With his record now standing at 7-0, he has a mouth to talk. Last year he beat Yasuhiro Urushitani, who’s ranked No. 2 in SHOOTO world rankings. Iguchi may be the guy who has the strongest momentum in his weight class in Japan now, not only as a fighter but also as a guy who has an bad attitude after the fight. Man, he spit out a lot of poison through the microphone. Of course I’m saying that as positive thing for him. He definitely put the fire in other fighter’s hearts, like Urushitani.
Once the bout started it was all about Ishida, who dominated his match up with Shinya Sato. Ishida threw his opponent all over the ring, before suplexing Sato and kneeing his nose. It was almost like watching a cartoon, except the mouse Jerry beat up the big cat Tom.
At 3:03 of the first round, Sato’s corner couldn’t stand watching their boy get so beaten up, so they threw a towel in the cage and the referee stopped the fight.
Ishida trained for years with SHOOTO champion Tatsuya Kawajiri, who beat up Vitor “Shaolin” Ribeiro. Also, he trains with lil’ Sakurai (Hayato) and Big Sakurai (Ryuta). There was no contest between Ishida and Sato.
OK, my boy Takeshi Yamazaki showed up in the third fight of the night. As he told me in an interview last week, his strategy in this fight was keep the better position. And he really kept a little better position than his opponent, Takahito Iida, almost the whole time, except for when he was on his back and went to the classic armbar. But Iida, who has such a built upper body, dropped brutal punches to Yamazaki’s face when he almost got the submission. So Yamazaki had to give up on catching the arm.
Then Yamazaki went to the leg lock, but by the time he almost caught Iida’s heel, the horn for round one sounded. As soon as the second period began, Iida came with strong punches. Yamazaki went to a single-leg takedown instead of firing back with punches, and this action brought the fight to his own game.
Yamazaki then earned back mount around three minutes into the third round. After about a minute on Iida’s back, Yamazaki scored the rear-naked choke and Iida tapped out with torment on his face.
“The rear-naked choke I trapped on Mr. Iida was a little bit unorthodox style,” Yamazaki said after the fight. “ My arm wasn’t placed at under his chin, so I made a fist behind his head and pushed his head with that fist by my chin real hard. Then he tapped out right before I gave up on that submission. I could hear Kikuta-san telling ‘Believe it, you can make it! He’s struggling. Keep on giving him a pressure there. He’ll tap out.’ So I continued to tighten up my arm as I choked him.”
“As soon as the fight started, I noticed that all he’s looking to do is punch me in the face by his vicious right hand,” Yamazaki continued. “So all I had to be careful was his right hand. Once we went to the ground, I didn’t feel any pressure from him. So the right hand is all he got. I still don’t underestimate his skill though.”
Grabaka Boss, Kikuta commentated about this fight on his blog: “Yamazaki sometimes lost when he got on his back. In that position he just eats series of punches to his face. But today, even if he was on the bottom, he didn’t stop attacking his opponent like to go arm and transit the submission to the leg. I think this was the best bout in his fighting career so far.”
Katsuya Toida and Atsuhi Yamamoto battled to a draw, and I don’t have problem with that decision. Even though Yamamoto was more aggressive, Toida reacted to Yamamoto’s attacks very well, and controlled the fight, as he wanted.
Toida ate several punches, but it seemed like none of them hurt him. I don’t know if any of the UFC staff will watch this fight, but Toida used the cage very interestingly. There was one time that Yamamoto tried to take Toida down from the backside. And Toida literally ran away from Yamamoto toward the cage, ran up the enclosure, and jumped back to Yamamoto. I felt like I was watching one of those Jackie Chan movies, like when he uses a wall to do a flashy back flip.
It was a fun fight to watch, with lots of action. I’d like to see this fight again, not in a ring, but in the Octagon.
There’s nothing I can write about Kenji Osaka versus Minoru Tsuiki. Tsuiki took this fight on three-days notice due to his teammate Shida’s injury. Once the fight started, it was all about how Kenji Osawa destroyed his opponent, how Kenji Osawa punched his opponent in the face, and how Kenji Osawa finished his opponent. We received the answer to those questions 22 seconds into round three after a knee from the Thai clinch.
The referee stopped the fight right after Tsuiki went down. From this fight, I could see Osawa was very ready to fight in the cage, while Tsuiki wasn’t ready at all. Once again, if the guy on the bottom can’t open his guard, how can he win? After the fight, Osawa called out SHOOTO world ranked fighter, Makoto Oishi, for his next fight.