Valkyrie 2

Not sure why but Sherdog took ages to run this gallery. Valkyrie is GCM’s (Wajyutsu Keisyukai and Cage Force) womens organisation. This event was held on the same day as Cage Force but for some ridiculous reason they held the events at the same venue but about 3 hours apart. Also if you wanted to go to both events, you needed to buy tickets to both. I really dont understand why they would do this. It was pouring rain and no one had anywhere to go in the break as Differ Ariake is in the middle of nowhere.

To me it would make sense to have a slightly more expensive ticket for both events, have a 30 minute or one hour break in between the event, sell a ton of food and get much better attendance for both events.

The headliner was one of the top pound for pound female fighters in the world, Yuka Tsuji vs. American import Kate Martinez for the Valkyrie Featherweight title. Kate is a world title holding kickboxer and although she has a blue belt in jiu-jitsu, Tsuji is just way too good.

Yuka Tusji making her way to the ring carrying an oni mask.

Martinez standing across the cage from on of the best female fighters in the world.

Martinez actually scored a bit of a knockdown with this punch but Tsuji quickly recovered.

Unfortunately Martinez's ground defense just wasn't up to scratch. Tsuji was able to move at will on top.

Martinez quickly sucummed to an armbar from mount.

Valkyrie and the now defunct Smackgirl bling.

They are doing a tournament now for a shot at Tsuji. Coming into the tournament, Windy Tomomi had to be the favorite but one of my old stablemates at Alive (Hatsu Hioki’s gym) Kyoko Takabayashi came in and made short work of her.

Takayabayashi would be an interesting opponent if she makes it through for Tsuji but her striking is somewhat lacking.

Takayo Hashi scoring a nice left on Chisa Yonezawa.

Takayo Hashi celebrating a victory.

Megumi "V Hajime" Yamaguchi landing a nice upkick on Emi Fujino in the other side of the tournament bracket.

Photography Notes

Differ is a wonderful place to shoot at. Reasonable lighting that is fairly even and good access to the runway for entrance shots. The cage often makes it tough with lighting though and it is not evenly spread around the edges of cages here. It’s about a one stop difference from the centre to the edges and about 2 stops if they are actually pressed against the cage on my side.

To get around this I either have to shoot the middle ground between the centre and edge of the cage which slightly overexposes and underexposes my photos respectively or I adjust my shutter speed on the fly.

Doing that can be very hard if you are not used to your camera. If a fight is moving really fast I just shoot the average but usually I adjust my shutterspeed depending on where the fighters are. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are really confident though. If you forget to change your shutterspeed back or you somehow screw it up you can lose photos from an entire fight.

See the rest of the gallery at Sherdog.