Gilbert Melendez Dominates Shinya Aoki to Retain Lightweight Belt

Gilbert Melendez dominated Sinya Aoki in route to retain the Lightweight Championship.  Aoki landed zero offense and Melendez refused to engage him on the mat when in the center of the cage (despite the butt scoots).  Aoki takedowns were incredibly ineffective and the majority of the time spent on the mat consisted of Melendez using the cage to his advantage while he punished Shinya in a controlled, intelligent fashion.  It was really a strong preformance from Gilbert who fought with intellgience and clearly followed through with his gameplan.

The big story with this fight is not Melendez's victory, but rather Aoki's loss.  Where does this put him in the lghtweight rankings, what does this say about the current state of Japanese MMA, and does he test himself outside of Japan again?  I cannot stress this enough, Aoki was compeltely dominated and mounted zero value offense.  His takedowns were slow and he was physically a weaker opponent.  This is not to take away from Melendez, but might provide SOME insight into the talent level in Dream.  Let's us not forget that is one fight and one fighter, we cannot draw absolute conclusions based simply off this.

Also, I bet that if Aoki comes back we will see some sort of knee guard, high sock, and long shorts combo (a.k.a. grappling pants).

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