DREAM Lightweight (155
pounds/70 kilograms) Champion Shinya Aoki (31-6) will face battle-tested
wrestling specialist Antonio McKee (28-4-2) at the DREAM Mixed Martial Arts
(MMA) event at Saitama Super Arena on New Year’s Eve.
DREAM.18 will be broadcast
live on Fight Network in Canada, along with the GLORY 4 Tokyo Heavyweight Grand
Slam.
The matchup was announced
today by officials from DREAM and Glory Sports International, which is
presenting the year-end show along with the GLORY 4 Tokyo – Heavyweight Grand
Slam event.
Also announced was a
middleweight (185 pounds/84 kilograms) fight between Melvin Manhoef (26-9-1, 1
NC) and Denis Kang (35-15-2, 2 NC) and a 139-pound catchweight meeting between
former DREAM bantamweight (135 pounds/61 kilograms) champion Bibiano Fernandes
(12-3) and Yoshiro Maeda (30-11-2) of Japan.
“Shinya Aoki is already a
legend in mixed martial arts. His jiu jitsu and judo skills are just incredible
and we are delighted to have him on the card for DREAM 18. The Saitama Super
Arena is his home and the greatest matches of his career have been fought
there. We expect another epic encounter on New Year’s Eve when he faces UFC
veteran Antonio McKee,” said GLORY CEO Marcus Luer.
“With Melvin Manhoef and Denis
Kang, we have a fight where the fans cannot afford to blink – there is so much
power and skill in that fight that it is very, very unlikely to go the
distance. And the fight between Bibiano Fernandes and Yoshiro Maeda will be a
whirlwind, technical master class. Fernandes is one of the world’s top ten
bantamweights while Maeda is as tough as they come. All the DREAM 18 fights are
absolutely world class and we are very excited about them.”
Known as Tobikan Judan
(‘Master of Flying Attacks’), Aoki is a grappling prodigy. An incredible 20 of
his 31 career wins have been by way of submission and his victories include
wins over Rich Clementi, Joachim Hansen and Eddie Alvarez. He has a ruthless
killer instinct, exemplified by his breaking the arm of Mizuto Hirota at a 2009
New Year’s Eve event in the Saitama Super Arena.
McKee has fought for the UFC,
the IFL and top Canadian promotion MFC in a career spanning 12 years. Only four
fighters have ever managed to beat him, and three of those – Karo Parisyan,
Jacob Volkmann and Chris Brennan – have also competed amongst the upper echelon
of fighters in the UFC and PRIDE FC. McKee was set to fight Aoki at DREAM:
Fight for Japan last May, but the bout fell through because of visa issues.
The Dutch dynamo Manhoef needs
little introduction to fight fans in Japan or anywhere else. A huge fan
favorite, Manhoef’s power and highly aggressive style combine to ensure that
his fights rarely go the distance. He is one of only two men to ever stop Mark
Hunt with strikes and he also has a win over Japanese legend Kazushi Sakuraba.
French-Korean middleweight
Kang won a ‘Fight of the Night’ award for his clash with Michael Bisping in the
UFC. A second-degree Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, Kang’s honors include
being a finalist in the PRIDE FC Welterweight Grand Prix and winning a title in
leading Korean promotion Spirit MC. He has wins over Murilo ‘Ninja’ Rua and
Akihiro Gono.
Fernandes won the 2009 DREAM
Featherweight Grand Prix to become the organization’s first featherweight
champion. After losing the belt to Hiroyuki Takaya, he moved down to
bantamweight and won the DREAM Bantamweight Grand Prix.
Maeda has competed for many
of the best organizations in the world, including PRIDE FC, DREAM, WEC,
Pancrase and DEEP. He fought for the WEC bantamweight title against Miguel
Torres at WEC 34 and holds wins over Chase Beebe and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu expert
Micah Miller among others. He was also a quarter-finalist in the DREAM
Featherweight Grand Prix.
‘GSI presents DREAM 18 and GLORY
4 Tokyo – New Year’s Eve Special’ – will commence at 4 p.m. JST with the DREAM
18 card and continue with the GLORY 4 Tokyo – Heavyweight Grand Slam, a
one-night, 16-man, single-elimination tournament featuring the world’s top
heavyweight stand-up fighters, including Semmy Schilt (39-6, 18 KO’s), Gokhan
Saki (77-15, 53 KO’s), Daniel Ghita (44-7, 34 KO’s), Remy Bonjasky (77-14, 40
KO’s), Peter Aerts (104-30-1, 78 KO’s), Errol Zimmerman (76-16-1, 41 KO’s),
Anderson ‘Braddock’ Silva (32-8-1, 22 KO’s) and Sergei Kharitonov (22-7, 12
KO’s).
The winner of the heavyweight
tournament will take home a Grand Prize of $400,000, and a total of $600,000 in
prize money will be awarded to tournament participants.
For more information, visit
www.gloryworldseries.com.
About DREAM:
Japan’s premier MMA
organisation, DREAM has staged 23 top-class events in the course of its
four-year history. Fighters that have stepped into the DREAM ring include Fedor
Emelianenko, Gegard Mousasi, Shinya Aoki, Joachim Hansen, Melvin Manhoef,
Tatsuya Kawajiri, Eddie Alvarez, Todd Duffee, Gesias Calvancante, Marius
Zaromskis.
About GLORY:
The GLORY World Series
(www.gloryworldseries.com) is the world’s premier kickboxing, or stand-up
fighting league, staging events across the globe and offering up to $1,000,000
in prize money to the winners of 16-man ‘Grand Prix’ tournaments, which are
open to only the best fighters in each weight class. The fight series also
includes 8-man tournaments and events with traditional, single bouts.
With television deals spanning
every continent, plus a groundbreaking online video streaming system and the
world’s largest online martial arts library, GLORY is one of the world’s most
widely-broadcast sporting organizations.
Owned and operated by Glory
Sports International (GSI), the organization has offices in Holland, the UK,
Tokyo, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Its personnel includes a diverse mix
of award-winning hedge-fund and private equity investors; principals from
pioneering sports marketing agency Total Sport Asia; and senior level
executives from several leading sports franchises, including WWE, FIFA, Golden
Glory, Champions League and It’s Showtime.
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