Just posted–SavSci Japan editor Lyman Hoyt evaluates Satoshi Ishii’s professional MMA debut:
Evaluating Satoshi Ishii’s MMA debut @ The Savage Science

Much is being made of Aoki’s ‘flipping off’ of Hirota after the match. For now I’ll reserve judgment and see if I can get some context from our people in Japan, but on appearance alone it was an uncharacteristically classless move by the Japanese submission god. Someone I spoke with familiar with Japanese [...]

Here’s the trailer video for the Fields Dynamite New Years’ Eve show:

Wow. This fight is going to be huge in Japan. Satoshi Ishii will make his pro MMA debut against tough as nails veteran and fellow Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Freakin’ Yoshida! There’s a long running tradition of not ‘going easy’ on newcomers to MMA, particularly those from a judo background. [...]

Rumor afoot in Japan right now that Josh Barnett will face the winner of the Sengoku X fight between Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva and Big Jim York for the new Sengoku heavyweight championship. Barnett hasn’t said much in the US media since his failed drug test that started the downward spiral for Affliction’s MMA promotion, [...]

Here’s a TV promo spot for Sengoku X featuring an assortment of Japanese judo gods including Satoshi Ishii and the legendary Hidehiko Yoshida:

Yeah, we posted this video of the 2009 Sengoku Ring Girls a couple of months ago. Got a problem with that?

Josh Barnett will apparently fight as much as possible in Japan, at least for the immediate future. In addition to his work with Antonio Inoki’s IGF pro wrestling promotion and a tentatively scheduled Sengoku date for later this year he gave a good indication that he’ll be looking to defend his openweight ‘King of [...]

The first official fight has been added to the 9/23 Sengoku 10 card. It’ll feature Kazunori Yokota against Ryan Schultz:

The Japanese media is reporting that Blagoi Ivanov aka ‘The guy that beat Fedor in Sambo’ broke both hands during his split decision win over Kazuyuki Fujita at Sengoku 9. Ivanov showed some toughness, but has a long way to go before he’ll be a serious MMA fighter. He has tried to explain [...]