The Ultimate Fighting Championship is one of the biggest stages for mixed martial arts in the world. The UFC hosts the best fighters from all sorts of martial arts disciplines and pits them against each other in brutal battles. The UFC traditionally held events in the United States, but just prior to the year 2000 the UFC made connections in Japan.
The UFC held 2 different events in Japan prior to the UFC 25 event. The previous events in Japan were accepted with great anticipation and the events attracted a tremendous amount of attention from the Japanese people. The most recent visit to Japan was actually just a few months previous to UFC 25 as the UFC traveled to Japan for their UFC 23 event in November of 1999.
UFC 25 was met with much anticipation because there would be a new light heavyweight champion. The previous light heavyweight champion, Frank Shamrock, retired from the UFC. With the retirement of Shamrock there would be a fight between two of the top fighters in the class to determine the new champion. The fighters chosen to participate in the match were Tito Ortiz and Wanderlei Silva. The Japanese people would get a chance to watch the new champion take his belt.
The event also featured premier appearances for a couple of UFC fighters that would take the center stage in the UFC in the future. One of the fighters, Murilo Bustamante, would go on to be a champion in the middleweight division.
The fight between Wanderlei Silva and Tito Ortiz certainly lived up to expectations. While the UFC had become accustomed to short fights that ended in submission or knockout, these two fighters duked it out for 25 minutes before a champion was ultimately selected. The champion as decided by decision as Tito Ortiz was unanimously selected as the winner of the match.
The lightweight bout that took place was between Laverne Clark and Koji Oishi. This was another solid fight and it went to decision. There was not a unanimous decision, but Clark won by majority decision after 15 minutes.
The first middleweight bout was between Ikuhisa Minowa and Joe Slick. Slick sustained a cut in the fight and the referee was forced to stop the fight because of the cut. This meant that Minowa would be awarded the victory by way of TKO in the third round of fighting.
The heavyweight bout was between Ron Waterman and Satoshi Honma. This was the third fight of the night that went to decision. Waterman was declared the winner by unanimous decision at 15 minutes.
The second middleweight bout was between Sanae Kikuta and Eugene Jackson. This fight was not a long match as Kikuta was able to get Jackson into an armbar in the first round. Kikuta would take the victory by way of submission with the armbar.
The 3rd middleweight bout was between Murilo Bustamante and Yoji Anjo. Bustamante started his career of right as he managed to take the victory by way of submission over Anjo. Bustamante put Anjo into an arm triangle choke at 31 seconds into the second round to take the win.
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