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Agree &
Shin Haraguchi 5-0 Grachan champion &
Kouya Kanda 11-4 - DEEP interim champion
Are not bad either.
Road to UFC 2 confirmed fighters thread
- Thread starter Hellowhosthat
- Start date
Shin Haraguchi 5-0 Grachan champion &
Kouya Kanda 11-4 - DEEP interim champion
Are not bad either.
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Seems to me like they're slowly considering the Japanese market again.
I'll be sure about it if they make a move on the Asakura brothers.
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Japan is too expensive to really start something there and yakuza worries.
But UFC needs some roots there, recently they switched from Abema to U-NEXT who is independent streaming, U-Next who also streams Bellator events and they go out of their way to help UFC.
Hopefully they can get more stuff going in Japan again and get a strong base there.
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Idk about the Yakuza stuff, the Yakuza are not nearly as omnipresent and strong as they used to be. Japan did take a lot of steps towards excluding yakuza members as much as possible from society.
I saw a documentary about this once but cant be arsed to find the link, I think Yakuza should not be a big problem like they used to in Pride. Aside from the fact Khadyrov is connected to multiple UFC Fighters the UFC obviously doesn't really care about that stuff if the money is right.
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Not signing Makoto Takahashi after he won the CFFC belt speaks for itself.
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Shinryu will be in by the end of the year, I'm sure of it. Him and Azat Maksum are the two direct flyweight signings I'm very confident of happening.
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Shin Haraguchi has won Japanese national championship tournaments and competed at the Asian games for Japan in Freestyle. Shin did say he had intented to compete at 145lbs but would compete at either 145 or 155 for the tournament to get signed by the UFC, its just hes a little undersized at LW so im concerned about that. He's a very good prospect though, a high level wrestler. Similarly Rei Tsuruya was a national champion in Greco at the highschool level and went on to compete for Japan at the Cadet world championships as well, Rei Tsuruya grew up in his father's MMA gyms though so he started fighting at just 15.
@Hellowhosthat I believe Rei Tsuruya is only 20 according to Tapology and his own Instagram page.
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Only seen the Mongolian once and he KO'd an experienced 15-12 guy in 7 seconds, all wins are by finish which isn't the usual at flyweight.
Obviously we saw Topnoi last season.
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Topnoi looked solid last season too. Solid upset over Horiuchi, and nearly KO'ed Park before getting submitted out of nowhere.
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Here's the lineup @Hellowhosthat @EndlessCritic I heard Van will most likely go the contender series route. I was personally hoping Shin Haraguchi would somehow end up at 145lbs. Would like to year your guys opinions on the BW, FW and LW tournaments and who to look out for. The Flyweight tournament is stacked with more wrestlers than Poirier saw in his entire career.
Flyweight (>56.7kg)
Flyweight (>56.7kg)
- Rei Tsuruya (Japan) vs Ronal Siahaan (Indonesia)
- Mark Climaco (Philippines) vs Jung Hyun Lee (South Korea)
- Ji Niushiyue (China) vs Billy Pasulatan (Indonesia)
- Sumit Kumar (India) vs Seung Guk Choi (South Korea)
- Xiao Long (China) vs Shohei Nose (Japan)
- Shuya Kamikubo (Japan) vs Jieleyisi Baergeng (China)
- Eperaim Ginting (Indonesia) vs Daermisi Zhawupasi (China)
- Chang Ho Lee (South Korea) vs Rana Rudra Pratap Singh (India)
- Yi Zha (China) vs Abdul Azeem Badakhshi (Afghanistan)
- Keisuke Sasu (Japan) vs Sang Won Kim (Korea)
- Yibugele (China) vs Koya Kanda (Japan)
- Li Kaiwen (China) vs Reza Arianto (Indonesia)
- Seong Chan Hong (South Korea) vs Rong Zhu (China)
- Kazuma Maruyama (Japan) vs Sang Uk Kim (South Korea)
- Windri Patilima (Indonesia) vs Shin Haraguchi (Japan)
- Won Bin Ki (South Korea) vs Batebolati Bahatebole (China)
- Flyweight: Top Noi Kiwram (Thailand) vs Nyamjargal Tumendemberel (Mongolia)
- Flyweight: Sim Kai Xiong (Singapore) vs Peter Danasoe (Thailand)
- Welterweight: Nueraji Taiyilake (China) vs Han Seul Kim (Korea)
- Welterweight: Chris Hofmann (Philippines) vs Sang Hoon Yoo (Korea)
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At 135 I think Kamikubo is probably the guy to beat, very good grappler who won all his fights in ONE comfortably enough. Xiao Long is okay, was unlucky to get a good Christian Quinonez on DWCW and Ginting looks athletic but against low level comp.
FW I'm hoping for Li Kaiwen, was developing very nicely but coming off a loss as Chatri set him up with an assassination job against Wonderboy De Andrade when he was fighting his contract out. Sasu I think is better than he showed last season and the winner of Zha and Badakhshi could also be competitive.
LW I think I might favour Rong Zhu tbh, was probably let go from the UFC too early. Shin has potential too.
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Ill go at LW Shin but Rong Zhu is my second pick.
I'll go at FW the winner of Zha Yi vs Badakhshi wins that bracket.
At Bantamweight I like Shohei Nose or Kamikubo.
At Flyweight it's really tough but it's between Climaco, Sumit, Tsuruya and Hyun Lee I think. If I had to choose I'm going Tsuruya but it's hard to tell.
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Its crazy how soon this is and I haven't heard or seen it promoted at all, literally takes effort for me to look it up.
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They've had the banner pop up during fights and had Anik mention it a few times.
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I hadn't noticed. I wonder if it's being advertised more on their east Asian broadcasts.
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Idk if this is too off-topic for this but I just discovered that Patilima and the other Indonesian fighters all have trained in San Diego for the last couple Months, I still think it is unlikely an indonesian fighter will win but it is definitely a step in the right direction, this way I think the fighters get used to International competition. I saw that the last Cagewarriors card even had 2 Indonesian BW compete.
Even with none Indonesian fighters winning, these are some good developments for the sport.
Even with none Indonesian fighters winning, these are some good developments for the sport.
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Yeah Boylan is housing quite a few Indonesian fighters at the moment.
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Completely went past me that this happened but the sport is gaining popularity quite fast in the country, my uncle who never did any combat sports at all knows what an americana is because of the domestic MMA league.
When I was there in my teenage years they banned all MMA from TV and in probably 10 years it reached this point unexpected for me.
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Yeah they've got One fight series over there (not related to ONE championship) which has decent production values, a good atmosphere etc. Obviously the talent isn't there yet but it seems to be slowly but surely coming on.
