In November of 2006, Shooto held their final G-Shooto event, G-Shooto Special 3. At the time, they announced that they were no longer going to put on women’s only tournaments and that they were going to proceed with their Battle Mix series, a series that consisted of events featuring both women and men. Now, roughly 17 years later, Shooto has announced another women’s only series called “Colors.”
Colors?
One of Shooto’s goals for Colors is to develop a strong new generation of fighters. This can be seen in the name, as Shooto and Megumi Fujii explained, the canvas in the cage is still white and it is their hope that through the fighter’s personalities and strengths, the cage will be dyed many colors. In other words, Shooto is providing a blank canvas for these young fighters to express themselves and develop into world-class talent.
Megumi Fujii to serve as CSO
It was also announced that women’s MMA legend and G-Shooto veteran Megumi Fujii will be serving as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) for Colors. When asked what this entails, Megumi explained to us that she will primarily be helping with the matchmaking and other aspects of the management. This is a role that she should be familiar with, since she helped with the matchmaking in VTJ after she retired. While VTJ was only around for a couple years before going on hiatus, it did produce Kanna Asakura and hosted some excellent women’s bouts.
Takano to take on Ayaka Watanabe in inaugural event
It was also announced that Satomi Takano, Sarami, will be taking on Ayaka Watanabe, the AACC up-and-comer, in her first title defense since winning it in November of 2021. Considering the theme of Colors, Takano seems like a perfect choice, having once told us that she sees herself as an artist, who expresses herself through martial arts. Training under the tutelage of Kitaoka and Ryo Kawamura, the 32 year old 30 fight veteran has been flawless in Shooto, winning all of her fights in the promotion to date. She is also coming off of a gritty win over Laura Fontoura in Rizin, where Takano overcame a bad cut to earn the victory.
Across from Takano will be Ayaka Watanabe, a 25 year old fighter from AACC who made her pro-debut in 2020 and has amassed a somewhat deceptive record of 2-1. It is deceptive in that the one loss comes from a competitive bout with Emi Fujino and her most recent win was a shocking knockout victory over Mina Kurobe. Not much is currently known about the young fighter, but she does come from a judo background and is training with one of the best women’s teams in Japan.
The future
We had the chance to ask Megumi a little bit about the promotion and she informed us that this isn’t a one off tournament. The goal is to hold a couple events a year and to expand outside of the Kanto region and help promote the development of female fighters all throughout Japan. She also pointed out that women will also still appear on regular Shooto shows.
In the past, G-Shooto helped build fighters like Megumi, Miku Matsumoto, Megumi Yabushita, Hitomi Akano, and Emi Tomimatsu, so we can only hope that Colors does the same. As the header picture highlights, when Colors was announced, a lot of the women currently under contract with Shooto got in the cage, revealing how much their divisions have grown, especially after last year’s Infinity League, where Chihiro Sawada emerged as a potential star. In fact, when speaking to Chihiro before she went to the U.S. to train, she also indicated that she will likely be defending her title in Shooto near the end of the year, meaning she might also be stepping inside the Colors cage.
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