Pancrase Impressive Tour 1 Results: Sato New KOP, Kondo Loses, Tanaka Victorious

The results from Pancrase's Impressive Tour 1 event are in from Tokyo and there is a new welterweight King of Pancrase. Takenori Sato was able to apply a kimura to Kengo Ura and secure the win near the end of the first round. I'm waiting on video of the bout, but the fact that Pancrase's blog indicates that the referee actually stopped the bout leads me to believe that Ura may have come away a little worse for the wear. I believe that makes Sato the sixth welterweight King of Pancrase, and while the division may not turn many heads, it remains a good win for the Laughter7 fighter.

Eiji Ishikawa did something intelligent in the co-main event of the evening: he denied Masahiro Toryu the chance to blast him in a striking exchange and was able to win by virtue of his wrestling acumen.

Let me say that I ended up being quite wrong about Yuki Kondo at welterweight. Or well, I was correct - in my observation that his opponent, Hiroki Nagaoka was a sub-.500 fighter. I was just wrong about Kondo being able to handle him and moving on to other things within the division. Kondo dropped a unanimous decision to Nagaoka, and, while he survived the bout, Dan Herbertson snapped this photo showing Kondo being carted off to the hospital.

Also on the card, Akihito Tanaka and Tomonari Kanomata were able to secure two-round decision victories over their opponents. I anticipated wins for both men and hope that in the case of Kanomata, we'll see him in there against a higher level of competition next time. As for Tanaka, I hope we'll have the chance to see him progress given the unfortunate beginnings of his career.

Seiya Kawahara returned from injury to score a second round knockout over Takumi Murata. Kawahara will need to continue his climb back up the ladder so to speak, but in a time where a lot of people aren't too confident in the Japanese prospects, we have to hope he can find success in his return.

I hope Keiichiro Yamamiya and Kosei Kubota can leave this as a trilogy. Their first two fights happening in 1997 and 2000 - both decision wins for Yamamiya - the two fought to a draw on Sunday.

Full results after the jump.

Takenori Sato SUB-1 Kengo Ura
Akihito Tanaka UD Yuhei Fukuda
Hiroki Nagaoka UD Yuki Kondo
Eiji Ishakawa MD Masahiro Toryu
Seiya Kawahara TKO-2 Takumi Murata
Tomonari Kanomata UD Tomoyuki Miyaji
Masahiro Oishi DRAW Masaya Takita
Tashiro Nishiuchi MD Shoko Sato
Keiichiro Yamamiya DRAW Kosei Kubota
Yoshihiro Matsunaga UD Takuya Eizumi
Isao Hirose SUB-2 Hayato Sato
Kazuki Tokudome TKO-1 Junichi Ota
Tatsuhiko Nishizaka TKO-1 Tamotsu Kitada
Katsunori Takahashi SUB-2 Daisuke Shimoyama
Ryota Masuda TKO-2 Norifumi Aihara
Jonathan Shores UD Yoji Saito
Takashi Ito DRAW Akihiro Sakurai
Hayato Shimizu SUB-2 Shohei Kondo
Daisuke Tsujita SUB-1 Yasuto Taito