K-1 World Grand Prix in Yokohama Fights Announced; Badr Hari, Semmy Schilt and Alistair Overeem on Deck

The first official K-1 card of the year is beginning to finally take shape as K-1 producer Tanigawa took to the podium and ran down a blistering opening card for the K-1 Grand Prix season. This simply clears up and confirms a lot of the rumors that have been floating around. As we already know, Peter Aerts vs. Kyotaro for the Heavyweight title has been announced, and as it turns out, that will not be the only title defended at this show. K-1 has been making an effort to focus more on titles as opposed to just the tournament formats.

So of course, what comes to mind is the Super Heavyweight Title that Semmy Schilt holds. Schilt will actually defend that very title against fellow Golden Glory fighter Errol Zimmerman. We've heard Bas Boon say in the past that his fighters are always prepared for a fight, even if it is against each other and he was not lying in the least bit. The rumored bout of Jerome Le Banner vs. Ruslan Karaev was confirmed, billed as "old school vs. new school" and should be a great fight. Alistair Overeem, the man whose schedule would make Mirko Cro Cop blush will still fight on this card against the Bosnian Dzevad Poturak. Tanigawa mentioned when questioned as to the involvement of Overeem in the GP this year that he knows Alistair wants to focus on MMA and fight Fedor Emelianenko, that they tried to put that very fight together for DREAM but Fedor's contract with M-1 and Strikeforce got in the way. He also does not rule out Alistair Overeem fighting in the Grand Prix later this year.

Alexey Ignashov will officially make his return to K-1, and just like what was rumored, this will not be an easy fight for Ignashov, as he faces off against the K-1 World Grand Prix finalist from the past two years, Badr Hari. According to Tany, Ignashov flew out to Japan on his own dime to meet with Tanigawa and begged for him to let him back into K-1, no matter what it took. Well, what ended up happening was he got a return bout and it is against Badr Hari. He was hesitant to take such a fight, but wants so badly to be back in K-1 that he accepted.

The Eastern Europe GP in Bucharest we already know of, it will include Alexey Ignashov and Zabit Samedov as well as the winners of the Warsaw and Vilnius GPs. In June there will be a Western Europe GP (no location announced yet). There will also be an Asia and Oceania GPs. The four winners of these tournaments will qualify for the Final 16 tournament. They hope to bring in some new blood with these tournaments, much like they did with Zimmerman in '08 and Ghita in '09. They also plan to air these shows in Japan, on PPV if they have to, which means they plan to have a full crew there, which increases the chances of HDNet picking these up. Please?