAMITE!!! 2008 New Year's Eve event.

The announcement will be made with FEG event producer Sasahara and a representative from TBS.

A few participating fighters will appear and the event outline will be given.

The big news shaking up MMA fans in Japan is that Satoshi Ishii, gold medalist in 100kg judo at the Beijing Olympics this year, is heading to MMA. He alone with the right matchups could bolster the Japanese MMA scene.

Recently, there was a Q&A session. Here is some of what he had to say:

Question: Did you tell the Judo boss (Yoshimura) about your plan to go pro in MMA?
Answer: I told him I wanted to try it, that I had an interest.

Question: What has your preparation for MMA been?
Answer: I haven't done any at all [he uses a form that might be actually translated as "I haven't done jack"]. I've been doing BJJ since before the Beijing Olympics, so that doesn't matter at all.

Question: How about your conduct? [Ishii has been seen as making gross/brazen statements, jokes, etc.]
Answer: I am going to pay attention from now on, and fix the parts that need fixing.

Question: Have you submitted papers to resign from Judo?
Answer: No, not at all.

Question: When will the switchover to MMA happen?
Answer: I might even go when I'm 30 [He is now 22], I just really don't know. I haven't thought about it. I would like to think about it from now on.

The big news shaking up MMA fans in Japan is that Satoshi Ishii, gold medalist in 100kg judo at the Beijing Olympics this year, is heading to MMA. He has shown a genuine interest in MMA since winning the gold medal, talking of his plan to move into MMA for his future. However, subsequently, rumors about him moving to Japanese pro wrestling started to appear.

However, on October 6, he announecd that he is going into MMA.

He will make his debut at the FEG (DREAM) NYE event, December 31.

He is of course a national sports hero, and his debut at the biggest MMA event of the year should help boost Japanese MMA overall.

The news came a week late (see the previous post below), but SMACKGIRL is finished, and in its place comes a new company - Valkyrie.

Their first event is to be held November 6.

More on this soon, so keep watching.

FEG Event Producer Sasahara has made the first comment to come from FEG itself concerning the tv ratings for DREAM.6.

As reported in Part 1, the average viewership was 9.0% with a peak of 13.4% during the Akiyama-Minowa match.

Sasahara stated, "These are not numbers we can be optimistic about. The end of the year is when MMA attracts the most attention and we should be able to pull good numbers on that day. I want to think of an event that will bring us good numbers for NYE."

In other news, Japanese media is reporting the live attendance as 20,929. Compared with DREAM.5, with an attendance of 11,986, it showed reasonable growth.

However, a number of reasons could be behind this - the fact that 6 was held near Tokyo while 5 was held in Osaka, the holiday Tuesday on which DREAM.6 was held, it being the finals of the tournament, a stronger collection of matches made for Japanese fans, the end of summer, etc.

Sasahara's comments, and the fact that a number of matches are being talked about (Sakuraba vs. Tamura, Akiyama vs. Yoshida, Fedor vs. Ishii or Kharitonov, etc.), do hint that DREAM should at least survive through NYE, and there is speculation that the contract with TBS ends at year-end, so the numbers from one more televised event may convince TBS to continue with DREAM.

FEG's Tanikawa let it be known that DREAM.6 really needed 15% tv viewership in order for DREAM to continue in its present form.

Unofficial numbers in the form of the HDNet announcers put the attendance at 25,000 which would double that of DREAM.5 if confirmed.

However, the average TV percent was 9% with a peak at 13.4%, both significantly lower than the goal.

For the past DREAM events, the percent floated around 12%.

The 13.4% peak was during the Akiyama match.

He expressed interest in fighting Hidehiko Yoshida next, and on the possibility of DREAM ending, he said "I will fight him anywhere."

Roger Gracie was to appear at the September 28 Sengoku event against Travis Wiuff. Claiming injury, which has not been backed up by the appropriate documents, Gracie pulled out from the event, and the management of Sengoku is thinking of punishing him. Details from the WVR press release follow.

"Gracie's management sent an email on September 17 concerning muscle damage and Gracie requiring 4 weeks to recover. They were asked to submit a formal document with diagnosis results (CT scan, etc.) for the official WVR doctors to review. Until today, no such document has arrived.

"Further, no contact could be made to Gracie's doctor for a conference call scheduled for September 19. There was a 3-hour time limit within which to respond, but no response came.

"On receiving an email from Gracie's doctor, it became clear that no real close examinations had been conducted.

"As of 7pm on September 22, no official diagnosis has been received, so it was decided to announce cancellation of his bout.

"We are working hard to find an opponent for Travis Wiuff.

"We are thinking of severely punishing Gracie."

Satoshi Ishii, gold medalist in 100kg judo at the Beijing Olympics this year, started hype last month talking about MMA, Fedor, Rickson Gracie, etc.

Keiichi Sasahara DREAM Event Producer revealed that they had been working on an Ishii-Fedor match.

At a press conference on the 21st, Sasahara announced the match, yet in a rush it was cancelled.

The vague fax cancellation stated (I have removed the 50 apologies included): "On the Ishii-Fedor match announced yesterday, due to various circumstances, it has been cancelled... It came to be judged that it would be difficult to put this together, and it was decided to cancel..."

While on vacation in Japan, I went to visit one of the large statues of Buddha. Photos I took are below:





Click a picture for a nicer, larger image.

For those that might be interested, the statue is around 50 feet tall, 100 tons, 6-foot ears, and was made in the 1200s. You can also go inside it to see the work that went into making it.

While I was there, I was thinking about a fighter's heart, about DREAM, about MMA in general, and while looking at the giant Buddha, I suddenly thought of the Tibetan Buddhist idea of Bardo. My introduction to it was through Trungpa, which is presented below with quotes. I was also thinking of Evan Tanner, so this post is dedicated to him.

"Bardo" can be translated as something like "the space between two islands." Life can be thought of as the space between the islands of pre-birth and death. Death itself is another such space between islands. But also in life itself, death is another such space (i.e. a suicidal time in life, etc.). Basically in life the bardoes represent states of mind, your place along the path of the journey through life, etc. There are six bardos in life which could sort of be pictured as a spiral but instead of circular, it is hexagonal in shape. That is, once you have gone through one bardo, you will go through it again also, and again, but at different points along the journey, where it will appear to you in a slightly different form, etc

In any case, I see modern MMA and basically everything else that "happens" as going through these same stages.

I was thinking how MMA now has generally been about trying to find new techniques or "tools" to surprise and take out the opponent. We have seen new chokes, new guards, and things we never thought would work in MMA - like karate styles and flying kicks and such. At this point, MMA seems to be in the "human" bardo or "human" stage which is described below. He uses "tools" but you could think of "techniques" or "measures" or something similar. This aspect of the human stage could be called "techniques and anti-techniques."

"There is something extra connected with the human realm, a very strange kind of suspicion which comes with passion, and which makes human beings more cunning, shifty and slippery. They can invent all sorts of tools and accentuate them in all sorts of sophisticated ways so as to catch another slippery person, and the other slippery person develops his or her own equipment of anti-tools... Finally, we are unable to accomplish such a big undertaking. We are subject to birth and death. The experience can be born, but it can also die; our discoveries may be impermanent and temporary."

"The human realm is the lowest of the 'Three Higher Realms'. The previous three are known as the Three Lower Realms because you are just going down or stuck somewhere that is either unpleasant or limited. In this realm, unlike the previous three, there is a lot of choice, a lot of flexibility, a lot of creativity. There is promise. You are still earthbound and there are limitations, of course, but you can choose your behavior. You don't just have food, it can be 'cuisine'. You don't just survive, you could have enlightened society. You don't just walk around naked, you can wear fine clothes, and even when you go to the bathroom, there is a special room for it. Indeed, in modern Japan, in some well-to-do establishments, music automatically plays when you sit down on the toilet!"

"How interesting the human realm is! It is constantly changing. The other realms, even the higher ones, are stuck with their body or state of mind for a whole life. A pig, although one of the most intelligent animals around, is always a pig, with only a narrow range of feelings and situations that engender feeling; but a human has lives within lives. Each day we go through so many realms; in our lives, we can change roles and identities in terms of jobs, countries, relationships, styles. Indeed, the human realm is the only one where we can experience all six and keep going around and around."

"The human is sophisticated, intelligent, energetic, witty, and constantly preoccupied with what to do next. Life is filled with choices. The dominant emotion, or atmosphere, is passion: passion for other people, ideas, books, money, travel, food, sex, knowledge, power, insight, science, a better lawn than my neighbour's, a better pillow, a bigger bomb, a better pancake recipe. It is endless."

"Because of all this, the human realm is in many ways regarded as both the most intelligent as well as the most painful. In the human realm we can be aware that we are born, we live for a while and we die. This is because we are aware and can observe that we are always going through changes. In other words, we can compare this and that, and this 'now' from that 'then'. We have discriminating and evaluative memory and intellect so we can understand that life does not go on forever, that things are not as solid as we might first have thought. We are not actually stuck, even though we might be overly driven by our endless curiosity, passion, sense of exploration, intrigue, intelligence, whatever."

"This might not seem like much, and to tell the truth most of us ignore it all the time as if we will live forever or our scientists will find a way for that to happen; but it is important: it means that we have the intelligence and the opportunity to liberate ourselves from being trapped from birth in a particular body or mind-set."

"One of the main characteristics of the human realm is a sense of humor because we can see the many-sided aspects of pain and pleasure. We also see how they go together and therefore get glimpses that the whole thing is a mirage and so our point of view is always changing. That is why Buddhas can teach here, because this is the realm where we can actually wake up out of the dream. Because we see birth, old age, sickness and death we can learn to flavor the tasty food of our changing, multifarious experiences with the spices of wisdom and discipline in order to take full advantage of the precious opportunity that this life affords."

"I am the man, I suffered, I was there."