With Ham Seo Hee vacating the DEEP JEWELS Featherweight Championship for the UFC, DEEP JEWELS announced that a tournament will begin on the Feb. 21 Shinjuku FACE show. There are eight fighters in this tournament and there will be four first round matches on this show. Then they will have the semi finals and then the finals on upcoming shows. The eight fighters participating are as follows: VV Mei, Emi Tomimatsu, Tomo Maesawa, Ayaka Miura, SARAMI, Mina Kurobe, Yukiko Seki and Masako Yoshida. The most notable thing is who isn't in this tournament and the biggest name missing is Ayaka Hamasaki. I'm not surprised as she wants to fight in Invicta and I'm pretty sure she will be on an upcoming show. The other MIA fighters are Saori Ishioka and Naho "Sugi Rock" Sugiyama. Sugi Rock has had knee problems for a while now and it doesn't seem to be improving. Ishioka had an eye problem and may not be ready. Considering who is left, the tournament would be better with four fighters. But it would only take up two shows and with DEEP JEWELS' low talent level, they need to fill as much time as they can. The favourite should be VV Mei. But remember she just lost to Ayaka so this is sloppy seconds. Tomimatsu has never fought at 48kg. Should her first fight at that weight be in a tournament? Of course not but that shows how low the talent level is. And she's not that good. Tomo Maesawa is 4-4 and has bounced between 52 and 48kg. Again, not a great fighter. This is also Ayaka Miura's first fight at 48kg. Her record is 1-1 and her last fight was a loss to Emi Fujino. SARAMI has a 4-5 record. She won her last fight over Korean idol fighter Ga Yeon Song. But that doesn't mean she can beat any of these fighters. In fact, Mina Kurobe beat her in Nov. She's 4-0 but she's also 37 years old. And though normally I wouldn't consider veteran midcard fighters like Seki or Yoshida for this tournament, the talent level is so low they could win and move on to the semis. It depends on the matchups and DEEP JEWELS hasn't said how and when those will be determined. They have announced that MIYOKO vs Miki Araki will be a reserve match. MIYOKO is a veteran low level fighter. her record is 5-8. Miki appears to be a newcomer. she trains at Reversal Tachikawa ALPHA. DEEP JEWELS hasn't named a main event yet so stay tuned for more details as they become available.
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