Leo Santos vs. Kazunori Yokota LW Title Eliminator Announced for Sengoku VIII

by Chris Nelson on Mar 22, 2009 2:05 PM EDT

20090323-00000000-spnavi-fight-view-000_medium World Victory Road announced the first fight for Sengoku's "Eighth Battle" in May on their weekly TV Tokyo show, SENGOKU-G. Newly-signed Nova Uniao black belt Leonardo Santos will face 2008 LWGP finalist Kazunori Yokota in a match which a post on Sengoku's site indicates as a title eliminator. The winner would likely face Sengoku Lightweight Champion Satoru Kitaoka at "Sengoku X" in August.

Santos (brother of former IFL champ and current WEC featherweight Waggney Fabiano) has been on a tear in the past year, with four first-round victories in as many consecutive Shooto Brazil events. It was expected that he would be placed in immediate title contention when his signing was announced by WVR last month. Yokota, meanwhile, has not seen action since his unanimous decision loss to Kitaoka in last year's tournament finals.

Sengoku VIII
May 2nd, 2009
Yoyogi National Stadium
Tokyo, Japan

Lightweight Title Eliminator Bout
Kazunori Yokota (8-2-3) vs. Leonardo Santos (6-2)

Featherweight GP 2nd Round Participants
Marlon Sandro (13-0)
Nam Phan (15-5)
Michihiro Omigawa (5-7-1)
Masanori Kanehara (12-5-5)
Ronnie Mann (17-1-1)
Hatsu Hioki (18-3-2)
Nick Denis (7-0)
Chan Sung Jung (3-0)

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Tetsuya Yamada also said he wants to move up to 155. Their LW division is looking good

by smoogy on Mar 22, 2009 4:11 PM EDT reply actions

If they can really take advantage of their deal with Shooto and owning Pancrase, they could have a pretty decent LW stock there.

They already have:

Takanori Gomi
Satoru Kitaoka
Kazunori Yokota
Eiji Mitsuoka
Rodrigo Damm – anyone know when he’ll be back?
Ryan Schultz – will he be back?
Mizuto Hirota
Seung Hwan Bang

Pancrase:

Katsuya Inoue
Koji Oishi
Not much else.

Shooto:

Koutetsu Boku
Yusuke Endo
Takashi Nakakura
Ganjo Tentsuku
Kenichiro Togashi

Poaching the returning Nobuhiro Obiya and Katsunori Kikuno from DEEP (like they did with Bang) would be pretty stellar too, but those are basically pipe dreams.

by ilostmydog on Mar 22, 2009 4:34 PM EDT reply actions

Damn, that’s a pretty solid LW class to draw from.
I’m really interested in seeing Bang, Damm and Mitsuoka again.
Schultz, less so – very weird how he’s stumbled since he got to Japan.

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by Chris Nelson on Mar 22, 2009 4:51 PM EDT up reply actions