World Victory Road completes SRC Asia bantamweight tournament

Today, World Victory Road, the parent company behind Sengoku Raiden Championships, finalized the participants in their inaugural SRC Asia Bantamweight tournament. The quarterfinals will take place at SRC 15, which takes place on Oct. 30 at Ryogoku Kokugikan.

At SRC 14, Shoko Sato, Jae Hyun So, Wataru Takahashi and Shintaro Ishiwatari all advanced to the quarterfinals with victories. Those four fighters have all already won two tournament bouts. Now, they will be joined by representatives from Shooto, Pancrase, ZST and Cage Force.

Pancrase has sent their bantamweight King of Pancrase, Manabu Inoue. He won the then-vacant title by defeating Seiya Kawahara at Pancrase Shining 10. Inoue has since taken victories over Masahiro Oishi and Tatsuya So. He will participate in the SRC tournament despite having a scheduled title defense against Tashiro Nishiuchi on Sept. 5.

WEC veteran Akitoshi Tamura will represent Shooto. Tamura held the promotions 143-pound championship in 2007, but dropped the belt to Hideki Kadowaki in his first title defense. He holds impressive victories over Akiyo Nishiura, Takeshi Inoue, Rumina Sato and Manny Tapia.

ZST’s representative will be former title challenger Shuichi Shimizu. So far this year, Shimizu is 1-1-2. His career record stands at 17-6-9. The large number of draws is due to the fact that many ZST fights do not employ judges. In such fights, any fight that goes the distance is automatically declared a draw.

Despite not fighting since 2008, Taiyo Nakahara will represent Cage Force. Nakahara won his last two fights against Motonobu Tezuka and Ryota Uozomi. Although his career record stands at 10-6, many of his losses have come against quality competition. He has come up short against Mike Thomas Brown, Ivan Menjivar, Rani Yahya and Hideo Tokoro.

SRC 15 will also feature the semifinals of the SRC Welterweight tournament. In one semifinal, Keita Nakamura will face Takuya Wada, and in the opposite bracket Yasubey Enomoto will meet Taisuke Okuno.