Both Watanabe and Tokoro said that they want to fight KID.
Sakuraba with a mask on: “Hi, I’m Hikari Shinji (a character from Evangelion). Please put me against KID who’s in the same weight class as me.”
Nakao asks Tanigawa for Mirko. Gono hinted at Sakurai.
Hirota wants to fight Alvarez. “Don’t you want to see Alvarez get KO’d?”
Yoshida apologized to everyone who was preparing for the Ariake event and asked all fighters present to fight their hearts out on NYE.
Video message from Ishii: “Please be gentle on NYE, Yoshida.”
Sasahara said that rules, the fights, the weight of the fights, etc. are currently being discussed. The only thing certain is that KID won’t fight Sakuraba.
WVR GM said that SENGOKU is planned continue from next year as well. Though I wouldn’t believe what most people say about this right now.
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Time to get information from the big sites (GBRing.com, Sportsnavi.com, and Kamipro.com) reporting this and who get to ask questions. Most information usually come from these post-press conference Q&A’s.
Satoshi Ishii wasn’t present since he is currently training in Las Vegas. The plan is 7 DREAM Vs. SRC fights. The fights will be announced one of these days. Yoshida said that he hasn’t heard who he’s fighting in this event yet, implying that his fight with Ishii isn’t officially announced yet. Tanigawa said consider what direction we’ll take at the press conference.
However, after the press conference Tanigawa said that they’ll do Yoshida vs. Ishii. That fight and Masato’s retirement fight will be a double main event.
“Mach” didn’t know about any of this since he hasn’t been on the Internet lately. In his comment he said that he’s hungry since he woke up at 12 PM and hasn’t had breakfast yet. The press confernce was moved back 20 minutes because he was late.
Shibata is excited about fighting a SENGOKU fighter, mentioning that there are a lot of Judo medalists there. He wants to fight someone outside of his weight class and he’ll beat him up.
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Shinya Aoki was a little cocky at today’s press conference. When asked about who he wants to fight he said: “Who’s the current champion of SENGOKU? I don’t know.”
He also said that if the champion of SENGOKU says he’ll fight, he’ll think about it.
When asked to comment on the message Aoki just sent him, Hirota said: “My frank impression is that it made me feel sick (it can also mean feel irritated/offended).”
Hirota once again said that he wants to KO Alvarez on NYE, he thinks that fight would be more exciting. He ended his comment with: “My impression of Aoki? He’s a fighter with long arms and legs.”
FEG’s Tanigawa said that he himself proposed this union event. They started discussing since the end of October. He also said that he doesn’t know what will happen with the FieLDS sponsorship next year.
The WVR GM said that the current plan for the next SRC event is March. The fighters participating will be the fighters who have fought there until now.
Sasahara said that there will be 18-19 fights on NYE, and there will also be fights between DREAM fighters so it’s not only SENGOKU vs. DREAM on the MMA side. Kawajiri and KID couldn’t attend the press conference because they were out on other business.
About SENGOKU only fights (besides Ishii vs. Yoshida) the WVR GM said that it’s yet to be decided if there will be any.
Misaki’s participation is also yet to be decided. There will be a meeting about if his suspension will be lifted or not. Misaki himself said: “I want to obey the instruction of the SENGOKU side.”
There will be foreign fighters competing as well, but the Japanese fighters will be the focus.
Tanigawa wants to match the champions with each other. The rules might depend on the fight.
About a future merger, Tanigawa said that Dynamite!! is mainly TBS’s event so there’s nothing like that.
The plan is for a double main event but Masato’s fight will probably be last since they’ll have a retirement ceremony after the fight. The event will start at 3 PM.
About K-1 fights besides Masato’s retirement fight and the Koshien finals Tanigawa said that there might be. It depends on what happens on December 5th.
Why does Aoki seem so damn flaky lately when it comes to who he is going to fight? He doesnt seem to want to fight Kawajiri and now he "will think about" fighting the sengoku lightweight champion. What the hell is the deal with this dude? I really want him to come to the U.S. and face some of the acutal top lightweights in Penn, Thomson, Melendez, Florian, Sanchez, etc. This list could go on for awhile. I really dont like Aoki.
Well if Aoki fights stateside he would have to sign an exclusive contract with the UFC and he would not be able to do what he can in DREAM and their alliance with Strikeforce and M-1!
DREAM vs Sengoku NYE 09 Press Conference
Fighting Stateside
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