MMA Sengoku

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.

November has been an odd month for middleweights.

The UFC's middleweight division is basically taking the month off, with the undisputed No. 1 middleweight in the world, UFC champion Anderson Silva, nursing an elbow injury and hinting that he doesn't think any of the UFC's other top middleweights are worthy opponents.

Meanwhile, two big middleweight fights happened in other promotions, but they didn't quite go according to plan: Jake Shields beat Jason "Mayhem" Miller to win the Strikeforce middleweight title in a fight that left the crowd booing, while Mamed Khalidov shocked Sengoku middleweight champion Jorge Santiago.

And the guy who's probably the best middleweight after Silva -- Dan Henderson -- doesn't have a contract at the moment and isn't sure if he'll be fighting for the UFC or Strikeforce in 2010. So my list of the Top 10 middleweights in MMA shows a division in flux.

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.

Don't call him the "Grabaka Hitman."

2006 PRIDE GP champion Kazuo Misaki announced Monday that he has left his camp of nine years, the Grabaka Gym based out of Nakano, Tokyo.

In a big upset and a bad decision, Michihiro Omigawa defeated Hatsu Hioki by split decision Saturday at Sengoku 11 in Tokyo.

Hioki clearly controlled the pace of the fight, especially in the first and second round. Omigawa wouldn't quit and had his best round in the third, but it's very surprising that two of the three judges awarded him the fight.

In a major MMA upset, Mamed Khalidov defeated Jorge Santiago by first-round TKO Saturday at Sengoku 11.

The Polish Khalidov came out aggressively, trying and missing a spinning back kick in the early going before Santiago took him down. On the ground, Khalidov stunned Santiago with a punch to the jaw, and as soon as he smelled blood he pounced, unleashing a series of hard strikes to the head that had Santiago dazed and hurting. The referee stepped in and stopped it at the 2:45 mark of the first round.

Sengoku middleweight champion Jorge Santiago and top contenders in the promotion's featherweight and lightweight divisions are set for action on Saturday at Sengoku 11 at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, Japan.

Sengoku 11 is World Victory Road's final show before it changes its name on New Year's Eve to "Sengoku Raiden Championship," tacking on a word meaning thunder (rai) and lightning (den). Below are the results from Friday's weigh-ins and the final lineup in reverse order .

I've been banging the drum for a couple years saying the UFC needs to give Yushin Okami a shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva. You won't be hearing that from me anymore.

After Chael Sonnen thoroughly dominated Okami with a unanimous decision win on Saturday night at UFC 104, Okami took a tumble in my rankings of the top 10 middleweights in mixed martial arts. So how far did Okami fall, and what does the middleweight picture look like now? My rankings are below.

World Victory Road has named 10 participants for its New Year's Eve Sengoku Raiden Championships 12 event at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo.

Sengoku middleweight champ Jorge Santiago will face Mamed Khalidov in a non-title fight and Kevin Randleman will take on Stanislav Nedkov at Sengoku 11 on Nov. 7 in Tokyo, World Victory Road announced today.

Santiago (21-7), who last fought in January when he captured the Sengoku title over Kazuo Misaki, has been on a tear the past two years after leaving the UFC late 2006 on two knockout losses. Since, the American Top Team fighter has won Strikeforce and Sengoku tournaments and would have looked to extend his win streak to ten in August against Vitor Belfort until the cancellation of the Affliction "Trilogy" event.