The other big story of the night came in the match between Reversal dojo’s Hideo Tokoro (Pictures) and Gibson Pankration fighter Kultar Gill (Pictures).
K-1 constantly plays footage of him taking on a job as a janitor just to make ends meet, living in a tiny apartment with no bathtub or shower, and having to eat cheap obentos (lunch boxes) from the combini (convenience store).
On the other side of this, K-1 dubbed Gill “The Black Mamba” and has really been playing up the Indian side of his Indian-Canadian heritage. In fact, it seems K-1 would prefer to keep the fact that Gill lives and trains in British Columbia a secret from the fans.
Off the bell, the two fighters moved around the ring, throwing some punches and kicks to get the ball rolling. Then, just as Tokoro was coming in for what looked like a takedown attempt, Gill caught him with an absolutely hellacious knee to the head.
Tokoro was out upon impact and fell to the canvas. Gill followed up with a few punches before the ref called for a stop. The whole affair lasted just 43 seconds. Tokoro was down on the canvas for some time and needed to be helped from the ring.
The fans just went silent once they realized what had happened. I really don’t think that anyone in the arena, or even the K-1 organization itself, expected the red-hot golden boy to lose to Gill. This defeat now forces Tokoro out of the middleweight tournament and puts K-1 in a really difficult situation — Tokoro was an extremely marketable fighter for them, with the HERO's brass hyping him for a showdown with Yamamoto. With this decisive loss, all of their plans go down the toilet.
Caol Uno (Pictures) did a lot of circling around the ring in the opening moments of his bout against Danish Thai-fighter Ole Laursen (Pictures), before eventually shooting in and getting the takedown.
Once on the ground, Uno basically dominated, passing Laursen’s guard to take side, and then the mount. From here the Danish fight bridged hard and pulled off a nice reversal, but eventually Uno made it back to the same position. The round ended with Uno on a turtled Laursen’s back, trying to sink in a rear-naked choke.
The second round saw more of the same, with Uno getting the takedown and maintaining ground control. Towards the end of the round Uno was able to sink in the rear-naked choke that had eluded him in the first and scored the tapout victory.
In his pre-fight video, K-1 made light of the fact that G.C.M. and Pancrase veteran Hidetaka Monma (Pictures) had to drop 31 pounds in order to make weight for his fight against Gesias Calvancanti (Pictures), who is now known in Japan as J.Z. Calvan.
The really impressive thing about Calvancanti in this fight was his punches from either standing or kneeling in his opponent’s guard. Those things were absolute bombs. The American Top Team fighter knocked Monma to the canvas right off the bell with a well-placed front kick to the chest, then after a quick kneebar attempt just unleashed with the punches inside the guard.
Monma turned his back to try to avoid the vicious strikes, but Calvancanti got around to the side and continued to rain down until the ref called an end at 2:08 of the first round.
U-file Camp’s Ryuki Ueyama (Pictures) was supposed to fight against SHOOTO contender Gilbert Melendez (Pictures) (who was supposed to fight “Pequeno” until he had to back out of the tournament to defend the SHOOTO title), but the Cesar Gracie (Pictures) fight had to pull out at the last minute after injuring a quadriceps muscle while training — so last minute that his picture was still in the event programs. Enter the man whom I have dubbed “Mr. North-South” … Rani Yahira (Pictures).
Yahira has been on a roll in Japan since his two nearly punchless victories in D.O.G. and the new MARS promotion. It seemed likely that right off the bell, the Brazilian fighter would come running in and get the takedown. And sure enough, that’s what happened.
My next thought was “I bet he’s going to go for a North-South choke.” Then sure enough, after a bit of jockeying on the ground, that’s exactly what he did. But to Ueyama’s credit, he was able to hold on and fight off the choke, eventually escaping, only to have Yahira to take his back. The Brazilian threw all of about four punches in the first round.
Ueyama was able to get his game going a lot better in the second, laying on a keylock that I thought for sure would have Yahira tapping. Both fighters continued to move through positions, with Yahira having a good armbar attempt at the end. The fight went to the judges and Yahira got the decision.
Ivan Menjivar (Pictures) was supposed to face off against Pequeno’s little brother, Leonardo Nogueira, but he had to drop out due to a shoulder injury. Enter Caol Uno (Pictures)’s teammate, Taiyo Nakahara (Pictures).
This fight remained on the feet throughout and looked like a kickboxing match. Menjivar’s hands looked crisper than those of his opponent, and he put together good combos, usually ending with a kick or a knee. This guy loves spinning backfists and threw a lot of them during the course of the fight. The bout went the distance and Menjivar walked away with the unanimous decision.
So the way the middleweight tournament now stands, we have Gill, Calvancanti, Yahira, Menjivar and Uno all advancing, with “Kid” and Sudo having byes into the second round. That leaves one more spot available for the HERO's brass to decide how to fill. Eliminated are Nakahara, Ueyama, Monma, Tokoro, Laursen and Miyata. All of those fighters have a possible chance of taking the last spot if HERO's brass deems them worthy.
Of those six my guess would be that it will either be Tokoro or Miyata who will be elected to fill the gap, with some combination of the other four fighting as alternates.
In the card’s other single bouts American Don Frye (Pictures) defeated Chad Rowan (Pictures), aka Akebono. A slip on the part of the former Sumo Grand Champion in the second round allowed Frye to capitalize and apply a front choke. Apparently before this match Akira Maeda (Pictures) stated that this was Akebono’s last chance, but it will remain to be seen if he sticks to word.
Antonio Silva (Pictures) laid a pretty good beating on American wrestler Tom Erikson (Pictures), getting the knockout victory early in the first round.