Huang and Watanabe win big at Colors inaugural event -

This past Sunday, Colors held their inaugural event at the New Pier Hall in Tokyo, Japan, marking Shooto’s first women’s only event in 17 years. While the purpose of Colors is to help develop a new generation of fighters, it was hard to miss the veterans in attendance, like Megumi Fujii, who serves as their CSO, V.V. Mei, who was doing the ring announcing, and Mina Kurobe, who was doing commentary. Also on commentary was the new Atomweight champion Chihiro Sawada, who’s teammate Ayaka Watanabe TKO’d Satomi Takano in the main event en route to winning the title. In fact, you might say that AACC had a very good night, with three of their fighters emerging victorious, while Yasuka Tamada fought Hisae Watanabe to a draw. Elsewhere on the card, Miku Nakamura also picked up a big win, potentially setting up a match with Huang to decide the number one contender.

It was also announced that Emi Fujino, who was in attendance, will be taking part in this year’s Infinity League Tournament. This year’s tournament is at Strawweight and like last year’s tournament, the winner will be crowned Shooto’s first female Strawweight Champion. It is worth mentioning that the in the Infinity League, all the fighters will face each other, with points being awarded to them depending on the manner of their victories. (i.e. a first round finish is worth more than a decision victory.)

Watanabe TKO’s Takano en route to championship

In the main event, Satomi Takano returned to Shooto after a two-fight stint in RIzin in order to defend her Super Atomweight title against AACC’s Ayaka Watanabe. With 30 fights under her belt and a career going back to 2012, Takano had a clear edge when it comes to experience and at only 32 years old, she is still improving between fights. However, going into Sunday, Watanabe studied tape on Takano with her coaches and studied her tendencies, which allowed her to form a game plan, telling the media that she was going to KO Takano early on.

Unfortunately for Takano, Watanabe’s prediction turned out to be correct, as she stunned Takano with a high kick in the 2nd round, before landing another high kick that sent Takano stumbling to the canvas where Watanabe forced the ref to stop it after landing some ground and pound. In fact, even if the ref had not stopped it, Takano’s corner had thrown the towel in. Afterwards, the new champion was presented with the belt and the championship Tiara, which she said made her feel like Cinderella.

Despite this being only her second bout at Super Atomweight and her fourth fight overall, Watanabe has hit the ground running since making her pro-debut in 2020, giving Emi Fujino a run for her money as a last minute replacement, knocking former champion Mina Kurobe out this January with a well-timed uppercut, and now having TKO’d Satomi Takano. With Oshima and Motono in her corner, it isn’t too surprising to learn that Watanabe comes from a Judo background, but it is interesting to see that she has developed into more of a striker. At just 25 years old, it will be interesting to see what is next for the champion, especially now that Shooto also has a women’s Atomweight and Strawweight division.

Huang comes from behind to tap Koga

Roughly 6 months ago, Zenny Huang moved to Japan in order to train at AACC and to learn Japanese. At the time, she was riding a 5 fight losing streak after earning a title shot against Angela Lee in One Championship. However, this may have been due to One’s unique rules that changed after she joined, where Atomweight effectively became Strawweight. Now that she’s returned to her natural weight class, she’s rattled off two exciting submissions in a row, first in Pancrase and now in Colors. Her opponent, Aira Koga, is a Rizin veteran who comes from a kenpo background and trains under Megumi Fujii at Burst.

Despite coming from a striking background, Koga’s aggressive wrestling game was on full display throughout the bout, as she repeatedly was able to get the fight to the mat. In response to this, Zenny tried to set up submissions from her back, including a couple gogoplata attempts, but she wasn’t able to get her shin under Koga’s chin. Going into the third, Koga was likely winning on the judges’ scorecards, so Zenny tried to get the finish, pulling guard and going for an arm-in guillotine, but Koga was able to escape. However, Zenny then set up an omoplata near the cage that she then used to set up a choke, which got a big reaction from the crowd as she forced Koga to tap. Afterwards, Zenny addressed the crowd in Japanese, showing off what’s she’s learned at language school.

Afterwards, Zenny told us that going into the match, she’d thought that Koga, who is really good at striking, would try to keep the fight on the feet but that her takedowns and ground control were really good. However, she also added that she also has confidence on the ground, which is why she didn’t immediately try to stand up after getting taken down, because she wanted to go for submissions. She also added that after setting up the omoplata near the end, they were kind of stuck until Koga started to backup and that is when she noticed the space under Koga’s chin and decided to go for the choke. She then told us that she learned a lot from the fight and that she’s really excited to fight in Japan since there are so many good fighters at her weight and that her goal is to become a champion.

An opportunity to become champion may come pretty soon since she and Miku Nakamura both won big fights at Atomweight, potentially setting up a match between the two in the future to set up the next challenger for Chihiro Sawada.

Nakamura Out Strikes Kawanishi

In the first 3 round fight of the night, Shooto workhorse Miku Nakamura (she fought 4 times for Shooto in 2022, 4 times in 2021, and 4 times in 2020) returned to action for the first time in 2023 after TKO’ing Hisae Watanabe in November of last year. The Hokkaido native, who is teammates with Salt, used her stamina and striking to wear down her opponent, Kawanishi.

Early on in the bout, Kawanishi tagged Nakamura with some strikes, causing some notable damage around her right eye, but Miku never took her foot off the pedal and eventually started to pull ahead. Throughout the bout, Kawanishi also attempted to use her grappling skills to get the match to the ground, but Miku proved able to either defend these or get back to her feet.

With this victory, Miku, who was runner-up in last year’s Infinity League that decided who would be crowned the Atomweight champion, sets herself up for a potential title match or possibly a match with Huang to decide who the number-one contender is. Either way, she’s been a consistently active fighter, so we should expect to see her back in the cage soon.