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Caol Uno def. Mitsuhiro Ishida, RD 2, Submission
Consider me amongst the group who felt Caol Uno was going to get destroyed by the singular-minded, talented, strong Mitsuhiro Ishida. All signs pointed in the direction of T-Blood’s Ishida smothering Uno, a fighter who hadn’t competed in nearly eight months after recovering from a broken jaw. Instead, Uno, sporting swank white-and-orange shoes, played a “Wild Card” and changed things up in the opening moments of the fight by dropping Ishida with a well-timed right hook. I give Ishida credit for recovering well and turning up the heat on Caol afterwards but momentum was clearly Uno’s from that moment forward. Ishida seemed physically smaller than usual, and was sporting tape on his back, so I wonder if perhaps he wasn’t able to train at full speed in the weeks leading up to the match on Saturday night.
If I hadn’t seen it happen live on television, I might still have a hard time believing Caol Uno choked out Mitsuhiro Ishida, but it happened and as unbelieveable as it seems, Uno is now in the DREAM Lightweight Grand Prix Semi-Finals. I assume he’ll be facing Ishida’s T-Blood teammate Tatsuya Kawajiri based on interest the match-up creates as well as the intense moment between Uno and Kawajiri at the end of the show (which the HDNet production crew whiffed on by having Kenny and Bas wrap things up over it). If you didn’t see it, Kawajiri took the microphone and said something to Uno which I’ve since read was a challenge. The DREAM official in the ring had to actually put his arm in front of Tatsuya to keep him from getting any closer to Uno. That would leave Eddie Alvarez to face Shinya Ao-…er…the winner between Shinya Aoki and Katsuhiko Nagata. Sounds like two damn fine fights to me!

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