Pride Shockwave 2006

**MacWombat** · Posted On: 12/29/2006 4:20am

I suck at Pride but every time I see Hunt I think of a juiced up teddy bear and a juiced up teddy bear can't take the title away from Fedor. He just can't. *whimpers*

**bundtcake** · Posted On: 12/29/2006 8:19pm

I have no desire to see Minowa/Tamura, Yoshida/Thompson or Fujita/another olympic medalist. I'm a little tentative about Gono/Kondo and Gomi/Ishida... they could be good if the fighters go for it but I have a suspicion they won't.

Fedor/Hunt is stupid, should be Fedor/Cro Cop or Fedor/Barnett. I can see protecting Wanderlei, Henderson or Gomi, theyre marketable and might lose. Fedor isn't going to lose so why not let us see the number 1 contender actually get a shot PLEASE. But watching Fedor bounce Hunts head off the mat until he can grab a kimura might be ok to watch anyway.

The other four fights are going to be awesome! I'm picking Aoki to work Hansen on the ground but get caught with some strikes because that's just how Hansen rolls. Also I hope Barnett beats Nog again so we can see Fedor fight him after Monson. :eusa_ange

**nerveasian** · Posted On: 12/31/2006 2:57pm

So...who else watched the greatest event in the history of MMA?

**bundtcake** · Posted On: 12/31/2006 3:05pm

I did. It kept getting weirder and weirder as it went on. By far the best mma event I ever saw.

Also it totally wrecked my predicitons.

**El-Wood** · Posted On: 12/31/2006 6:22pm

didn't have it on free TV and I didn't feel like hooking up my skyperfect to the phone so I could PPV it - watched K1 instead... :(

**HANKtheTANK** · Posted On: 12/31/2006 6:34pm

Originally Posted by bundtcake

I did. It kept getting weirder and weirder as it went on. By far the best mma event I ever saw.

Also it totally wrecked my predicitons.

****, i have bets goin for every fight in UFC and Pride
even tho there are no spoilers here, I'm worried now....dunno how to preceive your defnition of "weird" for an Pride event.....

I have Aoki FTW...taking a chance...I'm the only one out of 8 ppl in a ppl...they think i'm crazy...but whatever...i think aoki is a bit more methodical and will sneak some crazy **** in there to win by sub

and the other one i'm worried about is Gomis fight....for one, its non title...so i dunno how motivated he is....and Ishida is a great wrestler....that worries me

Only reason i picked gomi is because i read he had neglected his sub wrestling in the past cuz he didn't need it as much....but for this fight against Ishida, he claims he's gone back to the wrestling heavily.......i hope he's not full of shite!

anyway, never touching this thread again until after i watch the whole show!!!

***Cassius*** · Posted On: 1/01/2007 2:35pm

The gogoplata was maybe the coolest moment in MMA ever.

**nerveasian** · Posted On: 1/01/2007 4:08pm

Yeah, Shinya Aoki has some futuristic alien jiu-jitsu that is matched in coolness only by his rainbow spandex pants.

This event was just great moment after great moment:

0. Noted person who defeated Fedor, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, doing color commentary on the Japanese broadcast.
1. Nobuhiko Takada playing piano for the Japanese version of Celine Dion singing some song in English.
2. A bunch of random Japanese people in street clothes singing in an inexplicable gospel choir.
3. Takada stripped down to a sumo mawashi playing the Pride drums (BOOM BOOM BOOM-BOOM!), buttocks jiggling in rhythm.
4. Noted pro wrestler Kiyoshi Tamura inexplicably shoving the referee after defeating Ikuhisa Minowa with a knee to the liver and a soccer kick.
5. The aforementioned gogoplata finish by rainbow-pantsed Shinya Aoki, who broke down in tears after the match in a moving display of raw human emotion.
6. Gono/Kondo snoozefest...only bad fight of the night. But Gono's entrance was a highlight. He came out dressed in a baseball uniform and a huge fake afro, accompanied by three masked pro wrestler friends also in baseball uniforms. Then this other dude who I think is a baseball player of some renown in Japan came out and they started doing a choreographed dance on the entrance ramp.
7. Nakamura making a decent showing of himself against a sluggish-looking Shogun.
8. Fujita effortlessly dispatching Georgian freakshow Olympic medalist Eldari Kurtanidze with, no exaggeration, one punch to the nose. Fujita tapped fists with Kurtanidze at the beginning of the fight, but then realized that Kurtanidze's outstretched lead hand wasn't a show of sportmanship, it was just his incredibly awkward guard. Fujita threw with an uppercut and Kurtanidze crumpled to the mat and tapped as Fujita threatened pro-wrestling stomps off the ropes. One of the most LOL moments in the Pride history.
9. The return of the old, ultra-aggressive Gomi, who pounded a helpless Ishida's face into hamburger with brutal hammerfists.
10. The Kawajiri-Melendez slugfest.
11. Man, where do I start with the Thompson/Yoshida fight. Thompson did his customary CHAAAAARGE at the bell and within moments was almost caught in an armbar, from which he transitioned to being almost caught in a kneebar, from which he transitioned to being almost ankle-locked. Then he escaped and ate some pretty big punches from Yoshida standing up, but somehow miraculously fought back and landed some huge ones of his own, along with a few knees that had Yoshida in serious trouble. At one point, Yoshida was in the Ken Shamrock position with his head outside the ring between the second and third ropes, and Thompson CHAAARGED him and dumped him outside the ring. Yoshida was very slow to get up and we got a closeup of his face, which was pretty mangled. Eventually he gets back in the ring and is basically out-on-his-feet, swaying in the breeze like Sakuraba in his last match. Actually, this match was reminiscent of that one in many ways. Thompson continues his merciless pounding and Yoshida goes down again, at which point the Japanese ref literally DRAGS HIM BACK into the ring instead of stopping the fight. Thompson mounts and the ref finally steps in. This fight went from being incredibly one-sided for Yoshida to being incredibly one-sided for Thompson in the span of two minutes. I felt bad for Yoshida, who's been exposed in front of all of his countrymen. He was actually carted out of the ring on a stretcher, which I hope was just him pretending to be more injured than he was in order to save face and not indicative of his actual injury level. Thompson reveled in his victory and rubbed his sweat onto the clothing of hordes of adoring Japanese female fans. (wtf)
12. Barnett did a back body drop on Nogueira. Like in pro-wrestling, when a guy's about to get powerbombed, and lifts the other guy up...yeah, except in real life, on Nogueira. Nogueira basically controlled the rest of the fight, ground-and-pounding at will. Barnett locked in a pretty tight guillotine at one point, which was exciting because Nogueira obviously wasn't going to tap to a guillotine. He worked himself free and and won the decision.
13. Mark Hunt escaped a Fedor armbar. Yeah. And then willingly clinched with Fedor and ended up in top position. Yeah. And then locked in a keylock that was tight enough to force Fedor to bridge up to relieve the pressure. Fedor eventually got on top and caught him in a Kimura, but he refused to tap out and just screamed in pain until the referee stepped in. Hunt made an excellent showing of himself. I thought this fight would last one anticlimactic minute, but it was an incredibly exciting and suprising finish to the greatest card in MMA history.