AikaImmortal

[12/22/2005] TOKYO, Dec. 22 — Japanese judoka Yoshiro Akiyama suffered a bad back injury during training and has had to withdraw from his fight against Royce Gracie (Pictures) on the upcoming New Year's Eve K-1 Dynamite show, it was announced on Thursday.

Akiyama's replacement against Gracie will be ZST star Hideo Tokoro (Pictures), who was scheduled to fight Olympic medalist wrestler Katsuhiko Nagata the same night. Nagata now faces ZST Grand Prix champion Remigijus Morkevicius (Pictures).

The weight limit for Gracie-Tokoro, according to K-1, will be 180 pounds. This leaves the Japanese star with the difficult task to put weight on his usual 155-pound frame to meet the limit. Also this match will be played under "special rules" with two 10-minute rounds. While asked about the weight limit by the Japanese press, Tokoro announced his intentions to fight Gracie at 178 pounds.

(copied from Sherdog.com.. for I am lazy)

This is very depressing news for me, being a diehard Akiyama fan, and very secure in the fact that he would have shocked the world in defeating Gracie.

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angryjonny

Damn. I was excited to see this fight. I just saw Akiyama for the first time about a week ago and was pumped to see him fight Gracie. Hope it's nothing too serious and he can get back in the game again.

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lwbfl

Yeah, I was looking forward to that one as well. Thats the nature of this game though!

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glockmn

I thought that was going to be a great fight, I am just glad I get to see Royce roll somemore

[Danny]

Akiyama was definatly the favorite in that fight in my opinion. Tokoro is way too small for this match. Royce by submission in round one. Tokoro is a badass at 145 though. But I believe Royce walks around at 170 and wasn't planning on cutting.

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