With a whooomp der it is, Aussie fans will get a slice of Shooto action in eight weeks time.
No bouts have yet been confirmed for the card, and it is expected to host mostly homegrown (Australian and Kiwi) talent, a card of hometown heroes, most of whom will fight under something equivalent to amateur rules, sans head gear.
The next Shooto Japan card takes place in five days, though not at the famed Korakuen Hall, instead set to take place at Shinjuku Face, Tokyo.
The event will be headlined (thus far) by the bout of Kiyotaka Shimizu (10-7-3) versus Masaaki Sugawara (11-7-1), two decent but mixed fighters. Sugawara has been around a fair while, but has lost to all the elite Shooto fighters he faced, including BJ Kojima, Mamoru “The Fro” Yamaguchi, and even Hironaka. He is a solid gatekeeper.
Shimizu, despite a very similar record, has fought mostly in Pancrase, and fared better against the same men – losing to Yamaguchi only via majority decision, and taking Kojima the distance in his penultimate fight – not close, but competitive. He did beat the big punching little dynamite-fisted Takuya Eizumi in a wide decision in 2009.
The rest of the (confirmed) card is as follows:
| MATCH | FIGHTERS | ||||
| 3 |  Noboru Tahara9 – 6 – 1 |
vs |  Akinobu Watanabe7 – 5 – 2 |
||
| 2 |  Hiroshige Tanaka8 – 1 – 0 |
vs |  Yoshifumi Nakamura10 – 3 – 0 |
||
| 1 |  Shinya Murofushi7 – 3 – 1 |
vs |  Yusei Shimokawa6 – 7 – 1 |
||
I’ll leave you with a song – “Headshrinker”
Lost in a fog I’ve been treated like a dog and I’m outta here
I take cocaine in the pouring rain and I got no feaaaar
And I bow down to the tears of a clown
Whatever’s goin’ down is coming around
I hope you don’t regret today
For the rest of your life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0sry6TyEUU
Viva la Belgium
