RIZIN has an empty women’s super atomweight throne, and it plans to fill it on New Year’s Eve. Saori Oshima and Natasha Kuziutina will fight for the vacant championship on December 31 in Nagoya, MiddleEasy reported on November 3.
It’s a sensible pairing on paper, which is more than you can say for some title fights. Kuziutina, the Olympic judoka, sits at No. 3 in the November edition of the Combat Press women’s atomweight rankings (the under-50.1-kilogram tier). Oshima is two spots behind her at No. 5. Nobody is jumping the line here. Two of the five best fighters in the division are meeting for a belt, and the promotion is staging it on the biggest night on its calendar.
The names above and around them in that top 10 matter for what comes after Nagoya. Seika Izawa holds the No. 1 spot, followed by Elisandra Ferreira at No. 2. Si Woo Park is wedged between Kuziutina and Oshima at No. 4, with Moeri Suda at No. 6, Ayaka Hamasaki at No. 7 and Rena Kubota at No. 8. Andressa Romero and Giuliany Perea round out the list at Nos. 9 and 10.
Combat Press noted that none of its top-10 atomweights competed in October, so the division has been quiet. That changes in November, when Suda takes on So Yul Kim. If Suda wins, she becomes an obvious name for whoever walks out of Nagoya with the strap, and that’s before you get to Izawa, who is ranked above both of the women fighting for the title.
The sources don’t spell out how the belt became vacant, so I won’t guess. What’s confirmed is the matchup, the date and the city.
The Take
I’m taking Kuziutina. The Olympic judo pedigree is the deciding factor for me, because at this weight the fights get decided in the clinch and along the fence far more often than casual viewers realize, and a judoka who can take an opponent off her feet from grips changes how every exchange ends. Oshima has to make the fight happen at a distance and keep it there for the full distance, which is a hard job against someone who wants to grab. Ranking order also favors Kuziutina, though No. 3 against No. 5 is close enough that it shouldn’t settle anyone’s bet on its own.
One request for the judges in Nagoya: if this goes the distance and one woman spends a round winning grips and controlling position, score it like the grappling counts. Because it does. The belt gets handed out December 31.
