Sherdog’s Top 10: New Year’s Eve Fights

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4. Shinya Aoki vs. Joachim Hansen
Pride “Shockwave 2006” | Dec. 31, 2006

No one pulls off the unorthodox and the unusual quite like the man with the rainbow-colored pants. With 20 career submission victories to his credit and a rubber guard worthy of a spot on Sherdog’s Most Dangerous Weapons list, it is no surprise that Aoki is the proud author of the first gogoplata-induced tapout in MMA history. And by first, we are only including bouts involving high-level fighters, of course.

In what would turn out to be the first of three meetings with Hansen, Aoki wasted little time in tripping his Norwegian foe to the canvas and moving into top position. From there, Aoki gradually worked to improve his position while feeding Hansen a steady diet of moderate ground-and-pound from above. “Tobikan Judan” eventually executed a slick transition in an attempt to take Hansen’s arm. Hansen defended that hold, but he quickly found himself in the clutches of the spidery Aoki, who cleverly trapped his adversary in the clutches of the rarely utilized gogoplata, forcing a tapout 2:24 into the opening stanza.

Aoki and Hansen would square off on two other occasions, with Hansen earning a first-round technical knockout victory at Dream 5 and Aoki taking the rubber match with a second-round armbar at Dream 11, but nothing stands out quite like the first meeting. Two months after Aoki made history, Nick Diaz followed suit, submitting Takanori Gomi with the same maneuver at Pride 33. As if to prove lighting can strike twice, Aoki tapped Katsuhiko Nagata with a gogoplata at Dream 4 in 2008. Still, there is nothing quite like the first time, and Aoki’s maiden gogoplata voyage remains an Internet marvel even today.

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