Sherdog’s Top 10: Defunct Promotions

5. Dream (2008-12)

With the demise of Pride Fighting Championships, the Japanese MMA scene took a serious turn for the worse. Into that gap stepped a coterie of executives from the dearly departed promotion and FEG, which promoted K-1 kickboxing shows. The new promotion that came out of that alliance, Dream, debuted at the historic Saitama Super Arena in March 2008 and put on six events within its first year of operation.

Initial returns were promising. The talent was superb: The lightweight grand prix, for example, featured Eddie Alvarez, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Shinya Aoki and Gesias Cavalcante, while the middleweight field included Gegard Mousasi, Ronaldo Souza and Melvin Manhoef. Alistair Overeem, Mirko Filipovic, Bibiano Fernandes, Joe Warren, Nick Diaz and Hayato Sakurai were only a few of the other stars the promotion would utilize during its run. The fights were excellent, the production was reminiscent of Pride’s heyday and by and large, things seemed to be going well. The promotion ran only four events in 2010 and 2011, however, and the quality of the cards dropped substantially. By the middle of 2012, it had gone bankrupt, and apart from a revival show that was Dream in name only, the company had gone belly-up.

Dream was the last gasp of the golden age of Japanese MMA. It was run by many of the same people who made Pride and K-1 the gold standard in their respective sports, but the context had changed and so, too, had the economics of running these kinds of shows. Fan interest in Japan had likewise dimmed, and the future of MMA in Asia would shift southeast, toward Singapore and One Championship.

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