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With Bryan Alvarez on the road back from Oregon, Mike Sempervive and Filthy Tom Lawlor present the first Live of ‘25. New Year’s Eve RIZIN madness, last night’s debut of AEW Dynamite’s simulcast on MAX, this weekend’s Tokyo Dome shows, and more. It’s a fun show as always, so check it out~!
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Image: The Evening Standard
Somewhat retired boxer Floyd Mayweather returned to the ring Monday in Japan for RIZIN’s annual New Year’s Eve show, easily dispatching his undersized opponent in less than three minutes.
The four-round exhibition against young and talented kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa didn’t make it out of the first round as Mayweather knocked Nasukawa down three times, the third of which caused his corner to throw in the towel.
The 41-year-old was smiling for much of the fight, blocking the 20-year-old’s punches and landing body and head shots that hurt Nasukawa quite badly.
Mayweather said he made $9 million for the appearance which was thought to be off at one point as Mayweather bizarrely said it wasn’t happening despite appearing at a press conference days before. There was a two-hour delay Monday at the event which raised concerns he was going to no-show.
Following the show, the undefeated Mayweather insisted he is still retired.
Strangely, the fight wasn’t available for US RIZIN PPV buyers, but was widely available on Twitter after it happened:
When Floyd Mayweather made an appearance Sunday night at a RIZIN press conference to announce some sort of fight with kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa on New Year’s Eve, it was a surprise to the combat sports world.
On Wednesday, the undefeated boxer took to Instagram to say there is no fight and to clarify what led to all this:
“Now that I am back on U.S. soil after a long and disappointing trip to Tokyo, I now have the time to address you, my fans and the media in regards to the upcoming event on December 31st that was recently announced. First and foremost, I want it to be clear that I, Floyd Mayweather, never agreed to an official bout with Tenshin Nasukawa. In fact (with all due respect) I have never heard of him until this recent trip to Japan. Ultimately, I was asked to participate in a 9 minute exhibition of 3 rounds with an opponent selected by the “Rizen Fighting Federation”.
What I was originally informed of by Brent Johnson of “One Entertainment” was that this was to be an exhibition put on for a small group of wealthy spectators for a very large fee. This exhibition was previously arranged as a “Special Bout” purely for entertainment purposes with no intentions of being represented as an official fight card nor televised worldwide. Once I arrived to the press conference, my team and I were completely derailed by the new direction this event was going and we should have put a stop to it immediately.
I want to sincerely apologize to my fans for the very misleading information that was announced during this press conference and I can assure you that I too was completely blindsided by the arrangements that were being made without my consent nor approval. For the sake of the several fans and attendees that flew in from all parts of the world to attend this past press conference, I was hesitant to create a huge disturbance by combating what was being said and for that I am truly sorry. I am a retired boxer that earns an unprecedented amount of money, globally, for appearances, speaking engagements and occasional small exhibitions.”
At the press conference, there were questions about the type of fight it would be, the amount of rounds, weights, gloves, the amount of money Mayweather would be commanding for the fight, and more, but he did or said nothing at the time to lead people to think a fight wasn’t happening.
RIZIN has not publicly commented on Mayweather’s statement as of this writing.
Image: MMAFighting.com/Esther Lin
After 15 months away, our hearts grew fond for the vocal stylings of journalist and podcaster Josh Gross which is why we welcomed him back to the latest Josh Nason’s Punch-Out with open arms.
On the menu for this 45-minute discussion:
– We kick off with some updates on what Josh has been up to including his sojourn into writing about LA’s newest MLS team, a departure from MMA writing
– We then transition to Sunday’s surprise news that Floyd Mayweather is going to fight on RIZIN’s New Year’s Eve show against a dangerous kickboxer…but with no idea on rules, rounds, or anything else. Also, who’s paying for all this?
– We then take a look at what’s next for the winners and losers for UFC 230 including possibilities for Israel Adesanya (seen above) and Chris Weidman.
– We attempt to answer why Jon Jones would even entertain a third fight with Daniel Cormier at this point.
– We then wrap up a quick look at this Saturday’s UFC 25th anniversary show in Denver, an affair that doesn’t feel like a big celebration at this point.
Hear all that and more on this free edition of the podcast, available below:
Undefeated boxing star Floyd Mayweather just can’t seem to quit combat sports as Japan’s RIZIN organization announced at a press conference that the on-and-off-again retired boxer will return to action once again on their annual New Year’s Eve show.
In a bit of a surprise, the 41-year-old (50-0) will face rising kickboxing star Tenshin Nasukawa at RIZIN 14, set for Tokyo’s Saitama Super Arena. Both men were in attendance at the press conference. The rules and weight class have yet to be finalized with the promotion and Mayweather saying they “were working on it” and that things should get sorted out over the next few weeks.
Mayweather said competing in Tokyo was a motivating factor and that his team and RIZIN were able to come to terms on this fight.
Nasuakwa is just 20 years old, but has an extensive amateur and pro career, currently sitting at 27-0 with 21 wins by knockout. He’s also 4-0 in MMA, but hasn’t competed in that sport since 2017.
Mayweather was last seen defeating two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor in August 2017 in a boxing match that set financial records. He had been trying to play up a boxing match with UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, former foe Manny Pacquiao, and even McGregor himself in recent months.
What would have been among the biggest fights to hardcore fans of a different era, Frank Shamrock vs. Kazushi Sakuraba, was announced on Friday at a press conference for Rizin.
Shamrock, 44, who hasn’t fought since a 2009 loss to Nick Diaz, will face Sakuraba, 48, in a 15 minute grappling rules match on the 10/15 Rizin show at the Marine Messe in Fukuoka. Shamrock will replace Dan Henderson, who was Sakuraba’s original opponent for the show. Rizin officials said that Henderson pulled out due to a neck injury.
This will be Shamrock’s first grappling match since a 1997 submission win over Henderson. Sakuraba competed in two grappling matches in recent years, a 2014 draw with Renzo Gracie and a 2016 draw in a tag team match where he teamed with Hideo Tokoro against Kiyoshi Tamura & Wanderlei Silva, the latter on a Rizin show.
Shamrock said that Rizin first contacted him about doing the fight one week ago, and spent this past week testing his body to see how it responded before confirming the fight on Thursday.
The fight will be at 185 pounds has no judges, so if there is no submission, the match will be ruled a draw.
Rizin announced that two of the 16 fights on the show would air live on the Fuji Network, but didn’t indicate which two they would be.
The show is heavy on women fights, since women like Rena Kubota and Miyu Yamamoto have turned out to be strong television draws on network television. Both are on the show with Kubota against Andy Nguyen and Yamamoto against Irene Cabello, Rizin is using Yamamoto as part of a mother-and-son fighting on the same show, as Erson Yamamoto will face Manel Kape. Erson was an age group wrestling champion and is the nephew of Kid Yamamoto and the grandson of a well-known Japanese former Olympic wrestler Ikuei Yamamoto. In the 90s, the Yamamoto sisters, Miyu and Seiko, were both well-known world champions in wrestling, and their younger brother, Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto was at one time Japan’s biggest MMA star.
Three other stars of the past are also on the show, the famed 265-pound heavyweight Jerome LeBanner of 90s K-1 fame, now 44, will face Roque Martinez of Guam in LeBanner’s first MMA fight in seven years. Andy Souwer, another K-1 star in the lightweighgt division, will face Akiyo Nishiura. Tatsuya Kawajiri, who fought for years in UFC, will face Gabriel Oliveira in a 139 pound fight.
Mauro Ranallo isn’t wasting any time getting back into the broadcasting game and will call Sunday’s Rizin Fighting show from Yokohama, Japan.
Rizin announced the deal Friday night via Facebook, and Ranallo is off to Japan as of this writing.
The 47-year-old has been in the combat sports news lately due to an absence from WWE tied to reports of bullying from former wrestler and commentator John “Bradshaw” Layfield. Ranallo has yet to directly address the allegations publicly, but as Dave Meltzer noted in today’s daily update, contract settlement talks between WWE and Ranallo have been initiated.
Ranallo will be paired up with former broadcast partner and former MMA star Frank Shamrock on the show, airing live on FITE.tv at 2 AM Eastern Sunday/11 PM Pacific. Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Anthony Birchak headlines a show that also features former UFC flyweight title challenger Kyoji Horiguchi. former UFC lightweight Daron Cruickshank and more.
Ranallo was the lead play-by-play man for 30+ PRIDE Fighting Championships events in Japan in addition to Strikeforce, Showtime boxing, and more. He signed a deal with WWE in December 2015 as the lead voice of the SmackDown brand.
The controversial battle between Gabi Garcia and 52-year-old politician and pro wrestler Shinobu Kandori on the Rizin New Year’s Eve show at the Saitama Super Arena was announced as now off at a Tokyo press conference due to Kandori suffering a serious rib injury in training.
But if anything, that only created a bigger mismatch. The replacement announced was Yumiko Hotta, another star of the boom period of women’s pro wrestling.
Kandori was at least considered the toughest of all the Japanese women pro wrestlers of their era, the late 80s and the 90s. She won a bronze medal in judo at the 1984 world championships and had a 4-1 record during the primitive days of women’s MMA in Japan.
Hotta, who turns 50 on January 10th, has a 5-4 MMA record with all of her fights but one coming between 1995 and 2000. In 2000, she suffered a submission loss to Kandori. She was a three-time WWWA world champion in the old All Japan women’s promotion.
Her lone fight since that time was a gimmick match on February 18th, 2012, losing to Amanda Lucas, the daughter of Star Wars king George Lucas, via third round submission.
Only two of Hotta’s wins were against non-pro wrestlers and all four losses were via submission against fighters with nowhere near the Jiu Jitsu credentials of Garcia, who has won 11 world championships in that sport. At 5-foot-5 and 160 pounds, Hotta will give away tremendous size to Garcia, who is 6-foot-1, and has fought recently at between 215 and 245 pounds. Garcia will not be the largest woman Hotta has faced in MMA, as in 1995, she lost to a 6-foot-3, 327 pound Russian judoka, Svetlana Gunderarenko.
Hotta’s background was in karate, and started pro wrestling in 1985 at a time when women’s pro wrestling was a huge television hit on network television in a weekend afternoon time slot. In her second year in the promotion, she was made the tag team partner of Chigusa Nagayo, the most popular woman wrestler of all-time, and they won the 1986 year-end Grand Prix tournament.
Hotta has remained active in pro wrestling for the past 31 years.
In the world of crazy MMA fights, one of the wackiest in history was announced for the Rizin Fighting Federation show on New Year’s Eve at the Saitama Super Arena with Gabrielle “Gabi” Garcia facing Shinobu Kandori.
Kandori, 52, serves in Japan’s House of Councilors, equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives. She placed in the world judo championships in 1984 before becoming one of the biggest stars of the 90s in Japanese women’s wrestling. There are those who would say the April 2nd, 1993 match at the Yokohama Arena between Kandori and Akira Hokuto was the greatest women’s wrestling match of all-time, and if not, it is both in the discussion and among the most famous.
Garcia, 31, is 6-foot-2 and weighed 245 pounds of muscle for her fight with Destanie Yarbrough in September. She will likely have a 90 to 100 pound weight advantage and eight inches in height. The two looked ridiculous next to each other earlier today in the staredown at a press conference with Nobuhiko Takada in the background.
Kandori crossed over to MMA from 1995 to 2000, including a 1998 win over 6-foot-3, 320 pound Olympic judoka Svetlana Gundarenko. It is the legend of that match which is the back story of this match. But the idea of the match at this stage is ridiculous.
Results from today’s Rizin show from the Saitama Super Arena:
Rena beat Jleana Valentino in a women’s 112 pound fight with a second round flying armbar.
King Mo Lawal beat Teodoras Aukstuolis in the heavyweight tournament semifinal, dominating him everywhere and winning via decision
Jiri Prochazka beat Vadim Nemkov in the other heavyweight semifinal. Very good fight going back-and-forth. Nemkov had the advantage on the ground. Both very tired by the end of the 10 minute first round and when it was over, Nemkov just couldn’t get up and didn’t answer the bell for the second round.
Brennan Ward of Bellator beat Ken Hasegawa with a belly-to-belly suplex and choke.
Soo Chul Kim beat Maike Linhares in a boring fight via unanimous decision.
Takeru beat Yang Ming under K-1 rules. The ref stopped it after a barrage of punches in the second round.
Gabi Garcia beat Lei’d Tapa via knockout with a backfist that looked most like a reflex action than a planned punch. Garcia looked tons bigger than Tapa, stunningly so. Tapa was a lot lighter than her wrestling size and Garcia had the most ridiculous shoulders on a fighter, man or woman, that you’ll see. Tapa knocked her down first and then both swung wildly with no technique. The crowd was very into this as a freak show fight.
Bob Sapp beat Akebono. This fight was so bad Spike couldn’t air it.
Baruto beat Peter Aerts via decision. The 403-pound Baruto threw Aerts around pretty easily.
Andy Souwer, a kickboxing legend, beat Yuichiro Nagashima with a flurry of hard punches to the head and particularly the body and Nagashima went down.
Kron Gracie beat Asen Yamamoto via triangle. He got the triangle, Yamamoto was able to power bomb Gracie but Gracie held on tight for the submission. Yamamoto was too young and too small. Gracie’s technique looked great.
Fedor Emelianenko beat Jadeep Singh via first round ground and pound as Singh tapped from strikes. Fedor took him down and pretty much beat him up. Hiroshi Hase made a cameo in the ring with Fedor.
King Mo beat Jiri Prochazka too win the heavyweight tournament. Prochazka landed a lot of kicks early, but Mo took him down. Prochazka rushed in after getting up and Mo knocked him out cold with a right hand.
Fedor Emelianenko clocked in at 236 pounds. Gabi Garcia and Lei’d Tapa in the women’s super heavyweight fight were more than 200 pounds. This will be the second Rizin show of the week, which takes place on New Year’s Eve at the Saitama Super Arena.
The show will air on Thursday morning at both 10 a.m. Eastern and Pacific time on Spike. Not all of the matches will air on Spike, and some matches from the Tuesday event will be on Spike.
The show is a mix of celebrity fights and names from the past with the attempt to draw mainstream viewers in Japan into MMA with unique personalities. While Emelianenko is who the show is built around in the U.S., in Japan the most interest revolves around the debut of former sumo star Baruto, the woman’s fight that includes former TNA wrestler Lei’d Tapa, the Bob Sapp vs Akebono fight and the Yamamoto wrestling family vs. Gracie Jiu Jitsu next generation battle with Asen Yamamoto, a teenage champion wrestler whose grandfather was an Olympic wrestler, whose mother was a world champion wrestler and whose uncle is Kid Yamamoto, facing Kron Gracie, the grandson of Helio Gracie and son of Rickson Gracie.
The show features five pro wrestlers in Akebono, Sapp, Tapa, Yuichiro Nagashima (the famed cross-dressing kickboxer) and Lawal.
Rena Kubota (112) vs. Jlena Valentino (112)
King Mo Lawal (214) vs. Teodoras Aukstuolis (216) in the semifinals of
the heavyweight tournament
Jiro Prochazka (211.5) vs. Vadim Nemkov (219.5) in the semifinals of the
heavyweight tournament
Brennan Ward of Bellator (178) vs. Ken Hasegawa (178.5)
Takeru (125.5) vs. Yang Ming (125.5) in a K-1 rules match
Soo Chu Kim (134.5) vs. Maike Linhares (134.5)
Gabi Garcia (216) vs. Lei’d Tapa (201) in a women’s fight
Kron Gracie (144.5) vs. Asen Yamamoto (144.5)
Akebono (419) vs. Bob Sapp (330.5) in a shoot boxing rules match
Andy Souwer (159) vs. Yuichiro Nagashima (158)
Peter Aerts (didn’t weigh in) vs. Baruto (403.5)
Fedor Emelianenko (236) vs. Jaideep Singh (233)
Finals of heavyweight tournament
Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez and Mike Sempervive returns today to talk all the news in wrestling and MMA including tons of thoughts on the RIZIN show with the doom of Kazushi Sakuraba, Raw from Monday, Big Show and whether or not he’s number one in the Royal Rumble, texts, calls and more! A fun show as always so check it out~!
Results from the Rizin show held earlier today at the Saitama Super Arena:
Tsuyoshi Kosaka beat James Thomspon via strikes in the second round
Kiril Sidelnikov beat Carlos Toyota via strokes in the first round
Felipe Efrain beat Yuki Motoya via knockout from strikes in the first round -The official result of the fight was a no contest due to Efrain missing weight.
Hiroyo Kawabe beat Akiyo Nishiura in a K-1 rules mach via third round knockout
Hinata Watanabe beat Kazuyuki Miyata in a mixed match. The first round was K-1 rules and Hinata, the kickboxer, destroyed him so there was no second round under MMA rules
Anatoly Tokov beat A.J. Matthews via knockout in the first round
Hideo Tokoro beat Kizaemon Saiga via armbar in the first round
Hiroyuki Takaya beat DJ Taiki via decision
Heavyweight tournament:
Reserve fight: Valentin Moldavsky beat Yuta Uchida with essentially a camel clutch submission
King Mo Lawal beat Brian McDermott via knockout in 9:10
Toedoras Aukstuolis beat Bruno Cappelozza via knockout in 3:32
Vadim Nemkov beat Goran Reljic via knockout in 2:58
Jiri Prochazka beat Satoshi Ishii via knockout in 1:36
Shinya Aoki beat Kazushi Sakuraba in a one round slaughter via strikes
Jerome LeBanner never came to Japan, so Peter Aerts will come out of retirement to face Baruto on Thursday’s show. Aerts has been Baruto’s trainer to get him ready for his debut making it even more weird.
The show was said to be entertaining except the main event was sad. The heavyweight tournament was good although from a Japanese perspective, Ishii going down so quickly wasn’t good news.
A rematch of the most watched fight in Japan of modern times was the latest bout confirmed for the debut of the Rizin promotion at the end of the year.
Bob Sapp vs. Akebono, a battle between giants who have not fared well as fighters, was announced today by Nobuhiko Takada during prime time network programming on the Fuji television network. Fuji TV will be airing the Rizin debut on 12/31. It will also be airing on Spike in the U.S.
On December 31, 2003, Sapp vs. Akebono in a kickboxing match drew 54 million television viewers on a night with ridiculous television competition. It was Akebono’s first fight, after being one of the biggest stars in the history of sumo. Sapp was all over television commercials and the biggest television draw among the fighters at the time.
The two have never rematched even though both have had log tenures since that time as pro wrestlers in Japan. They were on opposite sides in an eight-man tag team match at the January 4, 2013 Tokyo Dome show.
Akebono announced on 11/1 that he was leaving All Japan Pro Wrestling, after losing the Triple Crown to Jun Akiyama. It was widely expected he would be on the debut of the Rizin group. He hasn’t fought in nine years. Sapp, who retired as a fighter in 2013, made for the logical opponent.
Inside MMA had reported this match taking place a few weeks ago, but today was the official announcement.
Filthy Four Daily with Bryan Alvarez and Tom Lawlor is back today with a shocking amount of stuff to talk about, especially for this show! We’ve got the WWE Title Tournament, Tom’s own Filthy Invitational 2015 tourney for a copy of WWE 2K15, the Smackdown finish and whether it was the worst ever, previews of Retro Raw and Retro Nitro this week, some comedy regarding the RUMBLR app, Bellator and UFC notes for last weekend and this weekend, Shamrock vs. Gracie, RIZIN fights, fun moves Tom has successfully applied to people and more! A fun show as always so check it out~!
