On Sun., Aug. 2, 2009, World Victory Road’s “Sengoku: Ninth Battle” will take place at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.

The event will feature a lightweight title fight between Satoru Kitaoka (25-8-9) and Mizuto Hirota (11-3-1). Kitaoka is on a six-fight win streak with his most recent victories being first round Achilles Lock submissions over Yukio Sakaguchi in June and Takanori Gomi back in January.

Kitaoka will be putting his grappling prowess up against the striking abilities of Hirota. Hirota’s most recent fight was a first round TKO victory over Mitsuhiro Ishida at Shooto Tradition Final in May. It is interesting to note that Hirota has never won a fight by submission and Kitaoka has never won via strikes.

In addition to the title fight, the semi-finals and finals of Sengoku’s Featherweight Grand Prix will take place. This means that two fighters in the tournament will be fighting twice in one night as long as they make it through their first bout without injury. There will be a reserve bout in place just in case one of the semi-finalists can not continue to the final round.

Several non-tournament bouts will also be on the card including the MMA debut of Blagoi Ivanov, the Bulgarian Sambo Champion who defeated Fedor Emelianenko in Sambo competition last year. Here is the full fight card:

Sengoku: Ninth Battle

Sengoku Lightweight Championship
Satoru Kitaoka (No. 6 LW) vs. Mizuto Hirota

Sengoku Featherweight Grand Prix (semi-finals)
Hatsu Hioki (No. 5 FW) vs. Masanori Kanehara
Marlon Sandro (No. 10 FW) vs. Michihiro Omigawa
Chan Sung Jung vs. Matt Jaggers (Reserve Bout)

Sengoku Featherweight Grand Prix (finals)
winner of Hatsu Hioki vs. Masanori Kanehara vs. winner of Marlon Sandro vs. Michihiro Omigawa

Non-Tournament Bouts
Kazuo Misaki vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura
Eiji Mitsuoka vs. Clay French
Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Blagoi Ivanov
Yoshihiro Nakao vs. Mu Bae Choi
Akihiro Gono vs. Dan Hornbuckle
Takeshi Numajiri vs. Ryosuke Komori
Shigeki Osawa vs. Toru Harai
Ikuo Usuda vs. Koji Ando

The schedule for HDNet lists “Sengoku: Ninth Battle” premiering  on Fri., Aug. 7, at 10 PM ET.

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