A Brief History
Rizin Fighting World Grand Prix -SARABA no en- was a mixed martial arts event held by Rizin Fighting Federation. It took place at the Saitama Super Arena on December 29, 2015.
Digging Deeper
| Rizin Fighting World Grand Prix -SARABA no en- | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Information | ||||
| Promotion | Rizin Fighting Federation | |||
| Date | December 29, 2015 | |||
| Venue | Saitama Super Arena | |||
| City | Saitama | |||
| Attendance | 12,214 | |||
| Event chronology | ||||
| ||||
Background
In November 2015, ESPN reported that while still being signed to Bellator, Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal became the first announced Bellator fighter to participate on Rizin’s inaugural card.
Results
| Main Card | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight class | Method | Round | Time | Notes | |||
| Welterweight | Shinya Aoki | def. | Kazushi Sakuraba | TKO (corner stoppage) | 1 | 5:56 | |
| Heavyweight | Jiří Procházka | def. | Satoshi Ishii | KO (head kick and knees) | 1 | 1:36 | [a] |
| Heavyweight | Vadim Nemkov | def. | Goran Reljić | KO (punches) | 1 | 2:58 | [b] |
| Heavyweight | Teodoras Aukstuolis | def. | Bruno Henrique Cappelozza | KO (punch) | 1 | 3:32 | [c] |
| Heavyweight | Muhammed Lawal | def. | Brett McDermott | KO (punches) | 1 | 9:10 | [d] |
| Heavyweight | Valentin Moldavsky | def. | Yuta Uchida | Submission (rear naked choke) | 1 | 2:20 | [e] |
| Bantamweight | Hiroyuki Takaya | def. | Daiki Hata | Decision (Unanimous) | 3 | 5:00 | |
| Bantamweight | Hideo Tokoro | def. | Kizaemon Saiga | Submission (armbar) | 1 | 5:16 | |
| Middleweight | Anatoly Tokov | def. | A.J. Matthews | KO (punch) | 1 | 0:55 | |
| Lightweight (K-1 rules) | Hinata Watanabe | def. | Kazuyuki Miyata | TKO (punches) | 1 | 2:15 | |
| Lightweight (K-1 rules) | Hiroya | def. | Akiyo Nishiura | KO (punch) | 3 | 1:10 | |
| Flyweight | Felipe Efrain | vs. | Yuki Motoya | No Contest (Overturned) | 1 | 5:45 | [f] |
| Heavyweight | Kirill Sidelnikov | def. | Carlos Toyota | TKO (punches) | 1 | 2:23 | |
| Heavyweight | Tsuyoshi Kosaka | def. | James Thompson | TKO (punches) | 2 | 1:58 | |
- a Heavyweight Grand Prix Quarterfinals
- b Heavyweight Grand Prix Quarterfinals
- c Heavyweight Grand Prix Quarterfinals
- d Heavyweight Grand Prix Quarterfinals
- e Heavyweight Grand Prix Reserve Fight
- f Originally a KO win for Efrain, the result was changed to “No Contest” due to Efrain missing the weight limit.
Rizin 2015 Heavyweight Grand Prix Bracket
| Quarterfinals (Dec. 29) | Semifinals (Dec. 31) | Finals (Dec. 31) | ||||||||||||
| Jiri Prochazka | KO | |||||||||||||
| Satoshi Ishii | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Jiri Prochazka | TKO | |||||||||||||
| Vadim Nemkov | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Vadim Nemkov | KO | |||||||||||||
| Goran Reljic | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Jiri Prochazka | KO | |||||||||||||
| Muhammed Lawal | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Teodoras Aukstuolis | KO | |||||||||||||
| Bruno Cappelozza | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Teodoras Aukstuolis | UD | |||||||||||||
| Muhammed Lawal | 2 | |||||||||||||
| Muhammed Lawal | KO | |||||||||||||
| Brett McDermott | 1 | |||||||||||||
- Alternate bout: Valentin Moldavsky def. Yuta Uchida by Submission (rear-naked choke) in Round 1.
Reception
Karim Zidan of SB Nation described the event “heard on laptop screens and television sets around the world” as “a reminder of a bygone decade” and noted that “the 10-minute opening round was certainly a welcome addition to the broadcast and helped distinguish Rizin from its international competitors” and that the “show surpassed all expectations.”
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Historical Evidence
This article is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Rizin Fighting Federation 1 primarily written by Cabelo545 and as it appeared on January 8, 2016; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA. This article is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Rizin Fighting Federation 1 primarily written by Cabelo545 and as it appeared on January 8, 2016; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL. The article is reproduced here to preserve content threatened by electronic book burning by trolls and vandals.
For more information, please see Rizen 1 Sherdog.com and…
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