Press Release: World Victory Road confirmed the fight order for Sengoku 4 at 24th August. Also confirmed Yuki Sasaki as a participant of the Middleweight GP Series and Xande Ribeiro, Roger Gracie, and Jorge Masvidal as participants of the Sengoku 5 at 28th September.

SENGOKU4
Date : August 24th, 2008
Place : Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan
Fight : Takanori Gomi vs Bang Seung Hwan [Lightweight]
Makoto Takimoto vs Frank Trigg [Middleweight]
Satoru Kitaoka vs. Clay French [Lightweight GP Series 2008 1st Round]
Eiji Mitsuoka vs. Rodrigo Damm [Lightweight GP Series 2008 1st Round]
Kazunori Yokota vs. Bojan Kosednar [Lightweight GP Series 2008 1st Round]
Mizuto Hirota vs. Ryan Schultz [Lightweight GP Series 2008 1st Round]
Pawel Nastula vs Yang Dong Yi
Peter Graham vs Moise Rimbon [Heavyweight]
Takahashi Kazuo vs Valentijn Overeem [Heavyweight]

SENGOKU 5
Date : September 28th, 2008
Place : Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan
Participants : Xande Ribeiro
Roger Gracie
Jorge Masvidal
Lightweight GP Series 2008 1st Round participants :
Yuki Sasaki
Kazuhiro Nakamura
Evangelista Cyborg
Siyar Bahadurzada
Jorge Santiago

There is speculation that Olympic Gold Medalist Hidehiko Yoshida might not be fighting another Gracie after all. Yoshida, who was supposedly going to match up against Roger Gracie, might not get the chance to fight the 2005 Abu Dhabi 88+ kg and Absolute Weight class Champion as originally reported. GracieMag.com had originally reported that Yoshida vs. Gracie was close to finished but there is still a chance for that to change. The name Josh Barnett has been thrown around as a possibility to face the Japanese Judoka.

There seems to be a weird lust in Japan for seeing their Idols get smashed, literally, by bigger fighters on a constant basis. I guess popularity comes at a very heavy price. Ikuhisa Minowa, Hidehiko Yoshida, and Kazushi Sakuraba have all been subjected to this kind of treatment. Not to mention fighters some of the time get the discourtesy of not having a “tune up” fight to get their careers rolling, which is definitely the case with Kazuhiro Nakamura, who questionably has one of the craziest looking records in MMA. In his 1st 2 years of fighting he’s faced Wanderlei Silva, Igor Vovchanchyn, Dan Henderson, Murilo Bustamente, Kevin Randleman, and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira on 2 occasions and 1 of those being his MMA debut.

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