Gegard Mousasi Talks Netherlands and Japan With Heavy.com

Heavy.com's Jonathan Snowden sat down with Strikeforce's Light Heavyweight Champion, DREAM and K-1 veteran Gegard Mousasi about his upcoming bout on November 7th against Sokoudjou in Strikeforce on CBS. Gegard, a fighter from the Netherlands found his homeland to be inhospitable for his dreams of pounding grown men in the face with his fists.

"In the Netherlands they like sports like cycling, darts and ice skating, there isn’t any interest in MMA.There is a big difference with countries like the USA and Japan," Mousasi said. "It won’t be big in Europe. Maybe in countries like Great Britain and Germany because the combat sport is popular there, like boxing."

They delved into Gegard's jump into the deep end of Japan's top competition as well as his alliance with the world's top heavyweight fighter, Fedor Emelianenko.

After two years as an MMA nomad, taking fights where he could find them after the sudden demise of PRIDE, Mousasi found his way to DREAM, PRIDE's replacement as the leading MMA promoter in Japan. He was almost an afterthought in their Middleweight Grand Prix, stacked to the brim with better known fighters like Paulo Fihlo, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, and Kazushi Sakuraba. Mousasi outlasted them all, submitting Melvin Manhoef, the most feared striker in the tournament and knocking out Ronaldo Souza, the most feared grappler in the tournament. Suddenly he was among the top fighters in the world at middleweight. It was also the last time he would fight at that weight. Still in his early twenties at the time, Mousasi simply couldn't make the weight anymore. He was growing bigger and stronger-and more confident. Much of that has to do with training alongside the best fighter in the world.

"Standing next to Fedor, I feel so much bigger than him," Mousasi said. "When you train with him, he feels like a middleweight. He’s as strong as a heavyweight but as fast as a middleweight, so I think that makes him special. If I can take my speed as a middleweight, have that explosiveness and mobility and move up to heavyweight, I think that’s something a lot of them don’t have."