Cagefighting will arrive on the main stage in Japan at DREAM.12 on Oct. 25 at the Osaka-jo Hall.
FEG first hinted mid-August at a change in fighting surface, hyping a surprise for DREAM. 12 as "The Great Experiment," and judging from the new promo video (see above) released Wednesday, the promotion is moving forward in replacing the ring with a cage. It is uncertain if the cage is a one-time special attraction or if it will replace the ring completely.
"Appease The Wrath Of God In Rage... The God Blessed This Island, Once With Ring, Now With Cage, Appease The Wrath Of God In Cage," the video states.
Fighting inside a cage is nothing new to Japan as GCM launched Cage Force in 2005 and was the first to base a Japanese promotion around utilizing a cage, but DREAM will be the first to do it on a mainstream level. DREAM's cage will be a six-sided similar to US partner Strikeforce.
Cage Force is an unofficial UFC feeder program that helped send Dan Hardy and Yoshiyuki Yoshida to the UFC and Takeya Mizugaki to the WEC. Cage Force runs around eight shows a year and last November brought women's MMA in Japan to the cage.
The video features Alistair Overeem, Andrews Nakahara, Eddie Alvarez, Katsunori Kikuno, Yoshiro Maeda and Kiyoshi Tamura and DREAM.12 could include most of them, but nothing is official for now.
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