Roberto Satoshi De Souza will now be attempting to defend his RIZIN FF lightweight world title for the 6th time on New Year’s Eve, when he faces Shunta Nomura at RIZIN: Shiwasu no Cho Tsuwamono Matsuri. It’s a great challenge for Satoshi too, as Nomura is actually the reigning DEEP lightweight champion and is currently riding an impressive 5-fight winning streak that includes his first two RIZIN fights. Although he’s only just left the regional MMA circuit, Nomura wasted no time in facing the best that RIZIN has to offer. His wins there have come against former title-challenger Luiz Gustavo and former Bellator champion Patricky ‘Pitbull’ Freire.
Although Satoshi has previously defeated Gustavo himself, Freire is one of just three fighters to have beaten him in the past. That was back in 2023 during the Bellator lightweight grand prix though, and quite a lot has changed since then. Satoshi has won all 5 of his fights and even finished every one of them too, taking a total of just 9 minutes and 19 seconds to beat all of them. Satoshi might be a submission specialist but he’s also become an excellent striker over the years, so Nomura definiteky has his work cut out for him if he wants to leave with the belt.
Satoshi isn’t the only one of the promotion’s champions that will be putting their belt on the line here though, and there’s actually a total of 6 titles up for grabs at the event. Razhabali Shaidulloev and Naoki Inoue are defending the featherweight and bantamweight titles against Mikuru Asakura and Danny Sabatello respectively, while Seiki Izawa will be defending her women’s super atomweight title against Rena Kubota. The other two title-fights are for vacant belts; as Hiromasa Ougikubo and Yuki Motoya are battling it out for the flyweight title and Aleksandr Soldatkin faces MMA legend Ryan Bader to become the heavyweight champion.
RIZIN FF announced the news that Roberto Satoshi de Souza would be defending his lightweight title on New Year’s Eve in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
