According to Nightmare of Battle, Olympic Gold Medalist Satoshi Ishii has provided more details to DEEP Featherweight champion, Koichiro Matsumoto about his next career move:
Koichiro Matsumoto blogged about meeting Satoshi Ishii yesterday. They seem to get along very well.
Anyway, he wrote that it looks like Ishii’s next fight will be on a Strikeforce event in February. Strikeforce have a big event on the 12th and a Challengers event on the 18th so I’m guessing it’s the Challengers event. Matsumoto also wrote that it seems like the fight will be fought at 93kg and under (Light Heavyweight).
First things first. Satoshi Ishii is very open about his every desire to do things with his career, and while that’s usually a good thing, the guy changes his mind as much that unpredictable ex-girlfriend of yours. It’s really hard to judge which statement is reliable or not, but that being said, if this pushes through, Ishii would still be a great pick up for Strikeforce.
Why? Because even if he’s looked at as a “disappointment” by some people, Ishii is just 24-years-old, and still has a lot of time to develop and complement his world class Judo with his overall MMA game. He would also have a better chance if he does drop to light heavyweight where the talent isn’t exactly that deep, and where he won’t be severely undersized anymore.
More importantly though, Strikeforce has just recently inked a PPV deal with SkyPerfect to broadcast their Heavyweight Grand Prix events in Japan. This is where Ishii could become a huge factor for the promotion. He drew the most eyeballs on the Dynamite!! 2010 show, and when you add him with well loved guys like Alistair Overeem or Fedor Emelianenko, they would have a much better chance of having a successful venture into the Japanese PPV market.
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