MMA Dream

Wednesday night's Jose Aldo vs. Mike Brown fight shook up the featherweight division in mixed martial arts. When I interviewed Brown last week it looked like he was close to clearing out the featherweight division, but now that Aldo is the World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight champion, the division is a lot more interesting.

Who will get the first shot at Aldo's title? I think it'll be the winner of the WEC 46 bout between Urijah Faber and Rafael Assuncao, and I think Manny Gamburyan's win over Leonard Garcia on Wednesday night makes him a player in the featherweight division, too.

My featherweight rankings are below.

Wednesday night's WEC 44 event is a featherweight showcase, headlined by Mike Brown defending his 145-pound title against Jose Aldo.

But the WEC's bantamweight division, which won't be represented in any of Wednesday night's live fights on Versus, might be even more stacked than the featherweight division. My list of the Top 10 bantamweights in MMA is topped by six WEC fighters, with champion Brian Bowles and former champion Miguel Torres clearly the class of the division.

A couple of Shooto fighters make my list, as does Dream's Bibiano Fernandes (whom I consider a bantamweight even though he's the promotion's featherweight champ), but there's no question that at the top, the division is dominated by the WEC.

The lightweight division in mixed martial arts consists of B.J. Penn and everyone else.

We all know that Penn, the UFC champion, has established himself as the top lightweight in the sport. But after Penn, there are about a dozen guys who are practically interchangeable. That list includes UFC fighters like Penn's next opponent (Diego Sanchez), his last opponent (Kenny Florian), and some past and future UFC opponents like Gray Maynard, Frank Edgar and Sean Sherk.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, ILL. -- DREAM lightweight champion Shinya Aoki made a special appearance at the Strikeforce weigh-ins on Friday, and FanHouse spoke to "Tobikan Judan" about the possibility of fighting in the United States in the near future.

Aoki also talked about unifying the DREAM and Strikeforce lightweight titles and when he expects to fight again. The full video interview is below.

Kazushi Sakuraba's stunning submission of Zelg Galesic at Dream 12 was one of the most stunning endings to an MMA fight we've had all year. Video and commentary below.

Marius Zaromskis is still known only to the hardest of the hard-core MMA fans in the United States, but if he keeps winning fights like he won his fight against Myeon Ho Bae Sunday at Dream 12, American fans will learn about him soon. Video below.

A heavyweight bout between Fedor Emelianenko and Alistair Overeem is increasingly looking like it will be one of the big MMA fights of 2010. The question is whether it will happen in the United States in the Strikeforce cage, or in Japan in the Dream ring -- and Dream Event Producer Keiichi Sasahara says he's hoping to get the deal done in his promotion.

Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, widely considered the No. 3 lightweight in the world, tapped out DEEP titleholder Katsunori Kikuno at DREAM.12 on Sunday. But early on Alvarez was in trouble when he was caught in a move, which he claimed, was "something I've never been in before."

The move is called the standing crucifix, a neck crank obtained when the applier can secure double underhooks and join his hands around his opponent's back. It can be transitioned from a guillotine choke and also be utilized when defending a takedown, which happened in this case.

After beating James Thompson in a Dream 12 squash match Sunday, Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem said he wants his next MMA fight to be against a much, much tougher opponent: The best fighter in MMA, Fedor Emelianenko.

In North America, people who know who Alistair Overeem is know him as an MMA fighter. He's the Strikeforce heavyweight champion, and his 14 fights in Pride included one in Las Vegas (against Shogun Rua) and one against Chuck Liddell when Liddell was the most popular fighter in the UFC. To the extent that Overeem has any name value in this country, it's for what he's done in MMA.