Shooto Chicago Collision 10 Preview

October 25, 2012

This Saturday Shooto Chicago Collision goes down for the 10th time in Lahti, Finland. The fight will be fought under Shooto rules which means for example that no elbow strikes are allowed and that the fights will take place in a ring instead of a cage. On Saturday the ring at the Sibelius arena will serve as a battleground mostly for up-n-coming young guns but the main and co-main event fights are built around seasoned veterans.

In the main event hometown hero Jimmy Immonen will try to take Lithunian Saulius Bucius‘s head off for sure. Immonen is a super aggressive brawler that looks to hurt his opponent with every single strike he throws. Immonen is a physically strong fighter who in the past has had problems with grapplers. For this fight Immonen has trained with superb grapplers like three time ADCC Euro champ Timo-Juhani Hirvikangas. Immonen’s opponent Bucius has been fighting pro since 2006 and gained mixed results since then. Bucius is no stranger to the Finnish MMA scene as he has fought on Finnish soil three times already with little success. The Lithunian has gone 2-1 in 2012. Bucius has finished six of his seven wins by submission so if he can weather Immonen’s storm early on and drag him to the ground, Bucius has a shot of pulling off an upset here.

In the co-main event Toni Valtonen, a regular customer at Finnish MMA events, takes on short notice replacement Rimgaudas Kutkaitis of Lithuania. After undergoing shoulder surgery and extensive rehab Valtonen made a successful comeback at Carelia Fight 8 where he crushed Slovakian Ilja Skondric’s leg with powerful leg kicks and scored a TKO stoppage in the first round. Over the last couple of years Valtonen has focused on improving his striking and results have followed. At the Carelia Fight Valtonen looked like he was also in the best physical shape in years. All of this doesn’t mean well for Kutkaitis who has lost his last three fights and gone 2-8 in his last ten. At Shooto Chicago Collision 9 in November of 2011 Kutkaitis lost to Finland’s Timo Karttunen by rear naked choke in less than three minutes.