By FCF Staff
Dream continues to confirm bouts for the promotion’s first event in 2011, as today the organization announced that Deep Featherweight Champion Koichiro Matsumoto will take on former Shooto champ “Lion” Takeshi Inoue, on May 29th.
The upcoming “Fight for Japan” event will be hosted by the Saitama Super Arena, in Saitama, Japan.
Inoue (19-5) heads into Dream 17 following a second round stoppage of Taiki Tsuchiya at a Shooto event on April 29th, after dropping back-to-back bouts to Hatsui Hioki and more recently Kazuyaki Miyata. The 31 year-old-veteran is 7-3 in his last ten fights.
Matsumoto (12-2) continues to impress as the 25 year-old-featherweight has won five straight. Most recently at Deep’s 51ST Impact card in December, Matsumoto stopped Shoji Maruyama in the third round. Matsumoto’s only loss since 2007 took place in April, 2009, when he was knocked out by Dream vet Katsunori Kikuno.
Dream 17 will also feature the opening round and semi-finals of the promotion’s bantamweight grand-prix, as well as Joachim Hansen vs. Mitsuhiro Ishida, Kikuno vs. Daisuke Nakamura and Caol Uno vs. Akiyo Nishiura.
Lightweight champion Shinya Aoki is also scheduled to compete; however, no opponent has been confirmed yet.
