As if RIZIN Fighting Federation’s bantamweight division wasn’t stacked enough, they continue to add to it with more phenomenal talent. This time in the form of 25-year-old Pancrase title-challenger Kenta Takizawa (10-5) of Reversal Gym Tokyo Standout.
Fighting under the Pancrase banner for all but two of his professional bouts, Takizawa rebounded from a title opportunity loss a few months back when he detonated Hayato Ishii in the third round with a flying-knee for the knockout win. Prior to this, he was quickly submitted by bantamweight champion Rafael Silva in the first title shot of his young career.
In recent years he has been a main card mainstay for Pancrase and is always good for putting on exciting shows capped off with vicious knockout finishes. Some of his knockout victims include Toshinori Tsunemura, Hiroyuki Oshiro, Toshiaki Kitada, and Kosuke Terashima.
Kenta Takizawa alluded to the move to RIZIN in a social media post, and I have since gone ahead and confirmed with sources close to the situation that we can expect to see him in a RIZIN ring sooner rather than later. Perhaps as soon as RIZIN 21 next month.
Update: talks are very much underway and both sides are interested. It is almost certainly going to happen, but timeframe isn’t clear as of yet. Especially due to Kenta Takizawa being on the mend currently nursing a hand injury.