RIZIN made it official on Tuesday. Mikuru Asakura will fight Luiz Gustavo in a lightweight rematch on New Year’s Eve at Vantelin Dome Nagoya, with promoter Nobuyuki Sakakibara aiming for a 40,000-strong crowd at the baseball stadium. The promotion’s PR account announced the bout as a three-round fight at 71.0 kg for Super RIZIN 6, an event RIZIN has subtitled as a year-end festival of upsets in Owari Nagoya. MiddleEasy reported that Sakakibara had already called an Asakura appearance likely and laid out ambitions for RIZIN abroad. Then came the poster, the matchup and the confirmation.
The show is set for Thursday, December 31. Doors are scheduled to open at 11:00 with the first bout at 13:00, and the fan club ticket presale opens at noon on November 4. Kai Asakura, Mikuru’s younger brother, reposted the poster with a short note on X saying New Year’s Eve is going to be hot.
The rematch
The first Asakura vs. Gustavo fight happened roughly seven and a half years ago, a gap the Japanese MMA commentator Jyobin pointed out on X. He noted that Gustavo came into that one in poor shape after a hard weight cut, and that this time the Brazilian gets to fight at lightweight, which makes the physical gap a real worry for Asakura. Jyobin also argued that Asakura’s grappling has improved a lot since then, conceded that Gustavo probably holds the edge on the feet, and said he would have liked to see the bout carry a title.
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Gustavo has apparently been saying he was ahead on the cards the first time around. When a reporter asked Asakura about that, he waved it off, saying the fight was something like seven years ago, that he doesn’t remember it, and that there’s no point rehashing the past when they’ll settle it in two months anyway. A fan on X who shared the clip praised how smoothly he turned the question aside.
Elsewhere on the card
Tatsuki Shinotsuka meets Hinotori in a fight that will be Hinotori’s sixth of 2026, a schedule that would wear down most rosters. Jyobin framed it as a classic split. He favors Shinotsuka standing and Hinotori on the mat, doubts Shinotsuka can stop Hinotori’s takedowns all night, and expects a finish one way or the other.
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Seika Izawa is also confirmed for the show and has invited anyone who wants the fight to step forward. NOEL answered on X, asking whether it really could be anybody and pitching herself as the perfect opponent for a card built around upsets. Separately, a press session produced a tense exchange between Izawa and Saori Oshima about fighting while raising a child, with Oshima suggesting she wasn’t sure about competing during those early months and Izawa saying she felt no particular need to respect Oshima as a mother and was simply living her own life. Veteran Satoru Kitaoka shared the clip and said he wanted to hear his daughter’s view.
My take: Asakura’s answer was the right one. A fight from seven and a half years ago, with one man compromised by the scale, tells you very little about what happens now that Gustavo walks in at full strength and Asakura brings a grappling game that barely existed back then. If the improved wrestling shows up, it’ll be in the first exchange against the fence. Fan club tickets go on sale November 4 at noon, and RIZIN needs a lot of them sold to fill a dome.
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