Sengoku ‘Eleventh Battle’ Preview

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Masvidal will be overmatched.

Joe Stevenson’s Japanese lookalike looks to pick up the pieces after losing the Sengoku lightweight strap to Mizuto Hirota. Meanwhile, Masvidal just wants to erase the memory of getting immortalized by a Toby Imada inverted triangle in the Bellator Fighting Championships lightweight tournament. That entails finding a way to throttle Kitaoka, one of the sport’s most recklessly aggressive fighters. Combining rabid ground-and-pound with submissions that are painful to even look at, Kitaoka fights like a Honey Badger. While the same goes for Masvidal, his upright kickboxing style and weak wrestling make him a perfect target for Kitaoka’s bullet train takedowns.

For the first five minutes of any fight, Kitaoka is as dangerous any fighter in the world. He has problems keeping that pace for an entire fight, which essentially cost him his showdown with Hirota. Masvidal does not have Hirota’s takedown defense, but if he can survive into the second round and make Kitaoka expend energy at every turn, he will be facing a completely different and far more vulnerable opponent.

It has never been a secret that Kitaoka sacrifices his cardio in the name of aggression, and that strategic gambit makes him dangerous against anyone who cannot keep pace. Masvidal may be a dangerous striker, but his mat game looks impotent in comparison and he has not made the necessary strides with his wrestling to be anything more than an entertaining mid-tier fighter. That nasty bit of reality will be forced down his throat, as Kitaoka taps him out with an NC-17 Achilles’ lock.