Wanderlei Silva’s tag team partner revealed for Rizin FF main event

A former rival will join forces with Wanderlei Silva at Rizin Fighting Federation’s main event on April 17.

"The Axe Murderer" will face Kazushi Sakuraba and Hideo Tokoro in a special grappling tag team matchup, and it was announced on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that Silva’s team partner will be MMA pioneer Kiyoshi Tamura.

Tamura (32-13-3) retired from mixed martial arts in 2008. The Japanese veteran, who defeated both Sakuraba and Tokoro in two of his most recent mixed martial arts bouts in 2008 and 2007, was defeated by Silva at Pride 19.

“I’m gonna fight on Sakuraba is better, supposed to be better than me,” Silva told Ariel Helwani. “I stopped training fighting for close to three years and this happened (too) fast, and I have more time to prepare myself. I like to do my best and make good shows, and this is like a warm-up to come back to the ring.”

Rizin FF’s upcoming event takes place at the Nippon Gaishi Hall in Nagoya, Japan, and also features the following MMA bouts:

Daron Cruickshank vs. Shinji Sasaki
Gabi Garcia vs. Anna Malyukova
Chris Barnett vs. Kirill Sidelnikov
Teodoras Aukstuolis vs. Jaideep Singh
Vadim Nemkov vs. Karl Albrektsson
Hisaki Kato vs. Yuta Watanabe
Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Jiri Prochazka
Allan Nascimento vs. Yuki Motoya
Kanako Murata vs. Natalya Denisova