What was the biggest question at the press conference: Will both fighters wear red shorts? Something tells me that question would rank pretty low on the importance scale if they were fighting over here.
Ikuhisa Minowa (Pictures) is the 1999 Neo Blood tournament champion and sports a record of 35-24-8. Minowa made his PRIDE debut against Quinton Jackson (Pictures) and he was pounded with strikes. He came back for more, taking a beating from Wanderlei Silva (Pictures) at PRIDE Bushido 2. Ikuhisa clearly beat Ryan Gracie (Pictures) in his next fight, but lost a split decision. Minowa went on to win five of six in PRIDE, including submission wins over Gilbert Yvel (Pictures), Stefan Leko (Pictures) and Kimo Leopoldo (Pictures).
He split a pair of bouts with Phil Baroni (Pictures), getting stomped near unconscious in the first meeting and taking a decision in the rematch. Minowa would lose three of his next four to top competition.
Over the last year the crowd favorite has often been selected to take part in the card’s “spectacle bout.” He took to the ring with oversized behemoths Eric Esch (Pictures) and Paulo Silva and stopped both fighters in the first round. Last month Minowa earned his third win in a row.
Japanese submission wrestler Kiyoshi Tamura (Pictures) is the leader of the U-File Camp and a former UWF and UWFi professional wrester. The promoter of the U-Style submission-wrestling event trains with Ryuki Ueyama (Pictures). The former RINGS champion has a professional MMA record of 13-9-0 and has split eight fights in PRIDE.
Tamura made his PRIDE debut against Wanderlei Silva (Pictures) in 2002. He was thoroughly abused before being knocked out in the second round. The beating continued as he was fed to Bob Sapp (Pictures) four months later. Tamura exacted some revenge by retiring the man who currently resides as PRIDE president, Nobuhiko Takada (Pictures).
After nearly a year away from MMA, Tamura faced Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida (Pictures) and lost by gi choke. He stopped his next two opponents and won a decision victory over another judo medal winner, Makoto Takimoto (Pictures). Kiyoshi’s last appearance was in Feb. where he met “Minotauro” Nogueira in a rematch of their 2000 RINGS match. He was submitted via armbar early in the first round.
Kiyoshi is an accomplished submission fighter and has quality kicking skills so this could be a bad match-up for Minowa. He was outworked in the previous meeting and there’s a good chance it will happen again here. Minowa’s strength is his ground game, but he’ll need to keep Tamura there to employ his skills. That won’t be easy and even if he does get to the mat, Tamura is comfortable on his back. Neither fighter is a quick finisher so we may be in for a long battle. Tamura by decision.