Mitsuhisa Sunabe defeated the previously unbeaten
Isao Hirose by unanimous decision to remain the flyweight King of Pancrase at Pancrase “Changing Tour 6” on Sunday at the Differ Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
The 30-year-old Sunabe has pieced together a three-fight winning streak since his 2007 knockout loss to Cage Force veteran
Daichi Fujiwara. He sent Hirose, 28, back to the drawing board with his first defeat as a professional.
In the “Changing Tour 6” main event,
Yuki Kondo and
Yuji Hisamatsu fought to a stalemate after three rounds in what was Kondo’s 80th professional mixed martial arts match. The 34-year-old Kondo -- a Pride Fighting Championships and UFC veteran -- has not won back-to-back fights in nearly two years.
Former International Fight League middleweight champion
Matt Horwich edged
Jason Lambert by split decision in the Aggression MMA 1 “First Blood” headliner on Saturday at the Edmonton Events Expo in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
The bout served as a rematch of a 2004 World Extreme Cagefighting showdown in which Horwich was struck into submission.
Anchored at Team Quest, the mercurial Horwich snapped a three-fight losing streak with the victory, as he won for the first time since he defeated
Joey Guel at the IFL’s swan song in 2006. Lambert, meanwhile, has fallen on the hardest of times. A loser in five straight fights, his UFC 68 knockout of Renato “Babalu” Sobral now seems a distant memory.
Other winners at the Aggression MMA premiere included Sengoku featherweight grand prix quarter-finalist
Nick Denis, unbeaten Bellator Fighting Championships veteran
Nick Ring and Team Quest’s Cyrille “The Snake” Diabate. Glam rocker turned mixed martial artist
Robin Black submitted to a first-round guillotine choke from
Cory Lautischer.
Katsuhiko Nagata, a 2000 Olympic silver medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling, posted a unanimous decision win against
Daisuke Hoshino in the Cage Force 13 main event on Saturday at the Differ Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
The victory halted a five-fight winless streak for Nagata, a 35-year-old Dream and K-1 Hero’s veteran. He entered the match reeling, having dropped consecutive first-round finishes to
Kuniyoshi Hironaka and
Vitor Ribeiro.
“The Ultimate Fighter” Season 8 light heavyweight finalist
Vinny Magalhaes submitted Chris Davis with an opening-round triangle choke in the featured bout at Carolina Fight Promotions “Carolina Crown 2” on Saturday at the RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C.
Davis replaced journeyman
Jason Guida, who withdrew from the matchup with a back injury. He scored with an early takedown but found himself trapped inside Magalhaes’ death trap of a guard. The fight ended soon after.
A former Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion, Magalhaes halted a three-fight losing skid, which included his technical knockout loss to the unbeaten
Ryan Bader at “The Ultimate Fighter 8” Live Finale and a unanimous decision defeat to
Eliot Marshall at UFC 97.
EliteXC, Ring of Combat and Ultimate Warrior Challenge veteran James “Binky” Jones defeated Jason McLean by unanimous decision in the Shogun Fights 1 headliner on Saturday at the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore. The event was the first sanctioned MMA event in the state of Maryland.
The win brought an end to a two-bout losing streak for Jones, a
Renzo Gracie protégé who has struggled to keep his head above water after losing four of his first five fights as a professional. A Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt and one-time Ring of Combat lightweight tournament champion, he has delivered five of his eight wins by submission.