DREAM champ Shinya Aoki Photo Credit: Esther Lin/Strikeforce

By FCF Staff

Just a day after DREAM announced the first two fights for it’s New Year’s Eve event at Saitama Super Arena in Tokyo, the promotion has announced today that it has added a lightweight contest between Shinya Aoki (31-6) and Antonio McKee (28-4) to the fight card.

Aoki is coming off a first round technical submission (triangle choke) of Arnaud Lepont at ONE FC 6 in Singapore.  Prior to that he was stopped by old nemesis Eddie Alvarez in Bellator action on April 20, a loss that snapped a seven-fight win streak for Aoki.  The loss also evened the score between the two, three and a half years after Aoki submitted Alvarez with a heel hook in the first round of their K-1  “Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2008” New Year’s Eve matchup.

The 42-year-old McKee will close out his 13th year as a professional mixed martial artist.  The one-time UFC veteran and four-fight veteran of the now-defunct IFL is riding a three-fight win streak.

Prior to his split decision defeat at the hands of Jacob Volkmann on Jan. 1, 2011, McKee hadn’t been beaten in 15 consecutive bouts.

Yesterday, DREAM announced the first two bouts for its New Year’s Eve fight card – a middleweight (185 pounds) fight between Melvin Manhoef (26-9-1, 1 NC) and Denis Kang (35-15-2, 2 NC) and a 139-pound catchweight bout between former DREAM bantamweight (135 pounds) champion Bibiano Fernandes (12-3) and Yoshiro Maeda (30-11-2) of Japan.

The DREAM  event represents the first half of a doubleheader card being produced by GLORY, which will follow the MMA event with a 16-man, single-elimination heavyweight tournament that will award it’s winner a grand prize of $400,000.