Neil Davidson writing in The Canadian Press must have been reading over the shoulder of our Grady Roy, as he concurs that Saturday’s Kenny Florian/Roger Huerta matchup has “fight of the year” written all over it:

It’s been touted as a potential fight of the night at UFC 87, but Kenny (KenFlo) Florian says even that may not do justice to his lightweight showdown Saturday night with Roger (El Matador) Huerta.

Florian believes it could be fight of the year.

“You’ve got two very aggressive fighters going at each other who are well-rounded. And with the potential to see this fight everywhere — on the ground, on the feet — it’s going to be non-stop.”

With the winner promised a title shot, there is even more at stake, although 155-lb. king B.J. Penn seems more interested in returning to 170 lb. for a second shot at Montreal’s Georges St. Pierre.

The Canadian, who won a split decision over Penn at UFC 58 in March 2006, headlines UFC 87 at the Target Center where he will defend his welterweight crown against top contender Jon Fitch.

Weekend tilt touted as fight of 08 @ The Canadian Press/Calgary Sun

Better yet, read Grady Roy’s take on it here at SAVSCI:

Huerta to face Florian at UFC 87 @ The Savage Science

According to SukiMMA, Kid Yamamoto’s knee surgery went well though he’s in a lot of pain. Apparently he took care of a nagging wrist injury at the same time, which is a pretty clever move. He also bought a Nintendo DS to help him get through his rehab and speaks very highly of “SimCity”:

I bought NINTENDO DS to kill my time. I play the role of a mayor in a game called “SimCity.”
I didn’t tell this before, but I had my left wrist operated on as well. I was injured my wrist during my training last September, a week before a fight with Bibiano Fernandes. I had kept training for my fight and I even had a fight without taking care of properly. I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t throw powerful punches by my left hand because of the pain. Finally I had an operation to get rid of bones which don’t stick together. I’m glad that I could have both my knee and wrist treated.

SukiMMA is essential reading, providing English translations of interviews and articles from the Japanese fight media

DREAM has updated the card for the forthcoming DREAM 6 event that’ll go down in Tokyo on September 23rd:

Ronaldo Jacare vs. Zelg Galesic (middleweight semi final)
Melvin Manhouf vs. Gegard Mousasi (middleweight semi final)

Also on the card is another appearance by Hideo Tokoro, who fought SAVSCI favorite Darren Uyenoyama in a fight of the year candidate at DREAM 4:

Hideo Tokoro vs. Atsushi Yamamoto

DREAM 6 card at DREAM Official Website

Speaking of Uyenoyama, last we heard he was going to be fighting on the DREAM 6 card but no announcement yet. We’d like to see him get another crack at Tokoro. We came across a Tokoro fan site and it might be some Japanese/English translation issues but it sounds like he’s talking smack about our guy Uyenoyama:

Hideo defeated Uyenoyama via dec. That was a very exciting match up and Tokoro could have finished this fight 2 times after vicious knees. He was better fighter on the feet and on the ground. That was his 20th pro victory in MMA.
He looks really impressive when he fights vs FWs. That was the best fight of the night. I hope to see Tok soon in his another match-up.  

We’ll certainly agree that it was the fight of the night (if not the fight of the year), and that Tokoro looked sharp. He may have been marginally better in the standup, but the ground battle was essentially a toss up. It’s the highlighted line that really bothers us: Tokoro could have finished the fight after the aforementioned knee strikes if Uyenoyama wasn’t such a tough SOB and kept getting up from shots that would have KO’d an elephant.

BTW, Uyenoyama is opening a gym in the San Francisco Bay area. We’ve posted the flyer from the grand opening on 8/11/08 below. If you’re in the area you should check it out. There’s a lot of wanna-be’s out there who run gyms but Uyenoyama is the real deal: