MACHIDA: Ryoto “Lyoto” Machida, the Antoni Inoki protégé, has trained with Wallid Ismael and Ricco Chiparelli but still manages to blur the lines between work and shoot. “Lyoto” is a purple belt in BJJ under Alexi Cruz (a student of Dela Riva) as well as being the 2001 Pan Am Karate Champion and the runner up in the 2000 Brazilian Sumo Championships in the 115 kg division. He is 4-0 in MMA and has shown legitimate fight skills in recent action with wins in the New Japan “Ultimate Crush” show and the Inoki/Wallid Ismael half work/half shoot event Jungle Fight 1. Machida looked impressive recently taking out UFC veteran Rich “Ace” Franklin at the Inoki Bom Ba Ye show on New Year’s Eve and then stopping K-1 stand-out Michael MacDonald at the K-1 Beast in March.
GRECO: Sam Greco brings a 1-0-1 MMA record (beat Stefan Gamlin, drew with Masaaki Satake) into the ring against Machida. He has an extensive full contact karate and kickboxing record with a 92-4 tournament record and a K-1 record of 18-6-2-2 with 11 KOs. The Australian native is a 6-time Australia Full Contact Karate Champion, a 3-time Commonwealth Karate Champion, the 1994 Karate World Cup Champion, the former WAKO PRO World Super Heavyweight Champion and Thai Boxing Champion, and a K-1 Grand Prix finalist in ’96, ’97 and ’98. He’s a good striker but the ground game is new territory for this 37 year-old traditional karate stylist.
MY PICK: The fighters are fairly evenly matched size-wise but “Lyoto” will know better than to keep a dangerous striker like Greco standing for too long. It will go to the ground and Machida will submit the MMA neophyte late in the 1st Rd.