During Kasai weigh ins for Kasai Pro 6 in Atlantic City we caught up with Kasai’s CEO Rich Byrne, who has great plans for the event. “We started out with some NY shows and all we are hearing from fans is ‘when are you going to come to our city?’, ‘When are you coming to our country?’”. Kasai took their even on the road, with their “Super Series” event which is comprised of only super fights. The Atlantic City event shows a departure from this model. Rich explains “Originally we contemplated only doing Kasai Pros in NY. As we toured we started the Kasai Super Series. Because the reception has been so great in all these other cities we decided to mix it. We are agnostic now. Kasai Pros are our tournaments – 8 man round robin tournament. We have done 6 weight classes so far. Kasais pro 6 is our Bantam weight. After that we have only one left which are the heavy weights. We are going to do that in NY beginning 2020. We are picking the best guys in the world at that weight class. Our rules set is a good blend. We can attract people no matter what their discipline. We also have superfights between the tournaments.” The difference between Kasai Pro and Kasai Super Series is that the latter is only Super Fights “On average 12 super fights. We are just having fun. Just making our dream match ups. We are trying to match styles to have super exciting fights – All of our dream match-ups. In Orlando some of the fights we have put together are still being talked about as some of the great super fights of the year.”
When asked about future plans Rich explained, “We are going to keep doing it. We are going to go to Brazil, Europe, Asia. The sky is the limit for Kasai! Brazil is going to be Kasai Super Series. It will be a special version. Brazil against the world. Main card will have 12 or 13 fights. It will be a Brazilian against a guy that is not a Brazilian. They are going to blow people away. We were originally thinking Brazil against the US but there are a lot of guys from Europe and Australia that fit the bill perfectly. We are going to get some good guys against these Brazilians.“
In regards to this event, happening today in Atlantic City “Bantam weight is 135 lbs. This is our lowest weight, but these guys are killers! Some of these guys are leg lock specialists. You’re going to see some crazy stuff. These guys move fast. The rounds are only 6 minutes and the action is usually frenetic. This is a hard one to pick a winner.”
“We have 4 super fights of big guys. 2 of our guys are champs from prior tournaments. Our 185 lbs. champ is Matheus Diniz and he is fighting Josh Hinger who is a world champion. 2 of the most highly credentialed guys in the sport. They fought once before and the match was crazy so we wanted to have them on our stage.”
“Our heavyweight, Kaynan is our belt holder at 205 who will be fighting Patrick Gaudio – one of the best fighters in the world.”
“We also have Murilo Santana, the famous professor at Unity Jiu Jitsu, who have 6 guys in our card. It’s a big day for Unity.”
“And we have Tom de Blass, who is a local NJ guy. Tom is coming into his house to fight in front of his crowd. We’re excited for that.”
The event in happening at the Showboat in an intimate setting. The card is promising some really great matches.
All fighters were at weight.
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