Who do you want to join Rizin's 16 men Male BW GP and Female AW GP?

[Deleted member 363827]

Rizin has announced that it will be holding both male and female GP from the July event to NYE.
The weight class will be BW (135 pounds) and 108 pounds respectively.
So who do you think/want to participate in this GP?

Some things to keep in mind
1. The Woman GP will be centred around Rena and Horiguchi will lead the Man GP so they are both confirmed participants.
2. Takada do not want to rush Tenshin's development in mma, so he will continued to be slowly built up
and probably will not participate in this GP.
3. One Championship and K-1 have distanced themselves from Rizin, so their fighters will probably
not be fighting in Rizin. (But of course feel free to consider Road FC/ Deep/ ZST etc.)
4. Japanese fighters are guaranteed to get soft match up in the first round, so if there are obscure prospects you want to see given a shot feel free to include them.

Fighters I think will be in the GP
BW: Horiguchi, Asen Yamamoto (If he doesn't die from weight cut), Hideo Tokoro
Female AW: Rena, Asakura Kanna, Ishioka Saori, Miyuu Yamamoto (If the nude album sales do not go well)

Who do you guys want to see?

 

[Pyreen]

Fighters I think will be in the GP
BW: Horiguchi, Asen Yamamoto (If he doesn't die from weight cut), Hideo Tokoro
Female AW: Rena, Asakura Kanna, Ishioka Saori, Miyuu Yamamoto (If the nude album sales do not go well)

Who do you guys want to see?

Women: Andy Nguyen and Alyssa Garcia are pretty safe bets. That would leave 2 spots for either 2 foreigners or a foreigner and a local.

Men: Birchak is highly probable, Motoya as well. Apart from that it's hard to say, maybe a bulked up Wada? DJ Taiki had an exciting fight last year, as did Nascimento. Imanari is still competing as well.

 

[Asurah]

Neither weight has been confirmed, just that the women's one is probably going to be RENA weight (which is around 108 lbs so could be more of a Strawweight limit as well).

Assuming it's AW for the women then I would like to see:
RENA
Saori Ishioka
Kanna Asakura
Alyssa Garcia
Andy Nguyen (not sure if her fight with Bi Nguyen for the KOTC title is still on for May, maybe have that be an eliminator with the winner gaining entry)
Mina Kurobe (current DEEP JEWELS champ, beat Ishioka back in November)
Satomi Takano if she wins her next fight
Jujeath Nagaowa (would be a cool fight for RENA, trading body shots for days)
Bi Nguyen (KOTC is in RIZIN's network and she has a win over Andy Nguyen as well as expressed interest in the GP)
Mamamoto is probably likely just due to her popularity

Flyweight had been heavily rumored but if it's more of a Bantamweight limit then I would like to see:
Tokoro
Yuki Motoya
Horiguchi
Tatsumitsu Wada
Seiichiro Ito
Hiromasa Ogikubo
Felipe Efrain
Erson Yamamoto
a Bellator rep (maybe Joe Warren, Marcos Galvao, or LC Davis)
Masanori Kanehara
Birchak
Pancrase rep (Shintaro Ishiwatari, Masakatsu Ueda, Victor Henry, Rafael Silva)
ROAD rep (assuming they won't send champs: Kai Asakura, Yuta Nezu, Taiyo Nakahara, Nam Jin Jo)
BAMMA rep (Chris Miah, Andy Young, Shay Walsh, Ronnie Mann though he seems set on FW now, Rany Saadeh would be great but is one of their world champs so probably won't be leased)
KSW rep (Anzor Azhiev)
Yusaku Nakamura
Yoshiro Maeda
Hayato Suzuki
Tatsuya Ando
Go Kashiwazaki (ZST BW champ)

It's expected that the women's GP will be 8 entrants and 16 for the men's so I think they could get a very solid mix out of these

 

[Pyreen]

Neither weight has been confirmed, just that the women's one is probably going to be RENA weight (which is around 108 lbs so could be more of a Strawweight limit as well).

Actually 135lbs (well 134,48lbs) for the men's GP has been confirmed by Sakakibara himself:




Seohee Ham could be a possibility too depending on how her fight in June plays out.

 

[Asurah]

Actually 135lbs (well 134,48lbs) for the men's GP has been confirmed by Sakakibara himself:

Ah, I hadn't checked around yet today. Glad they went with one of the lower weights

 

[Danespina]

They said it was a flyweight GP during event though. Am I wrong?

 

[Edwin]

Takafumi Otsuka possibly.

 

[skylolow]

Alot of fighters that very few in the world even know who they are.

 

[GIBLERTBAPTISTA]

Glad they decided to go with '35, much more talent available at that weight.

 

[DanTheWolfman.com]

nice

 

[Edwin]

Alot of fighters that very few in the world even know who they are.

Just like a lot of the fighters on random UFC Fight Night cards.

 

[CC27]

Not sure, there really arent any top BW out there for Rizin to get, they are all in UFC and a few in Bellator.

BW tournament isnt gonna be nearly as good as the other GPs.

Unless other orgs like OneFC sends Bibi, Bellator sends maybe Warren, Higo.
But its for Japan so having Asian fighters from Deep and Shooto works for that region.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

I expect Bellator will lend them one of their non-champ BWs, so I'm predicting it will be Joe Warren.

 

[fermaPY]

The Gooch
Tokoro
Yamamoto
Mototoya
Birchak
Warren (Bellator)
Maybe they can bring Erick Goyito Perez that is a "free agent"
Don't really know others

 

[Shoot Boxe Hero]

Horiguchi, Tokoro, and Erson Yamamoto are now confirmed for the 135lb GP.

Sakakibara also said he wants to bring in talent from other Japanese promotions like Deep, Shooto, Pancrase, and ZST to compete in the tourny. July 30th will be the next Rizin event and part of the BW GP will be taking place at that time

 

[Go Go Plata]

I expect Bellator will lend them one of their non-champ BWs, so I'm predicting it will be Joe Warren.

I'd love to see the baddest man on the planet fight in a Rizin GP!

 

[qw3rty]

Women: Andy Nguyen and Alyssa Garcia are pretty safe bets. That would leave 2 spots for either 2 foreigners or a foreigner and a local.

Men: Birchak is highly probable, Motoya as well. Apart from that it's hard to say, maybe a bulked up Wada? DJ Taiki had an exciting fight last year, as did Nascimento. Imanari is still competing as well.

A bulked up Motoya too in that case

If they don't put some huge BW in there, I think Horiguchi could win

 

[qw3rty]

The Gooch
Tokoro
Yamamoto
Mototoya
Birchak
Warren (Bellator)
Maybe they can bring Erick Goyito Perez that is a "free agent"
Don't really know others

Goyito is commenting every UFC card in the spanish broadcasting and he also said he wasn't cut, just renegotiating his contract

I think is safe to say he will re-sign soon (if he already didn't)

 

[Feniamin]

Not sure, there really arent any top BW out there for Rizin to get, they are all in UFC and a few in Bellator.

BW tournament isnt gonna be nearly as good as the other GPs.

Unless other orgs like OneFC sends Bibi, Bellator sends maybe Warren, Higo.
But its for Japan so having Asian fighters from Deep and Shooto works for that region.

I think Said Nurmagomedov from Akhmat is not bad. Also I think EFN allows their fighters to fight in other promotions. Here you can see their BW rankings http://fightnights.ru/en/fighters/ Al-Abdullakh and Nurmagomedov looks like decent prospects.

 

[Pyreen]

A bulked up Motoya too in that case

If they don't put some huge BW in there, I think Horiguchi could win

Yeah, will be interesting to see who will move up/down for this GP. Ito already said he feels too small for BW and probably wont participate during the press conference, same for Tenshin who said that he feels too unskilled at MMA to fight over his weight, but would take matches at BW under Thai or Kickboxing rules.

Also, it has been made official that the "RENAweight" GP is at 49kg (108.03lbs).