Fujiwara to Defend Bantamweight Strap Against Shimizu at ZST 27

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Zst bantamweight champion Keisuke Fujiwara will put his belt on the line for the second time on Feb. 6 when he meets Toshihiro Shimizu in the five-round main event of Zst 27.

The Japanese promotion on Wednesday announced the complete card for the event, which takes place at Shinjuku Face in Tokyo and will be preceded by the seventh installment of Zst’s “Swat! in Face” series.

The show’s headliners are no strangers: Fujiwara submitted Shimizu via triangle choke in 2007, and has twice defeated the Uruno Dojo product’s older brother, Shunichi Shimizu. Fujiwara’s first title defense was a 25-minute unanimous decision win against the elder Shimizu last February, and the champion has notched two wins in Zst since. In the same time, Toshihiro has gone 3-0-1, most recently submitting Yuki Takei in Akira Maeda’s The Outsider.

In the card’s featherweight co-main event, Paraestra Matsudo representative Yoshitaka Abe will face promotional mainstay Kenichi Ito in a scheduled three-rounder. Abe ran off a trio of submission wins in 2010, while Ito went winless at 0-1-2 in his three outings.

In the first of the two-round undercard bouts, resurgent veteran Masayuki Okude will drop to featherweight to take on Grabaka fighter Masamitsu Nakamura. The 32-year-old Okude scored three straight wins by armbar last year, including one against Outsider champion Keinosuke Yoshinaga. Nakamura, meanwhile, halted a four-fight winless streak in November.

Rounding out the main card, former “Super High School Student” Tetsuya Yamada will go up against Takashi Matsui at welterweight; submission ace Naoyuki Kotani will meet Keigo Hirayama in a lightweight affair; and Yuki Yamamoto will face Outsider transfer Yoshihiro Saegusa at 160 pounds.

Zst 27
February 6, 2011
Shinjuku Face
Tokyo, Japan

Keisuke Fujiwara vs. Toshihiro Shimizu
Yoshitaka Abe vs. Kenichi Ito
Masayuki Okude vs. Masamitsu Nakamura
Yuki Yamamoto vs. Yoshihiro Saegusa
Tetsuya Yamada vs. Takashi Matsui
Naoyuki Kotani vs. Keigo Hirayama