Worldwide MMA Preview – Legacy FC, ACB, WSOF GC 2

Legacy FC 51 kicks the weekend’s action off on Friday night from Minnesota, United States. The main event is a fight between Ricardo Ramos and Manny Vazquez for the vacant bantamweight title. Ramos was due to challenge Augusto Mendes but Mendes got a late call from the UFC. The 20 year old Ramos is 8-0 in professional MMA. Six of those wins were in his native Brazil and in two fights in America with Legacy he has two first round finishes. Vazquez also has an impressive record of 8-1 that compiled in various local American MMA shows.

Heavyweight prospect Cody East is back in Legacy for this one. East is 11-1 and has gained a reputation as a knockout puncher with seven KO/TKO victories included in those 12 fights. His last fight was a good win against experienced heavyweight Roy Boughton. The UFC has been on a signing spree at heavyweight recently and East will get the call soon if he wins a few more fights. Big show veterans Brock Larson, Jakob Volkmann and Tateki Matsuda are also fighting on this card which is a strong one from Legacy, even with the late loss of Augusto Mendes.

On Saturday Russian promotion ACB are holding an event in Warsaw, Poland. Two heavyweights who have won tournaments held by ACB will contest the vacant title. All of Zlimkhan Umiev’s professional fights have been in ACB, his first four were in a tournament and then he beat Jacek Czajczynski to go 5-0 all in 2014. Salimgirey Rasulov has been around a lot longer with his MMA debut coming back in 2007. Since a loss to Peter Graham he has won three straight fights in ACB to challenge for the title.

Sunday brings us to Tokyo for WSOF Global Championship 2: Japan. Michihiro Omigawa. The card is headlined by a heavyweight fight between Brandon Cash and Evgeny Erokhin. Erokhin was involved in the main event of the first WSOF Global card against Jeremy May which ended in a no contest. Excluding the no contest he has a record of 13-4 with victories over Sokoudjou, Brett Rogers and Tim Hague as the highlights. Cash has some experience in Strikeforce Challengers and a Bellator preliminary fight but no big wins to speak of but some good regional opposition, he has a record of 10-3.

Akihiro Gono is probably for famous for his entrances than his fights but he has good wins over Hector Lombard, Gegard Mousasi and Hayato Sakurai. On Sunday Gono will fight Slovakia’s Miroslav Strbak who has a 12-5-1 record compiled on the European scene.

Another Japanese legend will be fighting on the card, Michihiro Omigawa will fight Teddy Violet at featherweight. Omigawa has been fighting great featherweights for a long time and is now 40 years of age so he may not have many more left in him. Violet who is from France comes into the fight with a 10-1 record with most of his fights taking place in France. He had two fights in the UK, one of which was his lone defeat to Tom Duquesnoy.