Tanigawa Rumor Mill: Sengoku "Co-Promotes" With K-1 on NYE

We all knew it was coming, Sengoku was set up to fail and had no choice to but hit eject. K-1's Tanigawa went in front of the press today and announced that on New Year's Eve K-1 will promote a giant, 19-bout card featuring stars like Shinya Aoki, Kazushi Sakuraba, Kiyoshi Tamura and so forth. We already know that the main event of this card is slated to be a 5-round war between Andy Souwer and the retiring Masato, and the assumption is now the supporting fight will be the debut of Japanese Olympic Gold Medalist Judoka Satoshi Ishii against 1992 Gold Medalist Judoka Hidehiko Yoshida.

Zach Arnold points out that this isn't the first time that FEG's Ishii has worked with outside promotions and basically killed their credibility, salvaging the remains.

We know Kazuyoshi Ishii loves interpromotional feuds and likes to push rivalries amongst factions. It’s his playbook, practically speaking. With Sengoku, he has a powerless ‘ally’ he can control and essentially tinker with as far as matchmaking goes. Sengoku is losing money promoting their own shows and as long as it’s not K-1 money, they could care less because ultimately Ishii controls the pipeline for Japanese TV in the fight business over there and you only get on if you work with him.

We’ve had various factions feud or co-promote with K-1 over the years (PRIDE, Yarennoka, now Sengoku) and in the end K-1 managed to control the outcome they wanted. The big question is whether or not Kazuyoshi Ishii gives Satoshi Ishii a big push. It’s a touchy situation if K-1 can’t have its tentacles into Ishii contractually-speaking in the long-run. On the flip side, K-1 has to be pretty confident that even if they do push Ishii on their TV platform that Sengoku will continue to lose money on their shows, so why should they care? Eventually K-1 will grab any of the Sengoku fighters they want.

While this might sound hasty, this is the end for Sengoku. I think Arnold is on the money here, K-1 will try to work "DREAM vs. Sengoku" just like they've been working K-1 vs. DREAM and at least this time around it won't seem completely internalized, using the same talent they have under contract. In the end after possibly running some sort of GP or champion vs. champion bouts, Sengoku will be put out to pasture and anybody looking to stay in the fight game will give in to FEG, just like everybody in the past has had to.