What a ****ing dissapointed show by Kitaoka. He is as good of a grappler as Aoki, some say better, but he didn't show it. What he needs to learn from Aoki is how to get the fight into grappling no matter what. Kitaoka just seems to have good, not great, wrestling, and even then only shots (at a high level, obviously he could do any takedown he wanted on a low class opponent). Aoki has great Judo, good shots, and great guard pulling. Kitaoka did pull guard at least once, but couldn't keep it there. So dissapointing :-(, I was thinking of putting a Kitaoka HL post up beforehand. Not belittling Hirota, he is a great fighter, just beat Ishida, no easy task. And like I said Cage Force is possibly Japan's best breeding ground for up and coming fighters. If Hirota wants to come to the US, he could do very well for himself. I think Kitaoka could to, I think he could be one of the best LW's around, but man I was let down during this fight. To be fair to Hirota he stopped good double leg takedowns, did very well on the ground, those knees changed the fight, and just fought an all around great gameplan for Kitaoka. Featherweight GP was a total joke, as is pretty much the norm. Losers fighting in the final, questionable decisions; typical Japanese one night tournament stuff. More typical Japan when the ref stopped the fight when Misaki had a decent at best arm in guillotine, which led to the ref stopping the fight despite no tap, scream, or passing out. That **** is such a joke and makes it clear it is not a sport to some people, absolutely disgusting. Great to see Hornbuckle land that Head Kick KO. Gono is just so annoying, he is a counter fighter who is never really exciting or even that good. What really sucks about him is the "oh, well I'm boring as **** in the ring, so I will try to be funny with entrances but fail miserably because I have the brain of a child" running through his brain. Save the idiot entrace, fight, then celebrate if you manage to win while countering. Everybody's new favorite Combat Sambo fighter, Blagoi Ivanov, defated Fujita by split decision. That is absolutely huge, although I haven't seen that fight yet, so who knows how it looks, comment if you do.
i watched the ivanov fight. i think that for only being his second fight in mma and first against an opp. with a pulse and seriously heavy hands in fujita, he did well he is still ad******g to mma but didnt shrink away from trading with fujita and even backed fujita up with his own decently heavy hands a few times. when on the ground he did a great job of smothering any offense by fujita. he needs work all around but showed a pretty good chin to take fujitas shots. im anxious to see what happens on sept. 26 if he still fights aleksander e. like scheduled
