The story
Founded by Keiichi Sasahara and Sadaharu Tanikawa on Mar 15, 2008.1
Formation
After Zuffa acquired Pride, former Dream Stage Entertainment executives put on a collaborative New Year's Eve mixed martial arts event with Shooto, M-1 Global, and the Fighting and Entertainment Group, called Yarennoka!. While the event was intended to be a farewell show for Pride, its success and further petitioning by Japanese MMA fans (including a petition with more than 3,000 signatures) prompted the FEG and the DSE staff to combine their efforts and form a new promotion.
Their new promotion was confirmed on February 13, 2008, along with Hero's dissolution. All of Hero's' fighters were confirmed (such as Hero's champions Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto, Yoshihiro Akiyama and JZ Calvan) to be part of the new promotion along with the additions of Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović, Shinya Aoki, Kazushi Sakuraba, Mitsuhiro Ishida, and Hayato "Mach" Sakurai. Another notable announcement was Dream's partnership with M-1 Global, who confirmed that they would allow the last Heavyweight Champion of Pride (and the winner of the 2004 Heavyweight Grand Prix), Fedor Emelianenko, to fight in their events. Emelianenko was present at the Dream press conference to promote the alliance between the two shows.
Partnerships
On May 2, 2008, Dream aired for the first time in the United States with a repeat of Dream 1 on HDNet. A repeat of Dream 2 was aired the following day, while Dream 3 was aired live on May 11. The promotion's later events would air as a part of the network's HDNet Fights series.
On May 10, 2008, Dream announced the working partnership with US promotion EliteXC. The two groups intended to share fighters and eventually co-promote shows. However, EliteXC went bankrupt before the alliance could materialize.
On August 5, 2009, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker announced that the promotions had signed an alliance under which they would exchange fighters.
On November 28, 2011, Dream and ONE Fighting Championship announced an agreement to co-promote events and exchange fighters.
On January 17, 2012, ProElite announced a partnership with Dream for fighter exchanges and possible co-promoted shows.
Cessation of business operations
On May 16, 2012, Sadaharu Tanikawa officially declared the bankruptcy of FEG. The promotion was then managed by its parent company, Real Entertainment Co. Ltd., and by June 3, 2012, Dream had effectively gone out of business.
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The promotion's final show, "Dream.18: Special NYE 2012", was announced for December 31, 2012, under the financial backing of kickboxing promotion Glory Sports International. The event promoted mixed martial arts and kickboxing bouts at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan, carrying on the tradition of fight events every New Year's Eve.
From Wikipedia’s article on Dream (mixed martial arts), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4