Preview: Shooto 'Tradition 5'

Shinichi "BJ" Kojima vs. Jesse Taitano

Taitano, a product of Guam’s vibrant and growing MMA scene, is coming off a unanimous point loss to Shooto gatekeeper Hiroyuki Tanaka in November. However, despite the recent loss as a bantamweight, Taitano remains one of the few fighters who have had success as flyweights against more established Japanese competition. After an early career split decision loss to veteran Takeyasu Hirono, Taitano blew Hirono’s doors off in March. On top of that, Taitano fought his way to a draw, albeit a debatable one, against perennial divisional star Yasuhiro Urushitani in December 2007. Apart from Robson Moura’s upset of Mamoru Yamaguchi's six plus years ago, that’s probably the most significant result for any non-Japanese flyweight in the division’s young history.

Naturally, Taitano finds himself in a tough spot against the world’s best flyweight. After a hare-brained and disastrous attempted run as a bantamweight, Kojima returned to the 123-pound division to defend his title against aforementioned rival Yamaguchi in July, when he pulled off a come-from-behind guillotine choke to retain his title with 78 seconds to go in the march. While Kojima has not shown the prowess he showed before capturing the title in October 2006, he remains unquestionably the sport’s premier flyweight.

Taitano will not be the man to take that mantle from him. He has some real dynamism to his game -- Taitano is aptly nicknamed “Spiderman” for his flexible slickness on the ground -- in addition to having serious striking power for a flyweight. However, Kojima is the more technical boxer of the two and should be able to work his hands comfortably against Taitano. More than that, Kojima is the far better wrestler, and with an underrated and often underutilized top position game, “BJ” at the very least can replicate the ground-and-pound game that Hiroyuki Tanaka used to defeat Taitano just two months ago at PXC 16.

St. Pierre-Penn 2 this is not, but the globalization of the flyweight division and the mixing of international talent pools are still two important trends in the sport. With Rambaa Somdet and Pat Runez less than a week away from engaging in the first significant flyweight fight on American soil at PFC 12, and Zuffa set to introduce 125-pounders to the World Extreme Cagefighting cage in the near future, you may want to take a gander.