Heat 22 – Japanese MMA
Well we have covered all the other MMA events in Asia this weekend – SFL, ZST, Deep and now it’s time for Heat 22 held at Differ Ariake, Tokyo, Japan, let’s see what it’s all about. This is incidentally being held at the same stadium as the Deep event the day before.
Now once again we have some issues with the information, the Heat website is definitely better that than the ZST one but it’s still not perfectly easy to navigate and Sherdog only lists three bouts for this event. We will start with them and then see what else we can figure out.
Bout:
Shinnosuke Oba (no record)
Shoma Shibisai (no record)
Bout:
Masaya Doi (8-7-4) a real journeyman fighter who has appeared in good quality events, his early days started off fighting in the UK where way back in 2004 he lost to current Malaysian based ONE FC fighter and Pete Davis. Since then he has covered many organisations from Deep, ZST, Rize, Legend, CFC, AFC, GCM and this will be his second Heat event. His record is very spotty, but he does keep checking in with the odd win in every few fights.
Genki Osako (4-3-2) (ranked 378 in the lightweight division worldwide) is a ZST veteren and last fought at Pancrase in January 11. This at least looks like a decent match up.
Bout:
Masanori Kanehara (18-10-5) (ranked 74 in the lightweight division worldwide) his record is really not as bad as it looks, he wins a few in a row and then will lose a couple. .
Jake Hattan (11-1-0) (ranked 268) looks to be on a tear up with a straight ten fight winning streak, so even though there is a big gap in their world ranking you might think this is his fight. But, his last fight was seven years ago. So, we just don’t know what he has been doing for the past few years. Also, why did he stop fighting for so long, his record must have had him well up the rankings. It should be interesting to see fight ready he is.
Bout: The Main Event?
Hiromi Amada (no record) according to the event poster this may well be the main event,a HEAT heavy weight title match.
Fabiano Aoki (0-1-0-1) I mean what is this return of the Zombies, this is another fighter who seems to have stopped fighting some six years ago and let’s be honest one loss and one no contest is not much in the way of a record. So the main event would appear to be a fighter with no record against an historical relic with a poor record. Oh yippee do!
Bout:
Zhang Shan it’s hard to tell if this is the correct fighters name, there are a couple of choices on Sherdog but none seem right. So, i staying away from this.
Magnum Sakai same as above.
Bout:
Moji Yoshida (no record)
Daisuke Endou (no record)
I am sorry I seem to be letting you down here, but the trouble is not the problem with the organisations but the problem with me, I do not speak or read Japanese and therefore the websites are pretty formidable to understand.
That being said, of the three Japanese events this weekend this one may possibly be the least awful one, but not by much.
There are probably less than a handful of fighters in all three events combined who could get on the undercard at ONE FC.
So, here’s my feelings about the weekends events. Like it or not the Super Fight League from India has the best Asian MMA event this weekend by a wide margin. And that get’s me thinking.
Is Japanese MMA in terminal decline or can it be saved. Is The Super Fight League going to be happy staying in India or will the be tempted to come after ONE FC’s market?
That could be interesting. Sure, they would have a lot of work to do but this second show is pretty good, if the Indian fans start turning out
