In the main event of Rizin’s New Year’s Eve card, Floyd Mayweather Jr. dominated 20-year old Tenshin Nasukawa and earned a Razin’s stoppage victory.
The exhibition bout was scheduled for three rounds and was ended after the third knockdown of the smaller Nasukawa, whose corner threw in the towel and ended the fight at 2:19 mark of the fight.
Mayweather had stated that he was paid $9 million for the fight, which was only available on the international broadcast and not through the Fite.tv streaming service in North America.
Nasukawa is a phenomenal kickboxer with a 28-0 record along with a 4-0 MMA record. Obviously, the idea was to have Nasukawa gain notoriety by being part of this fight with the most famous boxer in the world. This was the same playbook that Antonio Inoki ran for years, only he did so in a worked environment except for the Muhammad Ali fight in 1976, which is one of the most popular fights in Japanese history and Inoki’s legacy is deeply tied to that fight. In execution, this experiment by Rizin was much closer to Mirko Cro Cop’s destruction of Yuji Nagata on New Year’s Eve in 2001, a fight Nagata had no business being in and was blown out with a head kick stoppage.
Floyd Mayweather vs. Tenshin Nasukawa [Full Fight]#RIZIN pic.twitter.com/PNXVv0EEXZ
— GIF Skull – Full Fight, But With Less Calories (@GIFSkull) December 31, 2018
Here are the complete results from the New Year’s Eve card:
*Tofiq Musaev def. Nobumitsu Osawa by TKO at 1:19 of Round 2
*Justyna Zofia Haba def. Shinju Nosawa-Auclair by rear-naked choke at 3:41 of Round 2
*Ulka Sasaki def. Manel Kape by unanimous decision
*Yuki Motoya def. Justin Scoggins by submission at 3:28 of Round 1
*Johnny Case def. Yusuke Yachi by TKO due to a doctor’s stoppage at 4:47 of Round 2
*Kazuyuki Miyata def. Erson Yamamoto by submission at 3:23 of Round 2
*Miyuu Yamamoto def. Mika Nagano by unanimous decision
*Damien Brown def. Daron Cruickshank by guillotine choke at 4:19 of Round 1
*Gabi Garcia def. Barbara Nepomuceno by submission at 2:39 of Round 1
*Jiri Prochazka def. Brandon Halsey by TKO at 6:30 of Round 1
*Ayaka Hamasaki def. Kanna Asakura by submission at 4:34 of Round 2 to become Rizin’s super atomweight champion
*Kyoji Horiguchi def. Darrion Caldwell by guillotine choke in Round 3 to become the Rizin bantamweight champion
*Floyd Mayweather Jr. def. Tenshin Nasukawa by TKO due to a corner stoppage at 2:20 of Round 1 of their boxing exhibition
