Shooto To Run Earthquake Charity Event With Big Card April 29th

Nightmare of Battle is reporting that Shooto will be running a show on April 29th called "Shooto Tradition 2011 -Tohoku Earthquake Charity Event".  It will take place at the Tokyo Dome City Hall and the card is already stacked, with two title fights and a host of other Shooto mainstays already committed to fighting.  Here's the card so far:

Shooto World Featherweight Title Fight
Shuichiro Katsumura vs. Koetsu Okazaki

Shooto World Flyweight Title Fight
Rambaa Somdet M16 vs. Junji Sarumaru

Shooto Single Fights
LW: Taiki Tsuchiya vs. Lion Takeshi
WW: Takashi Nakakura vs. Kuniyoshi Hironaka
BW: Yuki Shojo vs. Shinpei Tahara

Participant
Rumina Sato

Katsumura is the man that took the Featherweight title (132 lb) from Masakatsu Ueda with a variation of a brabo choke that he called the Ninja Choke just under a year ago.  In his only fight since, he was upset by American Darren Uyenoyama in a non-title fight.  Darren was expected to get an immediate rematch for the title, but this seems to have fallen apart.  According to his twitter, he was told he'd get a title shot, then it was changed to a fight with Ueda, then...nothing.  In the meantime, Uyenoyama has committed to trying out for TUF 14 and the title shot has been given to Okazaki, the current Shooto Pacific Rim Featherweight Champion (132 lb). 

In the other title fight, Rambaa "M-16" Somdet will defend his flyweight (114 lb) title against Junji "Sarumaru" Ito.  Somdet is riding a 6 fight winning streak into the fight, including one defense of his title (a TKO win over Hiroyuki Abe) after picking up the belt from Nobaru Tahara in November 2009 at Shooto Revolutionary Exchanges 3.  Sarumaru is on a 5 fight winning streak himself entering this fight. 

In the biggest non-tile fight, Bloody Elbow's # 2 ranked featherweight prospect Taiki Tsuchiya will enter the biggest fight of his young career against "Lion" Takeshi Inoue.  Lion is a 2-time former Shooto World Lightweight Champion (143 lb), who has dropped two fights in a row for the first time in his career coming into this fight.  He lost a close split-decision (and his title) to Hatsu Hioki at The Way of Shooto 3 last May, and was bested by Kazuyuki Miyata at Dream 16 in September.  These two fighters have trained together in the past, which should make for a very interesting battle.