Samurai revenge! Today is the 4-year anniversary of the match in which Jiri Prochazka became the champion of the Japanese Rizin organization

21. on April 4, 2019, the title fight of the Japanese MMA organization Rizin was held in Yokohama to crown a welterweight champion. The fight featured Jiri Prochazka, who attempted to make amends for his loss to Muhammed Lawal in a rematch.

He flew into Rizin headfirst, but ran into a right hand from Lawal

When Jiri Procházka signed with the Japanese organization Rizin in 2015, he had to get used to a completely new fight format. While it is common to fight five-minute rounds in the world, he had to contend with a ten-minute round in Japan.

In his first fights in the Japanese organization, he already won the hearts of the local fans and media. With his aggressive fighting style and samurai heart, he gained popularity almost immediately. He flew into the organization like a hurricane, defeating both Satoshi Ishii and Vadim Nemkov in a three-day heavyweight pyramid.

Unfortunately, he was no match for Muhammed Lawal in the pyramid finals, who dealt him the first KO of his career. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Walk dominated all seven of his fights in the following years, and only one of them went to the judges on points.

But the title rematch four years ago was already dominated by Jiri Prochazka and became the organization’s champion

Thus, it was on April 21, 2019 that the organization staged a welterweight title fight, where Procházka faced his previous conqueror. Compared to the first fight, in which Jiri went in headfirst and literally ran into a knockout of the Bellator veteran, this time he started a bit more cautiously.

The match this time at the classic 3×5 minutes had a rather more moderate pace during the first two rounds from both sides. While Procházka was spotting his opponent with straight punches with both hands and feet, the precisely aimed uppercuts were working as well. “King Mo” waited for his opponent’s mistakes and waited for his opportunity again.

At the end of the second round, Lawal hit so hard that Prochazka’s eyebrows formed a cut. But the Moravian samurai kept fighting and the fight went into the final round. There the Czech fighter showed a huge heart and took away his opponent’s oxygen with accurate punches.

With less than two minutes to go, he then sent his older opponent to the ground after a hard combination to win the Rizin championship. “It’s an amazing feeling, I’m happy to have this teacher as my opponent, for the last three years I’ve always had the loss in my mind, the ending,” he said in a post-match interview.

“My purpose is only to rub, technique and fights, to defend the belt, ” he revealed his immediate goals. He fulfilled them six months later, when he knocked out UFC veteran C.B. Dollaway in less than two minutes in a title defense.

But after that fight, he moved overseas to the UFC, where he began to write his own story. He won the championship there as well, but failed to defend it yet, losing an unequal fight this time to his health. But he’s already back on his way as a fighter and hopefully we’ll see him back in the cage this summer.

Source:: Sherdog, Rizin, Twitter account – John Jack, Youtube channel – That’s why MMA!