There was a time when you couldn’t have a conversation about the best lightweights in MMA without at least mentioning Shinya Aoki . Back when he hit a gogoplata on Joachim Hansen at PRIDE Shockwave in 2006, or when he heel hooked Eddie Alvarez at the Fields Dynamite!! New Year’s Eve event in 2008, the skinny Japanese guy with the colorful tights and killer ground game seemed like something special. In those days, the question was whether he’d ever leave the rings of Japan long enough to get a real test in the cages of the North American MMA scene. Then he did, going 1-1 in Strikeforce before losing via first-round TKO in a 2012 Bellator rematch with Alvarez, and with that some important questions got some seemingly very clear answers