Sakuraba vs Mayhem Miller DREAM.16 PV Out!

Sakuraba and Mayhem Miller are set to fight in DREAM.16 on September 25th. Check after the jump for the official PV just released today.

We don’t know quite what to think about this match up, other than, “Holy crap, we hope Saku doesn’t die.”

It’s always a tough call when two of your favorite fighters meet. Who do you pull for? In this case, both men have tons of heart, tons of personality, but one is a taped up 41 year-old legend who, even with underdog status, continues to amaze.

We’re just going to hope this fight lives up to the spirit and craziness that define both fighters (and keep our fingers crossed for Saku). Read more »

Aoki Drops to No. 8 – Will Team GracieFighter Help Him Back to the Top?

According to Thursday’s USA Today/SB Nation MMA Consensus Rankings, Shinya Aoki has, not surprisingly, fallen down from the No. 2 spot and currently resides at No. 8 in the Lightweight division.

While numbers are numbers, Aoki’s loss to Gilbert Melendez hurt not only his ranking, but it proved to damage the status of Japanese MMA as well. It was a fight characterized as a battle between East and West, with colonization as the penalty for failure. Nevertheless, Aoki was dominated for five rounds, and this cemented the narrative that Japanese MMA as a whole needs to adapt to survive.

Adapt he will. Over the past week, Aoki seems to have gotten the message. According to Cesar Gracie, whose academy is home to Gilbert Melendez, Jake Shields, and Nick and Nate Diaz, Shinya was so impressed with their showing at Strikeforce Nashville that he contacted them about training with their team. Read more »

What Happened to Kestutis Smirnovas: Costar of One of the Greatest Comebacks in MMA History?

Well, according to his record, Smirnovas only had one more fight in K-1 Hero’s against Akiyama, which he lost. However,  after that he went 4-1-1 between 2006 and 2008 mostly fighting in his home country of Lithuania.

In 2008, he ran for Parliament  as part of the Liberal and Centre Union, but  his party as a whole had major setbacks and he did not get elected. Via the often spotty Google translator, I was able to read on his site, smirnovas.lt (translated) that he thanks his supporters and expects to do well in the future because he is still a young politician.  He currently seems to be a member of a city or county council.

His site also mentions that he is now a 3rd Dan black belt in Judo, attained a farming specialty in secondary school, and has a degree in education and physical education.

As noted in the title, Smirnovas was half of one of the greatest comeback fights in mixed martial arts: Sakuraba vs. Smirnovas during K-1 Hero’s 6. Check out the fight in its entirety after the jump. Read more »

Submission of the Decade?!

Dream 12. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Zelg Galesic. This is currently my favorite submission.

I was watching it while listening to the Rocky soundtrack and low and behold it synced up amazingly well, so we decided to make it official and make a “highlight” video, though the fight in and of itself is one continuous highlight reel in this case. Truly epic.

Maybe I need to watch the Ryo Chonan vs. Anderson Silva fight to music…

Watch the video after the jump! Read more »

Who Are You Cheering For???

When asked why you would support a sports team, many people would cite family tradition or location as big reasons. If you picked a team because they won all the time you would be a jerk, or worse a Yankees fan. Other times it’s some more intangible reason like team colors or attitude, like being a Raiders fan. When it comes to fighters, all of the above reasons also seem to hold true, but people are often more forgiving of a bandwagoner in MMA than in a team sport. Most of the time Favorite equals Greatest (Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, Megumi Fujii), and people too easily forget the glory days of a fighter after a tough loss, demand to see an endless string of victories, or come to believe some type of super human hype (Brock Lesnar) before they say they really like a new fighter.

I, on the other hand, find great joy in cheering for the underdog (Hitomi Akano vs Cyborg), the nerd (Roxanne Modafferi, Shinya Aoki), the crazy person (Jason Mayhem Miller), the quiet guy (Fedor), the heroic suffer (Yuki Nakai, Sakuraba vs Smirnovas, Galesic), or the unique stylist (Cung Le, Machida, Sakuraba). Often one fight will make me a die hard fan, add a cool back story, and I will be a fan forever (Hideo Tokoro).

So who am I cheering for? The previous names are all fighters I cheer for, but many of them are already pretty popular and they can all be considered great fighters. So the question is, who do I cheer for despite the fact they are not (YET) a great or very good fighter? Who do I, for some intangible reason, put my best wishes behind?

Answer: Shizuka Sugiyama!!!

Why am I cheering for this almost unknown female Japanese Zendokai Karateka MMA fighter, who supposedly was born in New York and likes rugby?

Is it simply because she’s cute? No.

Is it because she has a funny t-shirt or makes funny faces? Maybe.

Is it simply because her haircuts always seem to  grab my attention? Quite possibly, yes.

Or is it because she seems to have a lot of fun and is genuinely happy with life, especially when she wins ? Definitely, yes!

Pancake Landing will do its best to become the English language HQ for everything Sugiyama. In the meantime, check out more info about Sugi at her blog.