Welcome back to the second installation of the hottest news and rumors from Japan. While we are in topic about what’s going on in the Japanese MMA scene and we’re coming up on PRIDE 29, let’s focus one more time in the “small” promotions and what they have in store for the next couple of months.
Japan Ready for the Cage
Let’s start with the GCM D.O.G. octagon show and its upcoming show in March. Some new fights have been added to the card with Pancrase, DEEP and Demolition veteran Hidetaka Monma fighting Chatt Lavender, SHOOTO No. 2-ranked bantamweight Yasushiro Urushitani facing Lorenzo Coca and PRIDE Bushido and Pancrase veteran Yushin Okami taking on Brian Foster.
Out of all these fights, probably the most appealing to hardcore Japanese fans will be Okami-Foster. Okami is coming off a decision victory over tough-as-nails Eiji Ishikawa in Pancrase and Foster made quick work over the always-popular Daijiro Matsui at Shootboxing Ground Zero show a couple of weeks ago.
This really looks like a very good show and promises to be marked in the Japanese MMA scene as the first Japanese promotion to use the cage in real competition.
For now the card looks as follows:
Katsuya Toida vs. Atsushi Yamamoto
Ken Ozawa vs. Miki Shida
Takahito Iida vs. Takeshi Yamazaki
Hirono Takeyasu vs. Iguchi Setsu
Yushin Okami vs. Brian Foster
Yasuhiro Urushitani vs. Lorenzo Coca
Chatt Lavender vs. Hidetaka Monma
Yamazaki-san is Sherdog.com’s Masa Fukui jiu-jitsu instructor here in Japan, and I hear from a very reliable source that Masa will be having extensive “talks” with Yamazaki in order to give him tips about how to fight inside the cage. In case this is true, I predict Iida winning by knockout in the first round.
Nogueira Defends SHOOTO Belt
Jumping into SHOOTO waters, everything points to the SHOOTO commission getting tired or running out of Japanese fighters to try to take the title away from the eternal 143-pound champion Alexandre Franca Nogueira.
The master of the “10-Finger” guillotine choke is schedule to face and defend his title against fellow countryman and BJJ machine Joao Roque at the next SHOOTO show in March 12. Now in case some of you didn’t know this, “Pequeno” Nogueira is currently the oldest MMA champion in the world—and I’m not talking about age but how long he has held the belt.
Sato’s Final Shot?
According to the arcane SHOOTO files, Alexandre Franca Nogueira won the title in 1999. But the little twist is all this time he had only five official title defenses. Now like some people say “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” or in other words don’t blame “Pequeno” but more the SHOOTO commission and their weird way to rank and give title shots.
Also in the very same card we have another SHOOTO legend coming back. SHOOTO “charisma” Rumina Sato faces Makoto Ishikawa from Enson's Purebred Gym. Now make no mistake, I like Sato because win or lose the guy delivers excitement, and the “old school” aura from SHOOTO early days.
But this is the fourth time the Commission has given Sato a title shot. Sato already missed three times to become part of history when he lost back-to-back title matches with Caol Uno and later when he faced SHOOTO wrecking machine Takanori Gomi. Now for the fourth time Sato actually get this title shot after advancing in the Pacific Rim lightweight tournament, taking out Bao Quach and Katsuya Toida in outstanding fashion.
Let’s hope for the sake of Rumina Sato’s career that he can accomplish this long-time dream to become a SHOOTO champion and also to see him fight somewhere else like PRIDE Bushido.
Zuffa Invades Japan
The big boy is coming to town as ZUFFA announced it would to bring UFC 53 to Yokohama. This has been the big talk between the Japanese MMA scenes. Just to tell you how big this news is, I caught my fellow teammates at K'z Factory talking about UFC in Japan, and to tell you the truth these guys barely talk about anything else beside SHOOTO or ZST.
Under the same line last week was the debut of the “UFC hour” in TV Tokyo. Now this is not like the old deal ZUFFA had with WOWOW TV because WOWOW is a cable channel that you need to pay for in order to watch. TV Tokyo is a public channel available in every single house around this beautiful land, but oddly enough the TV station picked the worse time slot in the history of Japanese TV to show the cage action.
I was wondering if I missed the show or my dates were wrong because it was like around 2:00 a.m. and I was watching some weird anime about girls. Actually I was falling asleep with the remote control ready to push the “record” bottom until I realized Evan Tanner was raining elbows over David Terrell’s face and Masakatsu Funaki was doing the color commentary.
Anyway the show was good and TV Tokyo delivered three complete fights: Evan Tanner vs. David Terrell, Andrei Arlovski vs. Tim Sylvia and Tito Ortiz vs. Vitor Belfort, plus some backstage interviews.
Between all the interviews the most important information came from UFC president Dana White. In the interview, White said he was interested retaining the services of Caol Uno, Genki Sudo and Kazushi Sakuraba. White wasn’t too optimist about Sakuraba because of all the drama between UFC and PRIDE and the exchange of fighters between both promotion. He also named Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto as a possible candidate to walk into the Cage at UFC 53.
Now this is where reality check comes into play. Sudo and “Kid” Yamamoto are under contract with K-1. Uno seems to be in the same boat since he’s scheduled to fight in K-1 again this month, so basically this leaves UFC and Dana making deals with K-1.
To get Sakuraba this is a different story since UFC needs to deal with Sakakibara and Co.
Maybe UFC and Dana White ignore this but there is a full legion of Japanese fighters basically “crying” to be included or at least to get the chance to enter the Octagon. So without further ado and only with the sole purpose to give Dana White some tips about the Japanese MMA scene from the opinion of this humble writer, I present ZUFFA some interesting names they could take into consideration:
Former King of Pancrase Welterweight champion Kiuma Kunioku who returned his title in August 2004 with the only goal to fight somewhere else—or in Kunioku own words “to fight in UFC.” So how about you pit your current welterweight champion Matt Hughes vs. the ex-K.O.P. welterweight champion Kunioku?
What about that deal UFC has with Pancrase to get Terrell’s services in exchange for three Pancrase fighters in UFC? Now we all know Yuki Kondo needs to be the first representative from Pancrase, so what about a match between your new middleweight champion Evan Tanner and Kondo?
Or let’s see the current super heavyweight King of Pancrase Tsuyoshi Kohsaka against Andrei Arlovski, just in case Frank Mir is not back from the injuries?
For your third pick I strongly recommend to get Kazuo Misaki or Nathan Marquardt, since I believe both have good qualities to deliver a big show inside the Octagon.
Now if my ideas are not enough and Zuffa bosses still can’t make their minds about who should get a shot inside the cage, let me point out some other names: Tatsuya Kawajri, Remigijus Morkevicious, Masanori Suda, Takanori Gomi, Ryo Chonan, Hirotaka Yokoi, Katsuya Inoue or Akihiro Gono. All could deliver a good show and make amazing fights with the any fighter of the current UFC stable.
This is all from the land of the raising sun until the next time when Masa and I will be covering from ringside at any upcoming show in Japan.