Rin Nakai brings out the big guns in VALKYRIE

Rin Nakai

Today's VALKYRIE show at Differ Ariake only had three MMA matches. The rest of the show consisted of two one day grappling tournaments. But two of those MMA matches were the semi finals for the VALKYRIE Open Weight Championship tournament. The main event had undefeated Rin Nakai facing veteran Super Benkei. Super Benkei is much bigger than Rin. When I was talking to Roxanne Modafferi a few months ago about Rin, she said "Oh, she's so short". She's only 5'2". But I'm sure you can tell just by looking at her, she has tremendous power. And she's a great athlete. She was a competitive gymnast as a child. So her win in June over the legendary Megumi Yabushita put her on the map as a fighter worth watching. Super Benkei tries to come out aggressively with strikes. But when Rin comes back with a right hook, Super Benkei tries to take her down. Rin stuffs the takedown and then takes Benkei down. She's looking for an armlock but then passes guard. She mounts Benkei and pounds her and then goes for the armbar and it's over ar 2:42 of round one. Of course Rin is known in Japan as The Beautiful Backflip Woman. So she does her trademark gymnasatics run across the cage. With that physique, maybe they should start calling her The Gunslinger. In the other semi final, Mizuho Sato faced Michiki Takeda. Michiko is much bigger than Mizuho but couldn't do anything with.her. Mizuho knew she would have trouble taking her down so she stuck to punches and knees. And that's what got Mizuho Sato the unanimous decision victory. Rin Nakai will face Mizuho Sato in November for the VALKYRIE Open Weight Championship. Rin won over Mizuho in February. The other MMA match had Iris over HARI in 49 seconds of round one with an armbar. Katsura Kodera won the 60kg grappling tournament and Betiko won the 52.2kg grappling match. Rin Nakai said afterwards that she was very happy with the win but believes that she needs to win this championship to participate in Strikeforce. Paging Scott Coker.