The bantamweight champion of DEEP, Takafumi Otsuka, will take on Koichi Ishiuzka on May 13th at Differ Ariake in Tokyo.

Otsuka was supposed to fight Fernando Vieira for the WSOF-GC bantamweight title in December. However, the Brazilian was over the weight at the first weigh-in and never showed up at the second weigh-in. Vieira was nowhere to be found after this.The Brazilian basically fled from the entire show.

Otsuka became the inaugural WSOF-GC champ but this means, the last time he fought was back in August of last year. That was, however, against a Mongolian fighter named Baataryn Azjavkhlan who was 1-0 at the time.

In terms of competitive fight, vs Daisuke Engo in February 2016 maybe is the last time Otsuka went through, which is more than a year ago.

Ishizuka is basically born and raised in DEEP.

And, he is undefeated in the last ten fights.

For Ishizuka, this must be the opportunity he has been looking for all of his pro MMA career.

So, Ishizuka has to be motivated than ever.

The only concern is, his recent changes in the training environment. In last year, Ishizuka moved to Aichi because of the job which forced him to leave team Brightness Monma. And, Ishizuka joined team ALIVE which is based in Aichi prefecture.

But Ishizuka left ALIVE now, and his status is “independent.”

Besides this title fight between Otsuka and Ishizuka, men’s strawweight bout between Haruo Ochi and “Rambo” Kosuke is also confirmed.

These two met all the way back in May of 2011.

This fight took place in Shooto.

“Rambo” almost caught Ochi with an armbar in the first round. But Ochi came back and KO’d Kosuke in the second round. That was “Rambo”‘s first pro defeat in seven fights.