MMA K1

K-1 has released the latest promotional video for its World Grand Prix Final 2009, and it shows once again that K-1 knows how to hype a fight. Video below.

Giogrio Petrosyan won the K-1 World Max 2009 championship Monday at the Yokohama Arena in Japan and will likely face last year's champ Masato in his retirement fight at "Dynamite!! 2009" on New Year's Eve.

Petrosyan made quick work of his first opponent Yuya Yamamoto, knocking out the lone Japanese tournament representative with a right hook two minutes and nine seconds into the fight. In the finals (video above), Petrosyan won unanimously on the scorecards against two-time K-1 World Max champ Andy Souwer, who advanced earlier in the evening with a split decision over Buakaw Por.Pramuk.

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.

Only the hardest of the hard-core fans watched it, but the Ultimate Glory MMA and kickboxing event in Amsterdam Saturday featured four of the eight participants in December's K-1 World Grand Prix Final 2009: Errol Zimmerman, Ruslan Karaev, Alistair Overeem and Semmy Schilt. So what did that event tell us about what we should expect from the year's biggest and best kickboxing event?

Getting revenge for an ugly loss more than five years ago, the enormous Dutch kickboxer Semmy Schilt defeated the Belarusian Alexey Ignashov in a fairly dull decision Saturday at Golden Glory's Ultimate Glory 11 event in Amsterdam.

Alistair Overeem hasn't fought in the United States since winning the Strikeforce heavyweight championship two years ago, but on Saturday he beat an overmatched American, Tony Sylvester, in Golden Glory's Ultimate Glory 11 event in Amsterdam.

Overeem's first-round submission win was short and not particularly good: Overeem landed a hard knee to Sylvester's face, knocked him to the ground, landed a couple of punches, let him back up, and then forced him to tap with a standing guillotine choke. The whole fight lasted just under a minute and a half. Sylvester never went on the offensive at all.

K-1 event producer Sadaharu Tanikawa and DREAM producer Keiiti Sasahara held a press conference Wednesday in Tokyo to formally announce "Dynamite!! 2009" for New Year's Eve at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.

Tanikawa said the event will be similar to last year's in that there will be a mixture of K-1 kickboxing and DREAM mixed martial arts bouts to fill out an 18-fight lineup.

The last 24 hours have given us some big news on the two biggest MMA cards of the fall: The November 21 UFC 106 got better with Forrest Griffin stepping in for the injured Mark Coleman to face Tito Ortiz, while the November 7 Strikeforce/M-1 Global card got better with Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou facing Gegard Mousasi.

So which card is better: UFC 106: Lesnar vs. Carwin, or Strikeforce and M-1 Global: Fedor vs. Rogers? I asked MMA fans on Twitter to weigh in, and a majority picked UFC. A selection of answers -- plus a bonus question about a fight card that I think might be more fun than either of them -- is below.

One of the things I enjoy about K-1 is the way it determines the draw for the World Grand Prix final tournament, with the fighters first slotting themselves into the brackets. That slotting process was done the morning after Saturday's World Grand Prix in Seoul, so the results are in.