Rizin Fighting Federation line-up complete for debut shows

Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

On Dec. 29 and 31, Japanese upstart promotion Rizin Fighting Federation will hold their inaugural shows at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Tokyo. The new Year’s Eve line-up features the return of former Pride FC heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko in the main event.

On Tuesday, Rizin’s debut show will feature the opening round of the World Grand Prix tournament, as well as a catchweight bout between Kazushi Sakuraba and Shinya Aoki. Thursday’s show will feature the tournament final and a main event between Fedor and Jaideep Singh.

Check out the line-ups for the two-day show below:

Dec. 29 show (1:00am ET start time)

Grand Prix Round 1
Mohammad Lawal vs. Brett McDermott
Bruno Cappelozza vs. Teodoras Aukstuolis
Satoshi Ishii vs. Jiri Prochazka
Goran Reljic vs. Vadim Nemkov
Valentin Moldavsky vs. Yuta Uchida (Reserve fight)

Single Matches:
Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Shinya Aoki
A.J. Mathhews vs. Anatoly Tokov
James Thompson vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka
Hiroyuki Takaya vs. DJ Taiki
Kirill Sidelnikov vs. Carlos Toyota

Mixed Rules
Kazuyuki Miyata vs. Hinata Watanabe
Yuki Motoya vs. Felipe Efrain

K-1 Rules
Akiyo Nishiura vs. Hiroya Kawabe

Dec. 31 show (1am ET start time)

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Jaideep Singh
TBD vs. TBD [Grand Prix Tournament Final]
Kron Gracie vs Asen Yamamoto
Baruto Kaido vs. Peter Aerts
Yuichiro Nagashima vs. Andy Souwer
Bob Sapp vs. Akebono [Shoot Boxing Rules]
Gabi Garcia vs. Lei’d Tapa
Soo Chul Kim vs. Maike Linhares
Takeru vs. Yang Ming [K-1 Rules]
Brennan Ward vs. Ken Hasegawa
Muhammad Lawal vs. Teodoras Aukstuolis [GP Tournament Semi-Final]
Jiri Prochazka vs. Vadim Nemkov [GP Tournament Semi-Final]
RENA vs. Jleana Valentino

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About the author

Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.