DREAM.14; Nick Diaz's Streak Continues, KID Yamamoto Back to Form

DREAM.14 is in the books and it proved to be a good night for Strikeforce once again, although Nick Diaz won't ever place his victory in the win column for them as much as he will himself. At this point, I've given up on counting for these Strikeforce vs. DREAM fights, as of right now DREAM has yet to rack up a single victory and honestly, it isn't like the promotional feud has much fire to it anyway. Nick Diaz made incredibly short work of his opponent, Hayato "Mach" Sakurai. Sakurai attempted to stand with Diaz, who outclassed him on the feet before Sakurai threw a poorly timed kick that Diaz caught and used to take him down. After a pummeling session, Sakurai was able to fight back to his feet and withstand some more of Diaz's unique boxing before exploiting Nick's biggest weakness; the takedown. Of course, Nick is a lot more comfortable off of his back and was able to fight for an armbar before rolling Mach into the cage and tapping him out.

In the other main attraction, Kazushi Sakuraba has once again proven that when he steps into the ring, fans have to be weary, as Saku dropped a decision to a rather unseasoned Ralek Gracie. Joachim Hansen's second bout at Featherweight went about as well as his first one did, when Hiroyuki Takaya was able to overwhelm Hellboy in the first round before the ref stopped the fight. This raises some serious questions as for the future of Hansen's career, as the move to Featherweight was supposed to reinvigorate his career, instead he finds himself in a situation where he has amassed three losses in a row, two of which were in his new home, the Featherweight division.

KID Yamamoto pulled a rabbit out of his hat and got back into the winner's circle for the first time since December of 2007. He did so against Federico "Kiko" Lopez and in quick fashion, which by all means a fighter of KID's caliber should be doing. Now the question is if he can piece together another victory and start to rebuild his star. Hideo Tokoro's spotty career won't be taking a turn for the better or worse anytime soon, as he continues his streak of mixing wins and losses with a loss to SHOOTO and Cageforce veteran Akiyo Nishimura via ref stoppage due to punches in the first round. Kazuyuki Miyata beat Takafumi Otsuka via decision and Yoshiro Maeda dropped a decision to Kenji Osawa. Ouch.

The only other story coming out of DREAM.14 was of course Minowaman. Ikuhisa Minowa's streak of taking out big dudes in dramatic fashion continued with a first round rear naked choke of Imani Lee and I can't decide if I want to see Minowa step up in competition or continue beating cans and fist pumping for 10 minutes afterwards.

SBN coverage of DREAM.14