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About Shooto

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Shooto has reached its 20th anniversary and has had an amazingly marked past. Over the last ten years Shooto Japan has finally carved out a particular niche in all the lighter weight classes. Many fantastic fighters like Anderson Silva, Jutaro Nakao, Hayato “Mach” Sakurai and Tetsuji Kato have spawned from the Shooto however the rise of UFC spelled doom for this prestigious UFC category and it gradually dissolved in the sands of time. With the advent of time the particular lightweight division was Shooto’s calling card all thanks to the depth of the division and people like Caol Uno, Dokonjonosuke Mishima, Rumina Sato, Takanori Gomi and lots of others all jumped off the page and stayed on the list of Shooto’s 154 pound category. Soon enough there was an introduction of many other lightweight categories by many other companies like Dream Stage Entertainment. The K-1 backer Fighting and Entertainment Group then launched its own version and named it “Hero’s”. Soon enough all those who were responsible for the creation of the Shooto image were all gone.

Even amidst such promotions and glitz the Shooto Japan still remained the actual hub of the categories like flyweight, bantamweight and featherweight divisions and the true fans as well as all the experts always appreciated this. Shooto controlled the sub-lightweight world and this control was slowly getting diminished. This year alone some featherweight tournaments are taking place as made by Dream and Sengoku. Both had several veteran and highly experienced Shooto fighters. The latter that is Sengoku again placed major emphasis on the bantamweight category. Currently Zuffa’s World Extreme Cagefighting has become very popular with the fans and most 135 and 145 pound fighters are present there along with several Shooto veterans. There is also a forthcoming addition to the WEC’s flyweight division that might just include Shooto world champ Shinichi “BJ” Kojima.

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