Cage Force Headliner Scrapped; Tsuji Takes Valkyrie Crown

Earlier, at GCM's all-women's event Valkyrie 02 in the same arena, Kate Martinez held tough for 4:20 before tapping to a Yuka Tsuji armbar in the first round. As Tsuji landed a low kick, Martinez dropped her with a right hand. Martinez closed in to finish, but was immediately taken down. Tsuji quickly regained her bearings, stealing mount immediately, where she dropped hard punches as Martinez scrambled to recover guard.

After the ensuing standup, Tsuji took the fight back down again, passing effortlessly to side control, and then mount. Tsuji hammered down more punches before locking up the fight-ending armbar for the tap, as well as Valkyrie's featherweight title.

Takayo Hashi softened Chisa Yonezawa with punches from top position for two rounds before sneaking in an arm to sink the rear-naked choke halfway into the second round. From mount, Hashi dropped punches on Yonezawa's face, forcing her to give up her back. Referee Serizawa jumped in as Yonezawa tapped at the 1:43 mark.

“Windy Tomomi” Sunaba fell to tough Nagoyan Kyoko Takabayashi after the Alive rep put Windy away with a rear-naked choke in under two minutes. Knowing that Takabayashi would likely not want to engage on the feet, Windy charged forward at the opening horn, but was sucked to the mat when Takabayashi ducked under for the single leg.

In the following scramble, Takabayashi took Sunaba's back, punching the sides of her head before sinking the choke. Windy raised a hand and resignedly tapped the mat once, prompting referee Yoshinori Umeki to pause before ending the fight. She tapped once more and the bout was called at the 1:41 mark.

With the win, Takabayashi advances on to a fight against Megumi Yamaguchi to determine the No. 1 contender to Tsuji's new title.

Speaking of Yamaguchi, “V-Hajime” avenged herself in a rematch with Emi Fujino, taking the fight by decision after three rounds of stifling ground work. Though V-Hajime executed countless ineffective baseball slides, her single- and double-leg takedowns thankfully proved more than adequate to bring Fujino to the mat. Yamaguchi controlled on the canvas, racking up points for two of three rounds, doing just enough to steal the unanimous decision.

In other bouts:

Naoko Omuro def. Sachiko Yamamoto – TKO (Punches) 2:50 R1
Mizuho Sato def. Masae Mori – Technical Submission (Armbar) 2:28 R1

Editor's Note: This article was corrected at 12:47 a.m. on April 27 to correct the spelling of Marcus Dunahoo's name.