Shinkyokushin 3rd World Cup

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text : spioler allert ;o)

This event took place in Osaka 2005, with a really strong line up,well known fighters and new blood. The light weight category saw the winner of the 1st WC,Kou Tanigawa, take the title again. He overcame the very strong Bulgarian Dimitar Popov in the semi finals with a close edge. In the final Tanigawa met impressive Vasily Kudiakov fora hard fight to the distance. The finale then went to tameshiwari. Popov took the 3rd place "eating" the right leg of Vytautas Viscius from Lithuania, to an ippon.

The middleweight section saw the Bulgarian favourite Valeri Dimitrov take the title. Looking very strong and with a technical sharpness not often seen. In the final he met  Alexei Leonov of Kazakhstan who had defeated Japan's Gaku Yasamoto in a close semi final. Dimitrov scored an ippon to the body of Leonov, and this final could hardly go the other way than it did.

The heavyweight section was equally as exciting as two former winners met in the last eight as Russia's Denis Grigoriev took on Japan's Norichika Tsukamoto. After a hard fight in which the physically stronger Grigoriev handed out a lot of punishment but finally fell foul to a superb mawashi geri jodan in the second extension that gave Tsukamoto and ippon. Tsukamoto then went the distance again but was this time beaten in the second extension on a decision by current All Japan Champion Takayuki Tsukakoshi. The other semi final saw reigning World Champion Kunihiro against the immense Donatas Imbras in a surprise result as Imbras dominated to take the decision in one round. In the final Tsukakoshi did all he could to hang on against the power of the Lithuanian and eventually scraped through the fight to win on boards.

 

 

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