Ishioka, HIROKO win at May 23 JEWELS show

Saori Ishioka mounts Mai Ichii

JEWELS had their latest show today at Shin-kiba 1st Ring. It was mostly leading up to the 115lb tournament in July. Except for one fight, things went pretty much as expected. The main event had Saori Ishioka returning from an ankle injury to face Mai Ichii. Ishioka came to the ring in black and wearing sunglasses. She wants to be known as Black Charisma. I dunno about this. Has she been watching wrestling matches with Yoshiko Tamura? This seems like gimmick infringement. But she's still a pretty good fighter and had no problem with Ichii. Ichii tried to keep her away with strikes but that didn't work and Ishioka took her down after a knee to the body. Ichii survived round one but Ishioka wasted no time in round two and after another knee to the body, Ishioka passed guard and won with an armbar at 2:41. The semi-main had HIROKO facing pro wrestler Atsuko Emoto. The match was never in doubt as HIROKO battered Emoto with knees and then took her to the ground and pounded her there. HIROKO had all the offence and won easily by unanimous decision. Afterwards, Emoto gave a brief retirement address. It wasn't clear before that she was retiring from MMA too. She actually had a very emotional retirement ceremony at Friday's Revolution Amandora show and Bullfight Sora's retirement will be on the May 30 WAVE show.

Celine punches Mika Nagano in the face

Prior to the semi-main, some special guests appeared to greet the fans. The teen Yuasa Utako will appear at the World Jiu Jitsu Championships in Los Angeles June 3-6. Hiroko Kitamura has a fight in Seattle June 5. Megumi Fujii will appear on the June 10 Bellator show in Florida. Hisae Watanabe joked about her possible return and teased Sumie Yamada about beating her eight years ago. So now we have Nika Nagano vs Celine. The fact is that Celine looked really bad in previous fights. She has physical skills but seemed to be beating herself. A couple of weeks ago, her boss Hellboy Hansen gave her a pep talk. It's certainly understandable that fans might expect the old Celine. Dan Herbertson of MMA Fighting said that on Twitter. But Celine came out much better in this fight. Nagano wasn't able to do anything with her and her takedown attempts were unsuccessful. Nagano did manage a couple of takedowns but Celine was much more active in this fight than in the past. She continued in round two with dominant mounts and won by unianimous decision. So good for her and I hope she can keep it up. Nagano was bawling before the decision. Shame is a big thing in Japan. Sometimes a loss can be a good thing but you never know.

Miyo Yoshida

The rest of the show had two Shoot Boxing matches I don't care about. I don't think JEWELS is getting a fair deal. You don't see any JEWELS matches on SB shows. Miyo Yoshida battered Yuko Kagoshima with punches until the ref stopped the match at 3:30 of round one. Kagoshima tried to push back but Yoshida landed plenty of punches. In the opener, Amiba beat HARUMI by armbar at 3:45 of round one. Amiba took her down and HARUMI reversed her position. But then Amiba grabbed her arm from below, completed the sweep and mounted her for the win. I think HARUMI is 0-14 but who's counting. Afterwards, JEWELS matchmaker Shigeru Saeki said he hasn't finalized the lineup for July's tournament. He did say that one fighter was coming from the US. I think that Mika Nagano's slot in the tournament is not a sure thing. He probably needs to talk to her. Maybe he should replace her with Celine. She should be rewarded for winning.