SAKURAI TKO’S AOKI IN DREAM 8 MMA MAIN EVENT

Shinya Aoki has gained a reputation as arguably the best lightweight fighter in mixed martial arts, as well as being recognized as one of the sport’s premier submission specialists.  Especially tall for his weight class at 5’11”, he’s been able to use his lanky frame and insane flexibility to dominate the lightweight division.  His height also gave him cause to think that he could compete at the welterweight class against naturally larger fighters.  On Sunday afternoon in Nagoya, Japan, however, he found out first hand that moving up in weight isn’t an easy task as he was dominated by veteran Hayato ‘Mach’ Sakurai in their first round match of the DREAM welterweight GP tournament, losing by a devastating first round knockout.

Even for the best competitors, it’s exceedingly difficult to disprove the well known fighting axiom that ‘a good big man beats a good little man’.  While Aoki enjoyed a significant height advantage over the 5’7” Sakurai, the natural disparity in strength and weight was just too much to overcome.  Aoki has no trouble competing at 155 pounds, and usually walks around near his fighting weight.  Sakurai, meanwhile, is a powerfully built, fireplug of a man of has to cut to make the 168 welterweight limit and usually walks around at 175-180 pounds.  As they faced off before the bell, Aoki looked slight and downright weak compared to his older opponent. 

Aoki is known for his unorthodox fighting style, usually using some strange tactic that surprises his opponent to set up one of his countless creative submission maneuvers.  At the bell, it looked like such a scenario might unfold in this fight as Aoki ducked under a Sakurai punch and sent his opponent flying over his back to the canvas.  Aoki tried to execute one of his favorite tactics, taking his opponent’s back and setting up a submission from there.

At least that’s how he’d drawn it up—as he tried to hook his legs around his powerful opponent, Sakurai easily flipped Aoki and wound up in top mount.  Aoki tried to escape, but couldn’t avoid several punishing knee strikes to the head that knocked him silly.  Sakurai followed up with a few punches, but they were ultimately unnecessary as Aoki was out cold and the referee quickly stepped in to wave off the contest.

As Sakurai celebrated his victory, Aoki lay motionless on the canvas for a few moments but soon got up under his own power.  Though he was still visibly disoriented, he warmly congratulated the victorious Sakurai and the two shared a hug and a very cordial conversation.  Sakurai will likely face American striker Jason High, who won in equally impressive fashion as he knocked out Yuya Shirai at :59 seconds of the first round.  In the other two welterweight tournament fights, Marius Zaromskis defeated Seichi Ikemoto by unanimous decision and Andre Galvao defeated John Alessi by armbar submission.