Baka Survivor Shinya Aoki Highlights DREAM vs. Strikeforce

DREAM's Shinya Aoki highlights Strikeforce: Nashville this weekend, a card being main evented by the freshly-signed Dan Henderson taking on Middleweight Champion Jake Shields. Aoki is set to take on Gilbert Melendez for the Strikeforce Lightweight Championship in another DREAM vs. Strikeforce bout. If we look back at the history of this, we've already seen Manhoef vs. Lawler, Diaz vs. Zaromskis and Noons vs. Dida. The important question to ask is, why should anybody care about DREAM vs. Strikeforce outside of hardcore fans seeing fighters from Japan fight American fighters? Zach Arnold asks the tough questions.

The parties involved (the fighters, promoters) have no idea what they are doing here. An interpromotional series is supposed to be between two promotions who have a competitive grudge — friendly or unfriendly — against each other. There’s supposed to be heat.

HEAT THE DAMN THING UP!

Instead, we have gotten Scott Coker saying that he’s looking forward to "some of the cool match-ups" and Gilbert Melendez talking about fighting Shin’ya Aoki as a "nerve-wracking honor."

Forget the fact that I’ve yet to see an ad for this show on CBS — where’s the anger, the intensity, and the passion for this interpromotional program? Aoki has been barking up a storm in Japan about how he wants to conquer America. The DREAM staff understands how to hype this feud up, but on the American side nobody is acting like they give a damn as far as telling the fans why they should care. Fans, especially casual ones that would watch the CBS event, want some drama and passion and a reason to care. They have yet to be given any reason to care about this interpromotional feud. The hype has been atrocious.

Think about it, Shinya Aoki has claimed in interviews that Japanese MMA dies if he is defeated by Melendez, he has at least tried to make a case for why this fight is very important. The key is that Strikeforce has their platform on CBS, their shows on Showtime and should be marketing a bit more effectively. At this point Strikeforce's PR and marketing is still that of a regional company; blast emails, open workouts in the market where they'll be promoting and conference calls that are nothing short of organizational disasters.

To your average CBS fan, do you really think that Shinya Aoki has any name value at all? he is a scrawny Japanese guy with large feet who usually wears funky pants. The other question here is if Strikeforce has sold DREAM at all, either. I'd argue that Strikeforce has issues with its own brand, never mind trying to hype up other brands, which is something that M-1 Global ran into in their partnership with Strikeforce. Of course, DREAM is much bigger than M-1 and is supplying their fighters. I apologize for making a dated pro wrestling reference, but this is like WWF putting wrestlers from small Northeastern promotion ECW on Raw and wondering why the ill-fated ECW invasion of the late 90's was a complete bomb and was forgotten in a blink of an eye.

Simple video packages of Aoki submitting everybody in his path along with video of his rampage on New Year's Eve after breaking Hirota's arm paints him as a dangerous submission artist, a threat to Melendez and a "punk." It would get people talking. People other than just you and me.