Last night saw a historic moment for Sakuraba’s Quintet grappling series. For the first time ever, it featured all-female teams. The event was a success and even had a superfight that even featured Sakuraba’s son who like his father, won by a Kimura submission.
After a few hours of pure no-gi grappling, the eventual winners where Team Carpe Diem. In true Quintet fashion, the winning ladies where given medals in the closing ceremony and celebrated what was yet another solid showing on behalf of Sakuraba.
The female teams were as follows:
Team Coroblock
Emi Fujino
Windy Tomomi
Takayo Hashi
Yuki Ono
Norika Ryu
Team Fairtex
Carolina De Amorim Kuwahara
Kanon Kishida
Julyanna Laurentino
Kazuko Sakamoto
Team Carpe Diem
Haruki Ishiguro
Yuki Uchiyama
Mitomo Moriwaki
Satomi Suga
Sarami
The growth of all-female BJJ events has been growing steadily for some time now. Most recently, US promotions such as WNO and F2W have featured events exclusivity using women as fighters. This shows a growth in BJJ which previously used to show mostly male-based grappling events.