NEWS: Tournament participants announced! Plus MAX Dojo News!

The sixteen fighters who will have a shot to compete have been announced and it includes quite a few surprises:

Five MAX Dojo students – Umetaro Sakamoto, Hiro Minamoto, KOSUKE, Balloon Yamazaki, and Falcon Hamada – will all compete in the tournament.

The Demon Brigade will be represented by both GRIM and Tokyo Zombie.

Several former Lion’s Road Pro-Wrestling World’s Heavyweight Champions – David Troy, AJ Knight, James Edwards, and Alexander Irvine – will compete, adding instant prestige to the title.

As a reward for winning the Japan Chessboxing League’s Tactical Bowl, “The Mighty Python” and shoot-style aficionado Sen Oka will compete.

Newcomer Kenzo Onishi was selected, apparently via coinflip over Travis Gray, to debut. Will this coinflip have championship ramifications?

Finally, we’ve got several additional veterans of Shining Road Pro-Wrestling in “Mr. Meiji” Masayoshi Arimoto, “The Fighting Emperor” Toru Ishii, and “the Last Warrior” Yoshihiro Sawamura.





MAX Dojo has received a bit of attention in the past few weeks. Not only with the hire of former MAX Heavyweight Champion Mike Musket as Associate Head Trainer, but it has been recently announced that the students will travel along the TOUKON ROAD and five of them will have a shot to win the brand-new Royal Road Championship.

Word also has it that they have engaged in grueling training over the last month.

“Musket-sensei is tough but fair,” said Umetaro Sakamoto, recently elected by his peers as the Tour Captain. Captain Sakamoto continued, “We have trained very hard for this moment. We all are hoping that one of us will become the first dojo student to win a championship in this company. It would be a tremendous honor, but it must be earned.”

The idea of a dojo student achieving what few on the regular roster have done sounds like lunacy on the face of it. But there is reason to believe it may be possible:

Sakamoto, of course, is a co-winner of the Enatsu Special Tag Tournament from back in November. He has always been a tough competitor against the regular roster.

Hiro Minamoto, the so-called “Prophet of King’s Road”, has trained diligently not just with his fellow students but also has received grappling instruction from Go Gensai, one-half of the World Tag Team Champions.

KOSUKE, known to American audiences for his MMA victory at the FUSION 1 mega-show in New York City, has promised to show the world that the “man who brought Japanese MMA to the West” has not left and will become the “Heroic Assassin”, taking down as many students from the regular roster.

The students have endured a grueling training under the tutelage of Coach Musket and apparently there is something of a rivalry beginning to crop up, as many of the students feel that they have the talent and ability to go toe-to-toe with the regular roster. It looks like we’ll have to see, but it is possible that there are surprises in store!