RIZIN 55 predictions: Takahashi vs Laramie, Inoue vs Tilenov

Most of the world will be asleep for this one, which is a shame, because RIZIN 55 is the deepest lighter-weight card the promotion has put together this year. Sixteen fights at LaLa Arena Tokyo-Bay in Funabashi on Sunday, November 8. The first bell is 1:00 p.m. JST (11:00 p.m. ET and 8:00 p.m. PT on Saturday), and the main card starts at 5:00 p.m. JST, which is 3:00 a.m. ET and 8:00 a.m. GMT on Sunday. Broadcasters by country, the running order and every time zone are in our RIZIN 55 start times and how to watch guide.

The top of the card is a first title defense, a former champion's audition for a rematch, and two bantamweight fights between men who keep running into the same names. Danny Sabatello, Yuki Motoya and Azizbek Temirov are not on this card, and they are all over it.

One housekeeping note before the picks. The ranks quoted below come from the UFCalendar Rankings, our own projected board for RIZIN. RIZIN does not publish a ranking, so these are our numbers, not the promotion's.

Makoto Takahashi vs Tony Laramie, flyweight title

Makoto Takahashi (23-5-1) has been a RIZIN title challenger before. On New Year's Eve 2023 at RIZIN 45, Kyoji Horiguchi choked him out in the second round. It took him until June 6 of this year to get back there, and he took the belt the hard way: a unanimous decision over the champion, Hiromasa Ougikubo, in Sendai. Before that came a decision over Hiroya Kondo on New Year's Eve and a first-round kimura on Nkazimulo Zulu in April. He is 26, he trains at Paraestra Matsudo, and his base is freestyle wrestling (runner-up at the all-Japan junior high championships in 2015) with Muay Thai layered on top. Sixteen of his 23 wins went to the cards, and not one of his five losses came by strikes.

Tony Laramie (13-3) was on that same Sendai card and beat Yuki Motoya by unanimous decision. That made three straight for the Canadian, after a decision over Wataru Yamauchi in Kobe and a third-round TKO of Takaki Soya at RIZIN 52 in March. He has held regional flyweight belts in two promotions, PFC in 2020 and BTC in 2024, and seven of his 13 wins are knockouts. He has never been stopped by strikes either; his one finish loss is a submission.

The common opponents tell two different stories, which is my favorite kind of problem. Motoya beat Takahashi on the cards at RIZIN 51 in September 2025, the champion's last loss, and Laramie beat Motoya in June. Yuki Ito beat Laramie by decision at RIZIN 50 in March 2025, and Takahashi beat Ito by decision five weeks later. Transitive MMA math is a hobby for people who enjoy being wrong, so I will lean on the measurements instead. Laramie is listed at 5-foot-2 with a 67-inch reach, Takahashi at 5-foot-5 with a 65-inch reach. The challenger has to get inside a taller man who wants to wrestle, and when he gets there, his hands are the most dangerous thing in the cage.

Our board has Takahashi at the top of the division and Laramie fifth. I think it has the order right and the gap a little wide. Laramie can win this with one right hand in a scramble. Over three rounds, though, the man with 16 decision wins who has never been knocked out is the safer bet, and the wrestling should bank the rounds.

Prediction: Makoto Takahashi by unanimous decision

Naoki Inoue vs Yrysbek Tilenov, bantamweight

Naoki Inoue (21-5) won three straight RIZIN bantamweight title fights, over Soo Chul Kim, Yuki Motoya and Ryuya Fukuda, and then lost the belt to Danny Sabatello on a split decision on New Year's Eve 2025. He went to PFL Brussels in May and beat Marcirley Alves on another split. The Longo-Weidman fighter started in karate at age seven, went 9-0 as a kickboxer, and is the one man on this card I would call genuinely hard to finish: all five of his losses are decisions. Our board still has him as the top contender, first behind the champion.

Yrysbek Tilenov (8-1) is 22 years old and the most interesting new face at 135 pounds in Japan. The Kyrgyz fighter came up through Alash Pride and the Octagon promotion, where he beat Azizbek Temirov by decision in September 2025 (remember that name for the next fight), and in his RIZIN debut in Hiroshima in July he stopped Shinobu Ota with a knee in the second round. Five of his eight wins are knockouts, and his only loss is a submission. Our board has him fourth.

I went back and forth on this one. Tilenov's knee on Ota was the kind of moment that gets a fighter matched up fast, and he is getting the former champion in his second RIZIN fight. Then I look at Inoue's record again. Sabatello, the current champion, needed a split to beat him. Nobody has stopped him in 26 pro fights. A prospect who wins by knockout needs to land the knockout, and against Inoue nobody has. The winner here has the cleanest case for the next shot at Sabatello, and I think Inoue makes it on the cards.

Prediction: Naoki Inoue by unanimous decision

Ryuya Fukuda vs Soo Chul Kim, bantamweight

Photo: Sadoka74 / CC BY-SA 3.0

Two veterans who both lost a title fight to Inoue. Soo Chul Kim (24-9-1) got stopped by him in the first round at RIZIN 48 in September 2024; Ryuya Fukuda (26-10-1) went the full three rounds with him at Super RIZIN 4 in July 2025 and lost a unanimous decision.

Kim's resume reads like a tour of Asian MMA: the inaugural ONE FC bantamweight title in 2012, ROAD FC belts at bantamweight in 2017 and featherweight in 2022, and a BJJ black belt from Roan Carneiro in 2019. He is 34 now. He lost a decision to Shoko Sato at RIZIN's Korea show in May 2025 and came back with a unanimous decision over Ji Yong Yang at Road FC 76 in March. His wins are spread evenly, eight by knockout, six by submission, ten on the cards, which is what a long career with no single weapon looks like.

Fukuda is a former Shooto and DEEP flyweight champion who also won DEEP's bantamweight title in 2024, and he is a puncher: 13 of his 26 wins are knockouts. The problem is the most recent one went the other way. Temirov, the same Temirov that Tilenov outpointed, knocked Fukuda out in the second round in Fukuoka in April. Before that, a second-round TKO of Tatsuya Ando on New Year's Eve.

Our board has Kim third and Fukuda seventh, and I agree with the direction. Fukuda's knockout loss is seven months old and Kim has only been finished by strikes once in 34 pro fights, the Inoue fight. I expect Kim to make it a grappling fight whenever the exchanges get loud.

Prediction: Soo Chul Kim by unanimous decision

Jinnosuke Kashimura vs Shinobu Ota, bantamweight

Photo: Mohammad Hassansadeh/Tasnimnews / CC BY 4.0

Both men lost on the same Hiroshima card in July, and both lost in a way that says something about this matchup.

Shinobu Ota (8-6) has the best amateur credentials on the card by a distance: an Olympic silver medal in Greco-Roman at 59 kg in Rio in 2016, a world title at 63 kg in 2019, and the 2018 Asian Games gold. In MMA the wrestling has been real and the rest has been uneven. His six losses split evenly, two by knockout, two by submission, two on the cards, and the submission losses include Motoya catching him in the third round at RIZIN 48. He won in May with an arm-triangle on Yuto Hokamura, then walked into Tilenov's knee.

Jinnosuke Kashimura (12-6) is a submission specialist with a judo background and a BJJ black belt from 2023. Ten of his 12 wins are submissions. He was on a four-fight run (including a first-round anaconda choke on Hideo Tokoro at RIZIN 52 and a first-round TKO for the DEEP interim title in May) that earned him a shot at Sabatello in July, and Sabatello knocked him out in the third round. All three of his stoppage losses are by strikes, none by submission.

Here's where I go against our own board, which has Ota fifth and Kashimura 14th. The board weighs who they've fought, and Ota has fought better people. But this matchup asks one question: what happens when an Olympic wrestler takes down a man who wants to be on his back? Ota has been submitted twice already. Kashimura has never been submitted at all. Ota will win takedowns. I think Kashimura wins the fight off them.

Prediction: Jinnosuke Kashimura by submission, round 2

The rest of the main card

Kazuki Aimoto (10-0) arrives from DEEP undefeated with eight knockouts. His last three wins: first-round stoppages of Takeaki Kinoshita and Ryogo Takahashi, then a third-round stoppage of Shoma Yamada in July. Kaleo Meheula (7-4) is an Xtreme Couture featherweight with five knockouts of his own, and he has never been stopped by strikes: three of his four losses are decisions and the fourth is a submission. Someone's streak ends. I will take the unbeaten puncher, but not early.

Prediction: Kazuki Aimoto by TKO, round 3

Mac Papalii (2-0) has two pro wins, both first-round TKOs. Yukinori Akazawa (8-6) has 14 pro fights and comes in off first-round finishes of Charles Prete and Kosuke Kindaichi in DEEP. Fourteen fights beat two.

Prediction: Yukinori Akazawa by submission, round 1

Prelims worth staying up for

The lightweight fight between Kyung Pyo Kim (15-5) and Nurkhan Zhumagazy (11-1) has a neat subplot. Kim stopped Daigo Kuramoto in 2024 and Yusuke Yachi at RIZIN 52 in March; Zhumagazy submitted Tatsuya Saika in Kobe and outpointed Tenya Yoshimura in Fukuoka. Saika and Kuramoto fight each other on the same prelims, so two of the lightweight bouts on this card are built out of the same four-man loop. Kim is seventh at lightweight on our board, Zhumagazy 12th. Prediction: Zhumagazy by decision.

At featherweight, Juntaro Ushiku (24-14-1) lost a decision to Arata Mizuno in May, and Kaiwen Li (17-8) knocked out that same Mizuno in the first round at RIZIN 54 in August. Prediction: Li by TKO.

Two unbeaten records are on the line further down. Takumi Hamada (7-0) won his last fight at Pancrase by second-round submission and faces Sho Sekihara (14-5) at flyweight. Tsukasa Mizoguchi (4-0) has finished his last two in the first round and gets the 35-fight veteran Taichi Nakajima (20-14-1) at bantamweight. Predictions: Hamada by decision, Mizoguchi by TKO.

So here is the board for Sunday: Takahashi, Inoue, Kim, Kashimura, Aimoto, Akazawa. If Laramie lands the right hand in the main event, I'll be wrong in the most fun way the card allows. The bantamweight results are where the rankings will move, and Sabatello will be watching the co-main closer than anyone.