World Victory Road / Sengoku News - Page 1

The Sengoku upset artist, Michihiro Omigawa (9-8-1), has been confirmed to face Micah Miller (13-3) at Hidehiko Yoshida's retirement event."Astra" will take place at Nippon Budokan on Sunday, April 25 and feature the farewell bout of the former Olympic judo gold medalist and Japanese MMA icon, Hidehiko Yoshida.

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Sengoku middleweight champion Jorge Santiago admitted that he underestimated Polish powerhouse Mamed Khalidov in the pair's first meeting, a non-title fight in November 2009.Khalidov stunned Santiago that night with a first round TKO win.

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World Victory Road today announced more matches for their upcoming SRC 12 event on 3/7. Breakout star and Featherweight King Of Pancrase Marlon Sandro will return to the promotion to face Tomonari Kanomata while Nick Denis has been added and will face Yuji Hoshino. Denis replaces Wilson Reis, who is off due to Bellator commitments.

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Fast rising star, Marlon Sandro, will return to action at the upcoming Sengoku show to face Tomonari Kanomata in a featherweight bout for their show slated for March 7 in Japan and will be shown in the U.S. on HDNet.

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Lightweight King of Pancrase and former freestyle wrestling standout, Maximo "Maxi" Blanco (4-2-1) has been confirmed to square off with Korean submission artist, Chang Hyun Kim (15-5) at Sengoku 12 on March 7.Sengoku 12, the inaugural event under the new "Sengoku Raiden Championship" banner will take place at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, and the event will air on HDNet in North America.

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Sengoku Raiden Championship -- "now under new management" -- is slowly piecing together its March 7th return show, to be held at the Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo hall. Most promising of the three fights announced this week is a welterweight tilt between Akihiro Gono (31-15-7) and Sweden's Diego Gonzalez (13-3, 1 NC).

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World Victory Road today announced 3 additional fights for it's Sengoku 12 (SRC 12) event on 3/7 at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo. Confirmed matchups include Akihiro Gono vs. Diego Gonzalez, Yoshihiro Nakao vs. Henry Miller, and Leonardo Santos vs. Kiuma Kunioku.

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Two more big fights have been added to the upcoming Sengoku 12 card set for March 7 as Eiji Mitsuoka faces Leo Santos, while Kiuma Kunioku takes on Maximo Blanco on the same show. The bouts were confirmed to MMAWeekly.com by sources close to the fights, who indicated both will take place on the March 7 show. Eiji Mitsuoka (16-7-2) returns to Sengoku after losing a decision to Kazunori Yakota in November. Mitsuoka is 5-2 in his last seven fights with wins over fights like Clay French, Joachim Hansen, and Rodrigo Damm.

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Although World Victory Road has announced him as competing at Sengoku 12 on 3/7, it now turns out that Wilson Reis will not compete at the event. No exact reason given beyond undisclosed reasons, but it could be personal reasons.

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Tatame.com reports that Sandro, who was forced to withdraw from his Dynamite!! 2009 bout against Hideo Tokoro due to injuries, has been training hard at Nova União in preparation for his return to the ring. His appearance on March 7th remains tentative, as SRC has yet to name his opponent.

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The rumor mill was unexpectedly wrong on this one-despite widespread rumors that Kazuo Misaki would face Jorge Santiago for the Sengoku Middleweight Championship on March 7 at Ryogoku Kokugikan, World Victory Road announced today that Mamed Khalidov will get the title shot instead. It was long believed that Khalidov needed to beat Joe Doerksen on 3/7 to get his shot. But instead Khalidov gets another shot at Santiago, but this time it's for the title. The first fight, which Khalidov won, was non-title.

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After years of struggling to make his breakthrough, California fighter Nam Phan finally had his opportunity in 2009.Upon signing with Sengoku, Phan pulled off the victory of his career, defeating former Shooto champion Hideki Kadowaki, and elevated himself to Top 10 status in the featherweight division.While he lost to upset specialist Michihiro Omigawa in his next fight, Phan tasted success and is eager for more come 2010.

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WVR director, Sumio Inamura condemned Aoki's flipping of the bird at the severely injured (Mizuto) Hirota as an "erratic, unforgivable conduct" and fumed that there is not an ounce of sincerity or contrition in his apology. Inamura also demanded accountability from "those who are suspected to have incited Aoki to behave the way he did."

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World Victory Road held a press conference in Japan today to talk the future of SRC and post-Dynamite!! fallout, which not surprisingly focused on "Stone Cold" Shinya Aoki and his post-fight actions against Mizuto Hirota. The official statement from WVR notes that WVR acknowledges Aoki as the top Japanese lightweight and has no contention regarding how the fight unfolded from beginning to end. Nonetheless, it claims that Aoki's post-fight behavior ruined the plum opportunity to elevate the status of mixed martial arts with broadcast on network TV during the prime TV slot of the year. Invoking SRC's membership in the newly founded Japanese Martial Arts Foundation, the statement claimed that, if a fighter signed to a promotion under the umbrella organization engaged in a similar behavior, he would have his fighter license revoked or receive equally harsh punishment. It also reiterated that, while Aoki has issued a standard apology during the post-fight interviews, his words hardly convey any remorse. In fact, some of his comments, such as the one about "following through with (DREAM event producer) Sasahara's order to kill him" contradict his claim about feeling sorry. WVR also demanded that DREAM and any other culpable party to go beyond "stern warning" and other perfunctory measures to atone for Aoki's conduct. The statement concluded with a remark about the expectation for MMA fighters to be polite, genteel human beings, rather than a bunch of ruffians - an absolutely vital step in Japanese Martial Arts Foundation's ongoing effort to establish MMA as a true sport and someday elevate it to the status of Olympic sport.

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There was a time when Kid Yamamoto's stock was as high, if not higher, than that of K-1 MAX uber-star Masato. When Kid's presence on a fight card would be a guarantee to put at least 15,000 bums on seats, if not more, and an instant ratings hit on television. With back-to-back losses in 2009 against opponents hand-picked for him to beat, Kid's stock plummeted.

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“I have a contract with Sengoku and I want to stay there to have more experience. As much experience, better. If they do a GP, I’ll have an opportunity to fight for a belt”, explains the fighter. “If it’s the natural order of things [go to the UFC], but I want to obey my contract on Sengoku, maybe fight a GP, and then to fight in America, where’s my base, where I have my students”. *p.s. am i the only person that thinks Alexandre kinda looks like Bas...

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The fight card for DREAM and World Victory Road's Dec. 31 "Dynamite!! 2009" event got some serious depth today with the official announcement of numerous matchups, many of which pit one of the Japanese organization's fighters against the other promotion's.The HDNet-televised event features both MMA and K-1 bouts and takes place at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.Today's additions include Masanori Kanehara (15-7-5) vs. Norofumi "Kid" Yamamoto (17-2) and Akihiro Gono (30-15-7) vs. Hayato "Mach" Sakurai (35-9-2).

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Now it’s being reported that the president of Don Quijote, Yasuda, set up a meeting between FEG to enable this Sengoku vs. Dream co-promotion as an attempt to strengthen Japanese MMA. Initially, Sadaharu Tanikawa planned on letting Sengoku fail and then scooping up as many fighter contracts as possible (including Ishida). However now it looks like FEG’s MMA division may be in trouble.FieLDS, Dynamite!!’s primary sponsor, will not renew their contract next year. Today on NHBNews Pro, it was announced that Don Quijote not only wants to replace FieLDS as Dynamite!!’s primary sponsor…but they want to purchase the entire FEG MMA division (which would include Dynamite!! and Dream). This would mean a chain of discount super-stores will own all of Japanese MMA

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It's now official-World Victory Road will be working with DREAM on 12/31 for the annual NYE Blowout show in Japan. Sengoku & DREAM will now cooperate on Fields Dynamite!! and as a result, the card now includes Satoshi Ishii vs. Hidehiko Yoshida. This doesn't do much to clear up the future of Sengoku, which is said to still be in jeopardy.

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Marlon Sandro doesn’t wanna relax. One week after the ight at Japan, knocking Yuji Hoshino out in the first round, the Nova União fighter was back to the gym, focusing to the return in the end of the year. In the exclusive interview with the fighter, Sandro talked about the victory and the possible fight or the title.

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