The fighting woes continue for former Bellator MMA kingpin Patrick
“Patchy” Mix.

Just one day before his 20th birthday, Kyoma
Akimoto earned the biggest victory of his burgeoning MMA career
in Friday’s Rizin
Fighting Federation 52 main event in Tokyo. Akimoto clobbered
-450 betting favorite Mix early in the second round of their
featured featherweight clash.

Advertisement

In the opening seconds of the fight, Akimoto (12-1, 7-1 Rizin)
stuffed a takedown attempt from Mix (20-4, 1-1 Rizin), and the
fighters traded jabs until Akimoto stunned Mix for the first time
with a crisp combination that backed him to the corner. Mix
recovered, but Akimoto attacked his body with more punches and then
dropped him with a salvo to the face.

During the final 30 seconds of the round, Akimoto notched two more
knockdowns and punished Mix with knees and soccer kicks on the
ground. Mix narrowly made it to the bell, but his cornermen delayed
the start of the second round by not leaving the ring in a timely
manner following the one-minute break. Mix was given a yellow card
for stalling.



Seconds into the second stanza, Akimoto dropped Mix with two left
hooks flush on the temple. Mix scrambled to his knees, only for
Akimoto to punt his heavily favored foe with a pair of brutal
soccer kicks to the face. Referee Naoya Uematsu had no choice but
to wave things off at that point, rescuing a bloodied and battered
Mix from his own toughness at the 37-second mark of the second
round.

Since suffering a deflating decision loss at the end of 2024,
Akimoto has racked up five straight victories including four
consecutive stoppages. He became the first man to ever finish Mix
inside the distance, placing himself in prime position for a
potential featherweight title shot.

In the 155-pound co-main attraction, Luiz
Gustavo (15-4, 7-4 Rizin) followed in the footsteps of mentor
Wanderlei
Silva by knocking out Taisei
Sakuraba (2-2, 2-2 Rizin), the son of Pride Fighting Championships legend and former
Silva rival Kazushi
Sakuraba. Gustavo rebounded after a slow start in the opening
round and melted Sakuraba with a right hook in the second
stanza.

Sakuraba held the advantage early into the bout, landing a series
of kicks to Gustavo’s ribs and evading the majority of the
counters. As Gustavo began to load up, Sakuraba could not get out
of the way in time of a thudding body kick that took some of the
wind out of his sails. The 27-year-old recovered well enough to
fire back, even getting off some of his own offense, but the tide
began to turn.

Coming out of his corner in the second round red-hot, the
ultraviolent Gustavo shredded open a cut above Sakuraba’s right eye
with knees. Soon after, he finished a combination with a head kick
that put the Japanese athlete on high alert. Sakuraba blocked the
worst of what came at him, only for Gustavo to follow up with a
clubbing right hook that shut Sakuraba’s lights out and sent him
crashing to the mat. The impressive knockout for Gustavo officially
came at 2:32 of Round 2.

A striking battle between featherweights Ryo Takagi
(10-3, 4-2 Rizin) and Shuya
Kimura (5-3, 1-3 Rizin) came to an unfortunate end due to a
doctor stoppage after the first round, though it appeared that
Kimura had been poked in his right eye which may have caused some
of the fight-ending damage.

Takagi wobbled Kimura with a right cross during the opening 90
seconds, but Kimura recovered and grazed his foe with an overhand
right to back Takagi into a corner. Takagi kicked Kimura’s left leg
and landed two right hands late in the round, but he appeared to
poke Kimura in the eye in the process. Kimura indicated that he had
been poked in the eye, but referee Tatsuro Nagase told him to fight
on. At the conclusion of the round, the ringside doctor determined
that Kimura could not continue. The broadcast showed multiple
replays, but no video displayed the sequence when Kimura appeared
to suffer the eye poke. With Kimura unable to continue, Takagi was
awarded the doctor stoppage TKO victory.

Opening up the main card, Koji Takeda
(19-8, 8-8 Rizin) put forth a valiant effort on just two days’
notice to upset recent Rizin featherweight title challenger
Viktor
Kolesnik (27-6-1, 4-2 Rizin). The bout took place at
lightweight due to Takeda’s very late participation, with Takeda
stepping in for Kolesnik’s original opponent, Kazuki
Aimoto.

Kolesnik easily won the first round with relentless kicks to any
target he could find, which rarely slowed until Takeda countered a
flying switch kick attempt chained into an unorthodox standing
arm-triangle choke. From there, the fight changed drastically, as
Kolesnik slowed while Takeda rallied. The Japanese athlete pinned
Kolesnik in the corner for prolonged periods of time and hopped on
his back in search of a rear-naked choke. Takeda’s clinch control
continued in the final round, with the 30-year-old inflicting
enough damage to sway the judges in his favor. Three matching
scores of 29-28 came down in favor of Takeda, who took home the
unanimous decision win as a shocked Kolesnik looked on.

Earlier on the card, Deep and Deep Jewels microweight champion Saori
Oshima (16-7, 5-1 Rizin) picked up a much-needed victory by
outpointing Keito Oyama
(9-8, 2-2 Rizin) in a women’s super atomweight contest at 108
pounds. Oshima, who had dropped three of her past four fights
including an unsuccessful Rizin title bid in November, put the
popular “Kate Lotus” on the ground and kept her there for most of
the match. While active on top for the first 10 minutes, Oshima
took her foot off the gas the final five but maintained enough
control to pull through. Oyama struck back with a plethora of
elbows from the bottom and even tried a pair of gogoplatas, to no
avail. Oshima prevailed via unanimous decision with a trio of 29-28
scores, and the woman known as “Little Giant” has now gone the
distance in five consecutive bouts.

The judges were not needed for any of the other seven preliminary
tilts. At 130 pounds, Yuki Ito
(20-7, 10-3 Rizin) annihilated former Legacy Fighting Alliance champ Carlos Mota
(8-3, 0-1 Rizin) in the first round. Punches were traded during the
opening 90 seconds, and Mota was aggressive moving forward, but Ito
floored him with a head kick and finished him off with a barrage of
punches to secure the finish at the 2:27 mark.

Jinnosuke
Kashimura (11-5, 2-1 Rizin) spoiled the Rizin return of
legendary Japanese competitor Hideo Tokoro
(36-34-1, 4-6 Rizin) at bantamweight. Kashimura scored an early
takedown and passed Tokoro’s guard. He then rolled into an anaconda
choke that rendered Tokoro unconscious just 66 seconds into the
fight.

Kyung
Pyo Kim (15-5, 4-1 Rizin) beat down Rizin lightweight staple
Yusuke
Yachi (28-16, 12-9 Rizin) en route to a second-round doctor
stoppage. Kim cut Yachi with an elbow in the first round, then hurt
him with a knee and followed up with punches on the ground. A
bloodied Yachi made it to the bell, and Kim make sure when the next
round began to target those wounds to further paint the canvas red.
Time was eventually called, and the doctor could not stem the
bleeding, which resulted in the bout being waved off at 4:25 of
Round 2.

Shoko
Sato (38-17-2, 1 NC; 4-2 Rizin) bounced back from his narrow
decision loss to current Rizin champ Danny
Sabatello in September by demolishing LFA’s John
Sweeney (14-4, 0-1 Rizin) in an extremely lopsided bantamweight
bout. While the opening minutes proved uneventful, Sato took
Sweeney down midway through the round and immediately went on the
attack. He bloodied Sweeney with two knees, mounted his foe and
brutalized him with vicious punches and elbows that came close to
meriting referee intervention. When a stoppage did not materialize,
Sato transitioned to a mounted triangle choke, forcing Sweeney to
hastily tap out at 4:49.

In what was easily his most impressive Rizin performance to date,
Tony
Laramie (12-3, 3-1 Rizin) picked apart Takaki Soya
(13-8-1, 4-4 Rizin) with leg kicks for two rounds before finishing
him with punches and hammerfists in Round 3. Soya could not put
much weight on his lead leg after absorbing a ton of damage from
Laramie’s kicks, and Laramie dropped him with a right hook and put
him away for a TKO win exactly two minutes into the third frame.
Laramie campaigned for a flyweight title shot following his
triumph.

Road FC champ Jung Hyun
Lee (8-3, 1-2 Rizin) prevailed against Shooto titleholder Jo Arai
(14-13-1, 0-3 Rizin) in a flyweight scrap between two competitors
each seeking their first Rizin victory. Arai started well with
flurries of punches to Lee’s body in the opening round, but the
tides turned as soon as Lee got back at him by spamming knees in
clinch situations. The body work wore Arai down as the fight
progressed, and Arai held on to get out of the rounds. At 3:44 of
the final frame, an onslaught of knees and punches drove Arai to
the corner and ultimately out of the fight.

Rizin 52 kicked off with a women’s super atomweight bout between
“Noel” Noeru
Narita (4-2, 2-1 Rizin) and Korean prospect Bo Mi Lee
(3-2, 0-2 Rizin). Early on, Lee reversed a takedown and held top
position in the scarf hold position. Narita scrambled out from the
bottom and trapped a kneeling Lee in a tight guillotine choke.
“Noel” pulled guard with the choke, and Lee was forced to submit
2:07 into the first round.

IMAK ADMIN

By IMAK ADMIN

Internationaler Kampfkunst und Kampfsport Kleinanzeiger