World Victory Road’s Sengoku Preview (Part 1)

The 1^st time one does something it can be very nerve-racking and difficult and the outcome is sometimes what one doesn’t expect. Other times the outcome can be satisfactory and well deserved. The newly formed World Victory Road (WVR) will take center stage in Japan on the 5^th. WVR hopes, along with DREAM, to fill a void that PRIDE Fight Championships left after its implosion. WVR will host its inaugural 1^st show at the very unique looking Yoyogi National Gymnasium. The strangely named Sengoku will feature Mixed Martial Artists with varying skill levels, some elevating this cards status while others seem out of place.

I remember a couple of months back when word out of Japan was that a newly formed organization was about to be formed and would be associated with J-Rock. Obviously, the 1^st thing that popped into my head was Yoshida. I’m not the biggest Yoshida fan, but being one of the biggest draws in Japan it kind of got me thinking that maybe, just maybe this would be the “new” PRIDE. This is way before DREAM and around the time Shigeru Saeki’s name popped up saying that there was a revival movement, which became Yarennoka!, so anything sounded great coming from Japan. Fast forward about 5 months and we’re now in March and DREAM is unveiled and WVR kind of got pushed to the side. I think the fact that they lack about 4 more intriguing bouts actually hurt their cause as DREAM quickly sprinted ahead to try and fill that void. Wednesday will answer lots of questions that I think need to be answer before we can crown anyone the new, almost default premiere Japanese MMA organizations.

Will Sengoku mirror something epic and wonderful? Or was it’s inability to secure a TV deal a sort of foreshadowing of things to come? 2 very different paths all together. Wednesday’s card is very diverse and stands as so:

World Victory Road presents Sengoku

March 5, 2008

1. Fabricio “Pitbull” Monteiro vs. Nick “The Goat” Thompson
2. Ryo Kawamura vs. Antonio Braga Neto
3. Makoto Takimoto vs. Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos
4. Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Peter Graham
5. Kazuo Misaki vs. Siyar Bahadurzada
6. Takanori Gomi vs. Duane “Bang” Ludwig
7. Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Josh Barnett

I’ll go over the card as it appears on the official Sengoku website. Give my thoughts on the fight and fighters and eventually a prediction on the fight.

1.) Fabricio “Pitbull” Monteiro vs. Nick “The Goat” Thompson

The card starts off a bit weak in the sense that when you see both the 1st 2 fights you may automatically think that its a stacked Pancrase or DEEP show. I think this maybe due to the fact that 3 of the 4 fighters featured in the 1st 2 bouts have no experience fighting in bigger promotions, with the exceptions being obviously Thompson. Anyways, the first bout features The Goat against The Pitbull and is the only bout of the night to not feature a Japanese fighter.

Fabricio Monteiro is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and has experience in international competition, recently tying for 3rd in the Pan American Jiu Jitsu Champsionships in 2007. He’s alternated his fighting home between his native Brazil and Japan. His career started off with a bang going a perfect 10-0, until he eventually stepped up in competition to fight the legendary Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons and suffered a knockout loss. (SIDE NOTE: Landi-Jons recently suffered a horrific leg break at TKO 32 last week and I hope to wish him a great and steady recovery.) Pitbull would go on to earn wins over veterans like Kiuma Kunioku, Hiroyuki Abe, and Jutaro Nakao but has definitely looked less than spectacular in his last couple bouts losing his last 2 bad fashion. One of those actually being against Satoru Kitaoka for a spot in the PRIDE 2007 Lightweight Grand Prix, which eventually never happened.

Nick Thompson on the other hand has had a rebirth in his career. Thompson is a UFC and BodogFight veteran, who has managed to put together a nice 10 fight win streak with his last loss being to Karo Parisyan at UFC 59. His most impressive of those 10 being for the Bodog Welterweight Title against the very undersized Eddie Alvarez at the BodogFight: Clash of the Nations event last April. Another notable statistic about those last 10 fights is that all have come by stoppage. Thompson’s size should also be noted as he measures a solid 6 feet 1 inch.

I think this fight will not be the most hard fought battle. Monteiro’s stand-up is incredibly sketchy, at best, and he tends to really fall in love with his hands during the most inopportune moments. Another one of his bad habits is that he often tends to pull guard, which would definitely be useful as a BJJ black belt but his inability to solidly defend punches from his closed guard could spell disaster for him. Monteiro is the complete opposite when in a dominant position especially mount where he is constantly raining down shots or looking to secure a submission. I think The Goat’s reach will be a huge factor in the bout as Monteiro doesn’t have the strongest of jaws and is very open to punches entering his defense. I think superior striking will be the factor and his inability to be able to keep the Goat down will doom the Pitbull. Prediction: Thompson by KO in the 1st.

2.) Ryo Kawamura vs. Antonio Braga Neto

Classic battle between grappler and striker. Kawamura is a hard hitting Pancrase veteran, who I thought was by now was going to be in either the UFC or any other bigger organization. His inability to remain undefeated may have hurt his cause. Kawamura was one of those guys who was flying way under the radar and I felt was going to blow up at any second until his loss to Fabio Silva kind of knocked things a bit off track but than another huge upset loss to Pancrase Ultra-Veteran Keiichiro Yamamiya saw his aspirations of becoming King of Pancrase slip and more importantly a move to a bigger organization like HERO’s at the time. Strangely, with 2 losses in his last 3 fights he is still ranked 2nd in the Official Pancrase Rankings last month.

Kawamura does have experience and also big wins over Daniel Acacio, Hiromitsu Kanehara and Yuta Watanabe, who I predict sooner or later will be one of the bigger stars at 185 in MMA. Experience is something that Antonio Braga Neto does not have too much of, but does make up with his incredible ability to impose his BJJ skills on opponents. Sporting only a perfect 4-0 record going into wednesday, Neto hopes to make a bigger name for himself and continue his winning ways.

Neto’s BJJ has definitely transfered nice to MMA and could definitely pose a threat to Kawamura. I believe that this is one of the harder fights to pick on this card. The fact that Kawamura did drop his last fight against somebody who I thought he’d have no problem with kind of makes me hesitant. Neto doesn’t really represent too much of a threat for Kawamura on the feet, which is where Kawamura aims to keep this bout. Also, Kawamura does posses very heavy hands and almost always seems to eventually connect. I think experience will play a huge part in my decision and is kind of the turning point because Neto’s BJJ is awesome but his lack of real opponents gives reason to pick against. Prediction: Kawamura by KO in the 2nd.

3.) Makoto Takimoto vs. Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos

When you look at Takimoto’s record I don’t really think it does him much justice. A decent 4-3 record doesn’t really capture all that Takimoto is. A 2000 Olympics Judo Gold Medalist, he made his MMA debut at Shockwave 2004 in an untelevised bout against Sumo Wrestler Henry “Sentoryu” Miller. He’d then go on to fight other Asian fighters like Dong Sik-Yoon, Sinae Kikuta and Kiyoshi Tamura in very lack luster bouts. Finally in 2006, Takimoto entered the BUSHIDO Welterweight Tournament and in a hard fought loss was forced out of the fight due to an eye injury he sustained at the hands of Gegard Mousasi. 2007 was much kinder to him scoring huge wins in spoiling the highly touted PRIDE debut of Zelg Galesic and than earned a hard fought split decision over Murilo Bustamente.

There are alot of intimidating people in MMA but one who stands out alot is “Cyborg”. Some thing about his crazy killer/cocky staredown that sends shivers down your spine. His weapons and his mode of attack are no secret, as every blow he throws is laced with knockout power venom. Chute Boxe has definitely had it’s ups and downs this year with a weird shift in talent to the US (Wanderlei Silva) and some to the Universidade de Luta (Rua Brothers and Andre Amade) but Cyborg has remained loyal to the Fedrigo way of doing things. Also, he has a very special team mate in his wife the very talented and equally intimidating, Cristiane Cyborg or Cris Cyborguinha, who is off to a 4-0 start.

His crazy, no prisoners style of fighting has also maybe been the reason his record stands at a sombre 15-10 in MMA matches. His last 2 fights have been anything but stellar. He dropped a decision to Former Cage Rage Light Heavyweight Champion James Zikic and suffered a very controversial knockout loss at the last HCF show against the highly touted Gegard Mousasi. I think that the streak of bad luck for Cyborg will sadly continue. It’s very apparent that Cyborg is obviously incredibly confident and most likely aiming to try and keep this standing as long as possible, while Takimoto’s striking isn’t as polished but he frequently stands and receives alot of punishment and seems to thrive when he gets hit or is behind, which is very apparent in his last 2 fights. I think this fight will mirror what we saw at PRIDE 34 from Takimoto. He’ll end up on his back and be able to work as long as he stays away from too much damage but I do see him reversing Cyborg and managing to put him on his back. Prediction: Takimoto by 2nd Round Kimura

4.) Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Peter Graham

When I read that Kazuyuki “Iron Head” Fujita would be fighting on this card I was incredibly intrigued to see who he would be facing and after 2 weeks the name Peter Graham had appeared, which immediately led me to believe that this was definitely going to be one of the more entertaining bouts of the night. Fujita hasn’t had the best of luck recently losing 2 of 3 bouts in rather unimpressive fashion. The Japanese juggernaut was one of 16 (15 Really) who set out to capture the PRIDE OWGP title. He was initially successful in stopping the Colossus, James Thompson. His 2nd round opponent, Wanderlei Silva would not be an easy draw for anyone even obviously being smaller. Silva was brought in to replace Fedor Emelianenko, and would take advantage of this opportunity shockingly stopping the Japanese superstar in violent fashion.

Fujita would return at Shockwave 2006 to face the debuting Eldari Kurtanidze. It seems like DSE brought the Georgian in so that Fujita could take out all his anger out, something that he successfully did. His only fight of 2007 was a very strange and lacklust fight at a very strange and lackluster event PRIDE 34. He fought Jeff Monson in what I believe was an almost blasphemous and offensive main event at the very last PRIDE show ever. Nothing special came out of the fight as Fujita was eventually choked into submission. Almost 1 year later Fujita reappears and should hopefully be back to his destructive old self.

Peter Graham joins a growing list of fighters transitioning from K-1 to MMA. (Side Note: Mark Hunt was announced to be participating at the 4/16 K-1 Show and will face Semmy Schilt for the K-1 Super Heavyweight World Title) Graham in my opinion is the owner of one of the best head-kick knockouts in K-1 (The Other 2 being Koaklai Kaennorsing over Might Mo & Badr Hari over Stefan Leko II). Graham’s “Rolling Thunder” victory over K-1′s 1st and current Heavyweight Champion Badr Hari is a spectacle and will definitely live on as one of the most bizzare and incredible knockouts in K-1 History. He recently rematched Hari at the K-1 Hong Kong Grand Prix in a very lackluster affair. Graham has joined Team Quest in training for this bout, which definitely helps to smoothen the transition to MMA.

This being Graham’s 1st MMA fight it’s really hard to gauge how the fight will end. I think it would have to completely depend on what Fujita will do. Fujita has also just visited the States as he spent time training here. If Fujita is willing to stand with Graham, it will definitely spell his end. He has been dropped by Wanderlei and Fedor, who aren’t K-1 Level Strikers like Graham, which obviously gives the edge to Graham on the feet. If Fujita wants to be successful he should try and secure a takedown and utilize his ground and pound. Who knows what Graham’s wrestling or takedown defense is like at this moment. Training at Quest definitely should give him a good feel for the ground game while not necessarily hurting his striking as Cyrill Diabate and Xavier Foupa-Pokam from Snake Team moved to Quest to help Dan Henderson prepare for his bout at UFC 82. I’m going to be bold and pick the upset. I think Fujita will be too stubborn to take it down and will pay heavily for it. Graham’s striking is definitely better and should translate very well to MMA. Prediction: Graham by KO in the 1st

World Victory Road’s Sengoku Preview (Part 2) will be posted soon.