DEEP 31 card on August 5th finalized

With the addition of the Hidehiko Hasegawa / Dong-Hyun Kim bout, the DEEP 31 IMPACT card on August 5th in now final.

DEEP 31 full card:

• Masakazu Imanari (Team-ROKEN) / Jong-Man Kim (CMA Korea)
• Yoshihiro "Barbaro44" Tomioka (Club Barbarian) / Makoto Ishikawa (PUREBRED Omiya)
• Takeshi Yamazaki (Team Grabaka) / Yoshisuke Kitada (Paraestra Chiba)
• Yusuke Kawaguchi (Blue Dog Gym) / Iro Zeki (Freelance)
• Hisae Watanabe (Freelance) / Miku Matsumoto (Club Barbarian) (DEEP Female Lightweight Title match)
• Hidehiko Hasegawa (SK Absolute) / Dong-Hyun Kim (CMA Korea)
• Ryuichi Murata (Yoshida Dojo) / Sojiro Orui (SK Absolute)
• Kazunori Yokota (Team Grabaka) / Anthony McDavitt
• Yuya Shirai (Team M.A.D.) / Kozo Urita (Seiken Kaikan)
• Keigo Takamori (Samurai Sword) / Dong-Yi Yang (CMA Korea)

Future Fights:

• Takafumi Otsuka (AACC) / OZ (Combat Sports Circle OZ)
• Minoru Tavares Tuchiya (Hard Combat) / Toshiaki Saiki (Paraestra Tokyo)
• Tarou Shimazaki (U-File Camp) / Takao Nakajima (Team Barbosa Japan)

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DEEP Welterweight champ Hasegawa takes on Dong-Hyun Kim at DEEP 31

But not in a fight for the title, DEEP recently has become famous for matching up their champions with Koreans in non-title fights. This has backfired before though, Su-Hi Ham defeated Hisae Watanabe at DEEP 28, and this maybe another one of those times. Dong-Hyun Kim is coming of a 6 fight winning streak, most recently knocking out his opponent in 11 seconds at CMA Festival 2.

Saeki was quoted saying that a future title fight between the two was dependent on the result of this fight. Being Korean in DEEP you have to work twice as hard.

DEEP 31 IMPACT takes place on August 5th in Korakuen Hall, Tokyo.

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Jean-Claude Van Damme portraying Mark Coleman in new movie?

In a movie adaptation of the documentary The Smashing Machine, which followed Mark Kerr around, Jean-Claude Van Damme is supposedly starring in the role as Mark Coleman. I'd like to know what went through their heads when they came up with that idea...

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Zuffa releases Shogun promo video, "forgets" about Rampage

Zuffa released a Mauricio "Shogun" Rua highlight video to hype the upcoming Shogun / Forrest Griffin fight at UFC 76 (interestingly though it says PRIDE FC Worldwide in the intro text, I guess this is because technically PFCWW LLC owns the right to the footage and not Zuffa).

Noticeably missing are stomps and his dismantling of Rampage. Coincidence? This is Zuffa we're talking about so probably not.

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New Takanori Gomi to HERO's talk

You might remember the rumors about PRIDE lightweight champion Takanori Gomi signing with HERO's that floated around some weeks ago.

Now the rumor is back, and with a little more information to back it up. In an interview for the upcoming beach wrestling event on the 29th. Gomi spoke about his desire to fight for HERO's within the year, he confirmed that there is an offer from FEG, and if he was satisfied with it then he wants to fight for them.

I say good for him, UFC is most likely a dead end for most of the Japanese fighters anyway. Now lets hope others will follow him instead of just sitting idle and waiting.

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