In the rush of entry level business analysis, a stunning aspect of the little DREAM.7 talk that did take place was that almost none of it pertained to the actual bouts on the card. Rather, all the focus was on the business aspects of the show, which is great, except that at some point, someone should spend a couple minutes to review the athletic aspect of, well, athletics. We here at Total-MMA can’t say we helped matters any, because I didn’t bother to watch it until its HDNet debut Saturday night at 9PM, nor did, it seems, anyone else on our staff. That is okay though, because its now been shown in a pretty darn complete form for us here on this side of the Pacific. 

-CULLUM/NISHIURA: THEY DON’T MAKE ‘EM LIKE THIS ANYMORE-

For all the complaints that the UFC isn’t doing a good enough job of encouraging entertaining ground battles, the media is doing a piss poor of giving encouragement to those fights that feature it. For the most part, no one watched Reis/Cullum last year on ShoXC, but hell if it wasn’t one of the best fights of the year on one of the best cards of the year. DREAM 7 may not have been such an entertaining show, but Cullum once again came out and put on a fantastic performance against the eccentric Nishiura. Both men put on a great performance of active, world class submission grappling, with Cullum eventually outlasting Nishiura and pulling out a very close decision win.

Cullum still looks small for the tourney, however, even in victory. What he was able to get away with against the firmly established B/C Level Nishiura is not going to get him by a Kid Yamamoto. However, there’s plenty of mediocre enough names that depending on the draw he pulls for the Quarters, Cullum is a live threat to make it to the final 4.

-EVERYONE LOVES A MISMATCH-

I’ve gotten pretty hard on the UFC’s matchmaking of late, stating that the reactions to many of the bouts they’ve promoted are a result not of their actual quality, but rather the willingness of the fans to like whatever they’re told is a “good fight”. The difference then between that matchmaking and what DREAM, PRIDE, or K-1 has done since the inception of MMA in Japan with overmatched opponents getting abused by far superior opposition is that the media is more willing to admit how pointless Ross Ebanez/Tatsuya Kawajiri is than it is to admit that maybe, just maybe, guys like Joe Stevenson are actually nothing more than sacrificial lambs themselves. 

No surprises took place on the non-tourney undercard: Aoki, Kawajiri, and Ishida all pulled Ws out against their underdog foes. The most competitive of the bouts was, by far, the Ishida/Nakamura fight, as Nakamura showed no fear whatsoever of Ishida’s striking and was able on numerous occasions to take dominant position and catch limbs of the highly ranked lightweight, though he ultimately came up short on all the cards.

-WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR KIDS: CHASE BEEBE and MICAH MILLER’S STANDUP-

Its important to remember that not long ago, Chase Beebe was the WEC bantamweight champion. With 15 pro bouts and that sort of pedigree as a world champ, you’d expect Beebe to be well versed everywhere. Joe  Warren, a debuting 31 year old amateur wrestler with about 6-9 months of standup training and virtually no extensive submission training, shouldn’t be. And yet, it was clear 5 minutes into the bout between the two that Warren was the rough equal to the former WEC champion in the standup and fully capable of escaping his submissions. When he landed a knee to the face of the one time WEC bantamweight champ, gashing him across the forehead, it seemed like much less of a shock than it did reading it in text. Both men have the sort of robotic, chunky, vertical standing punching you expect from wrestlers, but that one of the two was able to transition into doing it after just a couple months is a damning statement about just how good these guys are at doing it.

Micah Miller, meanwhile, decided to wear some Aokiesque pants and gave up a 5 inch reach advantage to work the bottom against terminally overrated Yoshiro Maeda. While virtually every piece of effective offense came from Miller, Maeda only had a couple takedowns and “dominant position” to his credit, and that was enough for the hometown judges to give him the W. Miller could have made things much easier by not falling into Maeda’s shots, using lowkicks, a jab, or really any basic strategy a striker might employ to keep the fight at a range where they’d be more effective. Miller went in the complete opposite direction and now finds himself a good bet to fight on the openers of Strikeforce ShoXC events or lose his given name and his few remaining shreds of self respect signing with Bellator. Maeda goes onto the next round a solid underdog to virtually anyone he faces.

-DARK HORSES OR LOST IN THE HERD?-

Bibiano Fernandez and Hiroyuki Takaya both moved on with two of the more comprehensive victories in the tournament’s first round, but neither looked particularly great. Takaya, who arrived in WEC with high hopes in spite of never really beating anyone too great, became a lesson in how we should set levels of expectations for former Shooto/DEEP talent. Fernandez is a great athlete with some interesting potential and management that’s made sure to seek the best immediate payday with little interest in long term career development. Against Takafumi Otsuka, Fernandez dominated both realms of the fight, but it was, as many of the fights in the first round were, a fairly cut and dry bout in advance of even taking place. Takaya similarly showed an ability to land leg kicks and punches on the random Korean judoka that he was given to get him by to the second round. But along with that, he was surprisingly tenative to mix it up with a fighter who had never fought in MMA prior and was not from a discipline known for its intense combination punching. 

-DID IMANARI DESERVE THE DECISION?-

I personally would have given him the decision because while he did so little in round 2, he did actually do the most effective work and made an absolute mockery of Yamamoto in between bursts. The fight was an incredibly close one, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for going in either direction: Atsushi was often on top and landed the best strike of the fight with a right hand early in the 1st round. Imanari tied him up in knots on the mat though, and while he never finished a submission, he came close enough often enough to virtually nullify everything Yamamoto had to throw at him. You gotta think that with the ease that Warren had gotten arms caught by Chase Beebe that he’d be the natural choice for ACL destruction in the second round of the tournament, but anything is, I suppose, possible.