Akiyama -- Next big thing???

Dana white is trying to make the middleweight division as competitive as other divisions in the UFC as the champ Anderson Silva hasn't had a competitive match since he won the belt in August 2006. One of the fighters his signed up to build a stronger division is Akiyama and this is what he thinks of him. Dana: “I can see him making an immediate impact in the middleweight division, Besides his great judo and submission game, he’s a finisher, and UFC fans are going to love watching him because he always shows up to fight.”
Eventhough the above are all true does this mean that Akiyama can compete with top class fighters? He has two 'No Contests' in his records, both against the highest profiled fighters his faced; Misaki and Sakuraba. Sakuraba asked the refree to stop the fight as he thought Akiyama was 'greased', the refree ignored him and Akiyama grounded and pounded him untill stoppage. Later Akiyama admited on using body lotion on his whole body (Video of the whole incident below).


And against Misaki he had a quite boring striking match untill he managed to knock miskaki down with a straight punch but intrestingly failed to "finish" him. Misaki got up knocked Akiyama down with a punch and kicked Akiyama in the face while he was getting up. This was ruled as 'No Contest' as a rule that you can not kick an grounded opponent to the face.

He is scheduled to fight Alan Belcher in UFC 100, which will give us a better assessment of his abilities.