The Khan 2! Weigh-Ins Complete

The weigh-ins for tomorrows The Khan 2 card took place on the 26th in Korea. All fighters passed. The only change to the card since I last reported is that Im Chi Bin has been replaced by Su Hwan Lee, who lost to Bin in this years K-1 MAX Korea tournament.

Underrated “Mr. Shark” Min Soo Kim finally returns to take on Sentoryu in what is the heaviest and most star-filled fight of the card.

Se Ki Kim, who I think participates in every stand-up event in Korea, will also fight coming off his victory at the first W event.

I think Uranchimegiin Mönkh-Erdene is an amateur boxer from Mongolia. He participated in both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, took silver in the Asian games in 2006, and took bronze at the World Amateur Boxing Championships in Milan this year.

If he is the boxer Mönkh-Erdene, Min Ho Song is not the K-1 Heavyweight Min Ho Song.

Hyun Man Myung is undefeated in K-1 and just won some Muay Thai title in a 5 rounder at W.

You can watch a fight from Neo Fight with the second Korean female in the 4-women tournament, Woo Yeon Park, on YouTube.

Jae Gil No fought Go Yokoyama at a K-1 MAX event this year. Watch the fight here.

Xu Yan is coming off a dominating victory over cosplayer Nagashima at K-1 MAX. If you haven’t seen it, click here.

Su Hwan Lee participated in what was thus far probably the most dramatic K-1 GP of the year when he impressively KO’d both his quarterfinal and semifinal opponents but then got KO’d himself against Im Chi Bin in probably the craziest and most dramatic come from behind victory of the year. If you’ve seen it you’ll remember it.

I believe the event will be aired on Korean television so watch out for it.

1. Dong Hyun Kim vs. Sung Hyun Lee
2. Hae Chung Yang vs. Tokoku Onda(?)

3. Su Jeong Lim vs. Alena Hola
4. Woo Yeon Park vs. Jessica

5. Min Ho Song vs. Uranchimegiin Mönkh-Erdene
6. Se Ki Kim vs. Min Suk Kwon
7. Jae Gil No vs. Virgil Kalakoda
8. Kaoklai Kaennorsing vs. Hyun Man Myung

9. Min Soo Kim vs. Sentoryu

10. Su Hwan Lee vs. Xu Yan

11. Lim/Hola vs. Park/Jessica

ZST.22! Kotani Chokes Out Nakamura

Kotani left Nakamura face down - GBRing.com

ZST.22 took place today in Japan and it consisted of some very interesting fights.

In the main event of the evening Naoyuki Kotani choked Daisuke Nakamura out cold by a rare scissor leg choke/yano submission (don’t know the official name) after only 1 minute and 37 seconds into the first round.

Kotani was very happy after the victory and appealed for a NYE participation, saying to contact him if anything comes up.

In the semi main event Nobutatsu Suzuki continued being undefeated and kept his KO/TKO win only streak as he KO’d Osami Shibuya by a knee at the end of the second round. Suzuki now has his eyes set on the major leagues.

The grappling tag team match between SRC Featherweight champion Masanori Kanehara/Baret Yoshida and Takumi Yano/”Original Super High School Student” Tetsuya Yamada ended in an automatic draw after 15 minutes.

In other relevant fights, Kenichi Ito, who called out Hideo Tokoro for NYE after the fight, defeated Masayuki Okude via TKO (cut) in the first round and Hiroshi “Iron” Nakamura continued his winning streak as he defeated Wataru Inatsu by submission.

RISE 60! TATSUJI Sends HAYATO Off With A Loss

Final Fight - Sportsnavi.com

RISE 60 took place on the 22nd in Japan and it consisted of some important fights.

In HAYATO’s retirement fight he faced fellow K-1 MAX veteran TATSUJI. TATSUJI won big on points after getting two downs in the first round.

After the fight, TATSUJI thanked HAYATO who fought hard until the end and congratulated his dad on his 60th birthday. He also said that next year he’ll capture the World MAX.

DREAM, HERO’S, and legendary K-1 fighter Kin Taiei defated Magnum Sakai by decision in the extension round after the first three rounds resulted in a draw.

Kan Itabashi successfully defended his RISE 60 kg title after defeating K-1 MAX veteran Keiji Ozaki in the second round after three knockdowns.

In the main event of the evening, for a spot in next years K-1 MAX Japan Tournament and to decide the new RISE 70 kg champion, RYUJI won unanimously after 5 rounds as he defeated Yasuhito Shirasu.

RYUJI said after the fight that in February of next year in MAX, he’ll fight a fight which won’t be embarrassing as a RISE champion.

DEEP CAGE IMPACT! Atsushi Vs. Miyashita

KICK☆ - GBRing.com

Some solid fights were added to DEEP CAGE IMPACT on December 19th yesterday.

Atsushi Yamamoto will return after his tough victory at the DEEP&CMA Thanksgiving event to take on Tomoya Miyashita, who was very impressive against ZST Bantamweight champion Keisuke Fujiwara in the white cage.

DREAM participant Takeshi Yamazaki’s opponent will be Toshiaki Kitada who is on a nice 3-fight submission winning streak.

Former Lightweight Koichiro Matsumoto will take on the overmatched Isamu Sugiuchi.

Also added to the card, comedian KICK☆ will make his pro debut. His fight will be under kickboxing rules.

DEEP CAGE IMPACT
Date: December 19th, 2009
Place: Differ Ariake in Tokyo, Japan

Masakazu Imanari vs. Justin “The Shocker” Cruz
Yusuke Kawaguchi vs. Roque Martinez
Nobuhiro Obiya vs. ISE
Atsushi Yamamoto vs. Tomoya Miyashita
Ryuta Sakurai vs. HIROKI
Takeshi Yamazaki vs. Toshiaki Kitada
Koichiro Matsumoto vs. Isamu Sugiuchi
Eiji Ishikawa vs. Yoshitomo Watanabe
Bernard Ackah vs. Shunji Kosaka
Naoki Matsushita vs. Yuki Ito
Atsuhiro Tsuboi vs. Sadao Kondo
Hirohide Fujinuma vs. Makoto/Akira
Teruhiko Kubo vs. Kenta Takagi
Hiryu Okamoto vs. Kaiji Hirano
Yasuhiro Kawasaki vs. Mitsuru “Mike” Yamaguchi

Planned Participants:
KICK☆, Yasuhiro Motomura, Male Animal

Nightmare TV! Tenkei Fujimiya Vs. Tito Jones

Korean News! Dong Hyun Kim’s MMA Organization?

Dong Hyun Kim’s own organization?

UFC fighter Dong Hyun Kim who is currently recovering from an injury was recently interviewed in Korea. While talking about how there are only very small events in South Korea and how it is hard for fighters to be able to fight freely (not only when DEEP & CMA do events together). Kim wants someone to make an organization where Korean fighters can fight and construct an infrastructure. Kim even says that currently even he himself wants to try to start up an organization.

Kim, who was at the latest DEEP & CMA joint event as a second, was told by fans to come back and fight in Japan again. After he is successful in the U.S., he thinks it would be great if he could return to Japan and perform in front of the fans.

The Khan 2 complete

The November 27th “The Khan 2″ event is complete and it’s a very solid card. Im Chi Bin’s opponent will be the Chinese fighter who crushed Cosplayer Jienotsu at the last K-1 MAX event, Xu Yan.

Popular woman fighter Su Jeong Lim’s first round opponent in the one-night 4-women tournament will be a girl from (I believe) the Czech Republic.

Kim Min Soo vs. Sentoryu, Virgil Kalakoda vs. Jae Gil No, Su Hwan Lee vs. Min Seok Kwon, and Hyun Man Myung vs. Kaoklai Kaennorsing are four other interesting/fun fights on the card.

Pancrase Korea returns

The first Pancrase Korea card in two years will take place on November 29th and it will be the first event in the capital, Seoul. Fighters in this event will have the chance to continue to bigger things just as “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung did after winning at Pancrase Korea in Pusan.

M-1 Global rep talks Fedor

A Korean M-1 Global rep talked about Fedor through Korean site XSports. The rep said that Fedor only has a light ligament injury in the little finger of his left hand. About Fedor’s nose, the rep said that despite some reports, Rogers just cut Fedor with his nail so there are no bone injuries or anything.

He also delivered a message from Fedor to the Korean fans. Fedor will visit South Korea again from December 12th to December 15th where he will be photographed for a CM and attend a memory event for the newly established South Korean Sambo Federation.

Source: Kamipro Korea Column

Shooto Vs. Pancrase! The First 4

Another interesting development currently taking place in Japanese MMA is long time rivals Shooto and Pancrase finally promoting fights between their fighters.

Fights might have already taken place in Pancrase, but at Shooto Revolutionary Exchanges 3 on November 23rd, the first four Pancrase vs. Shooto fights in Shooto will happen.

In a Middleweight fight Takuya Wada (P) will face Shiko Yamashita (S), in a Lightweight fight Kotetsu Boku (S) takes on Yukio Sakaguchi (P) who has stepped in for Koji Oishi, in a Bantamweight fight Mamoru (S) will battle the rising Kiyotaka Shimizu (P), and in a women’s fight Megumi Fujii (S) will look to stay undefeated against Windy Tomomi (P).

Shooto will most likely take most of the wins in the four fights but it’s a very fun and historic development taking place right now.

Nightmare TV! Pequeno Vs. Lion

Bu Kyung Jung! Training In Silence

Sydney Olympic Silver Medalist Bu Kyung Jung made his MMA debut at Yarennoka! in 2007, coming in on short notice to fight top Lightweight Shinya Aoki. In the fight he almost armbarred Aoki more than once. After that he kept fighting top Lightweights, losing against all of them.

After those losses, Jung planned to travel to America to train. However, after trying a training session at Korean Top Team just before he decided to stay since he was pleased with the training.

6 months have passed and Jung recently came out from his silent training to participate in an interview with mfight…

Striking and wrestling is the focus at KTT and Jung says that the training environment there is the best in Korea, he couldn’t have wished for anything better. Though he still hasn’t grown completely accustomed to the Wrestling style takedowns which don’t exist in Judo, he will continue to study it in depth.

Jung is very confident in his grappling skills, saying that if it’s at Lightweight, he is confident that he can win at grappling against any champion. However, he questions the meaning of only being a good grappler.

“Being good at only jiu jitsu and wrestling in MMA is meaningless. It’s meaningless if you aren’t well-rounded. Until now I’ve had problem with strategy and my striking technique has been insufficent.”

Jung currently has his attention set on J.Z. Calvan, whose fighting style he thinks suits for him. He would like to have a go at Calvan after polishing his striking just a little more.

Jung has abandoned his title as a Silver medalist, after 4 consecutive defeats, the only thing he fights for now is his self-respect.

“To the end, my objective is to become a champion of a major MMA organization. For that reason I intend to make a fresh start as a complete fighter. The cause for my 4 consecutive defeats is that I entered MMA half-heartedly, only having faith in my own grappling ability. I have learned a lot of things since those 4 consecutive defeats.”

Jung thinks that he’s a 70% MMA fighter at the present point. Even though he wants to attempt seeing how far he has come right now due to his competitive spirit, he won’t be satisfied unless he gets to 100%…

Source: Kamipro Korea Column

DEEP Cage Impact! Obiya Returns

ISE Vs. Obiya - GBRing.com

Additional fights for DEEP’s first ever cage event were announced today. PRIDE veteran and unstoppable Nobuhiro Obiya will return to action and take on ISE in a Lightweight fight.

Ryuta Sakurai will look to take his second win in a row when he faces HIROKI of X-Force.

Eiji Ishikawa, who hasn’t fought since October of 2008 when he got a good win over Simon Thoresen, will battle Yoshitomo Watanabe.

The rest of the announced fights plus pas announced fights below.

DEEP CAGE IMPACT
Date: December 19th, 2009
Place: Differ Ariake in Tokyo, Japan

Masakazu Imanari vs. Justin “The Shocker” Cruz
Yusuke Kawaguchi vs. Roque Martinez
Nobuhiro Obiya vs. ISE
Ryuta Sakurai vs. HIROKI
Eiji Ishikawa vs. Yoshitomo Watanabe
Bernard Ackah vs. Shunji Kosaka
Naoki Matsushita vs. Yuki Ito
Atsuhiro Tsuboi vs. Sadao Kondo
Hirohide Fujinuma vs. Makoto/Akira
Teruhiko Kubo vs. Kenta Takagi
Hiryu Okamoto vs. Kaiji Hirano
Yasuhiro Kawasaki vs. Mitsuru “Mike” Yamaguchi

Planned Participants:
Koichiro Matsumoto, Takeshi Yamazaki, Toshiaki Kitada, Yasuhiro Motomura, Isamu Sugiuchi, Male Animal