Super Rizin & Rizin 38 Press Conference Highlights -

On Saturday, Sakakibara held a press conference at the new Rizin office to discuss his plans for Super Rizin and Rizin 38. He opened by mentioning that he had seen some concern when they announced they were closing the Rizin shop, but that was only because they moved the entire office. He then went into some details for Super Rizin and Rizin 38, both of which will take place on September 25th at the Saitama Super Arena. Here is our summary:

Event Details

They are still working out the details but Super Rizin will likely have 5 fights and Rizin 38 will have 8 or 9. Obviously, Mayweather and Mikuru will be on the Super Rizin portion, with Super Rizin expected to start around noon JST. Mayweather and Mikuru are expected to fight at around 3:00 PM JST, or 2:00 AM EST. Sakakibara mentioned having some sort of half-time show, to keep the Japanese crowd entertained since Rizin 38 is expected to start at around 5:00 PM JST.

When describing Super Rizin, Sakakibara wasn’t too specific but he did say that it will have non-MMA matches, he was not clear if that meant no MMA matches at all or just a variety of rulesets. For Rizin 38, he announced that Horiguchi will be returning. He noted that while Japanese fans wanted to see Horiguchi fought Ougikubo, that he wasn’t interested in that fight since Ougikubo is coming off of an injury. Instead, Horiguchi will face a “Rizin-esque” fighter that he’s never faced before. Ougikubo will face off against Kim Soo Chul, who last fought for Rizin in 2015. Aside from these two fights, the semi-finals for the Super Atomweight Grand Prix will also take place. He also added that he was impressed with Anastasiya Svetkivska and that they are trying to get her back to Japan, hopefully for Rizin 38. He also mentioned that an offer was made to Gustavo.

Finally, it was announced that Rizin will be selling NFT tickets for this event for the first time.

PPV

According to Sakakibara, the event will be available on roughly 4 streaming platforms, with Abema being the main focus. In Japan, Super Rizin and Rizin 38 will be sold as part of a package, but they are thinking of creating an option for international audiences to only purchase the Super Rizin portion.

Super Rizin / Rizin 38 Ticket Prices

The ticket prices for the event were announced and as expected they are more expensive than a normal Rizin event. Perhaps recognizing that they are expensive, Sakakibara added that they are cheaper than those for the Tenshin vs. Takeru event that happened earlier this year.