Bob Sapp lit up the crowd from the beginning, performing his usual grandiose entrance to the ring to the delight of his Japanese subjects. After an opening charge, the action hit the deck quickly, where Ikuhisa Minowa was able to sweep “The Beast” to his back. He then made the most of his specialist knowledge of leg locks, and Sapp’s unbelievable naivety on the ground by applying an Achilles lock. Nothing new here folks, Minowa can sub anyone with a suspect ground game and Sapp has once again been training his MMA skills by watching DVDs of “When Animals Attack: Volume 4”. One fan favorite down.

Sleaze… I mean BASEball star, Jose Canseco, did all he set out to do against gargantuan Hong-Man Choi in the freakiest of freak show matches. Canseco swung bombs from the outside and evaded Choi for a short time before feeling the power of the giant merely clipping him, feigning an injury and falling to the floor. Choi followed him down to finish him off and the ref quickly stopped it. It was apparent that Canseco would be more than happy not to leave the ring on a stretcher. Unfortunately, I think that’s what most fans wanted to see, and, unsurprisingly this horrific match ended unsatisfactorily. Canseco should proceed to crawl back in his hole, and Choi should prepare his ground skills for the next round. If his next opponent should chop him down, it’s a long way back up for him.

A disgraceful showing from Thierry Sokoudjou was to follow against an outclassed Jan Nortje. Sokoudjou was too quick for his slovenly opponent on the feet, landing body kicks at will, and once Soko eventually tripped him to the ground it was all over in a barrage of punches. The Cameroonian was not content to leave it there though, as he continued to fire punches as the referee waved the contest off, much to Nortje and his corner’s disgust. Unacceptable behavior from the youngster, and no-one should be impressed in any way by this performance against a man with no business in an MMA ring with a top competitor.

Gegard Mousasi stuck to his successful formula of fighting to his opponent’s weaknesses by quickly submitting Mark Hunt. The young talent tripped his vastly larger opponent down with great stealth and moved to side mount, shortly thereafter applying a kimura for the W. Mousasi’s move up the weight divisions begins successfully then, although you can’t help but wonder just how good he could have been at middleweight. A genuinely exciting talent and a firm favorite for the entire open weight tournament, I can’t wait for his recently confirmed fight with Vitor Belfort. Mark Hunt, I hate to break it to you, but your weaknesses are kind of obvious. On the face of it though, you couldn’t care less win or lose, which is a shame.