Laramie Dethrones Shinryu in Split Decision to Claim RIZIN Flyweight Title

Tony Laramie had to survive the worst of it before he could enjoy any of it. Dropped in the opening round, cut open in the second, the Canadian challenger kept coming back to his wrestling, round after round, until there was nothing left for Makoto Shinryu to do but wait for the scorecards. When they were read out in Chiba on Sunday, Laramie was the new RIZIN flyweight champion, a split-decision winner in the main event of RIZIN 55 at the LaLa arena TOKYO-BAY.

Both men opened southpaw, and it was Shinryu who landed first and hardest, dropping Laramie with a right hook after a left and then pursuing him to the floor. For a few seconds the challenger's night looked like it might be over before it had properly begun. But Laramie recovered in the scramble, took the champion's back, and threatened a rear-naked choke that he could not quite finish. He stayed busy underneath, trying an armbar and a guillotine rather than simply holding on, and by the bell the momentum had started to turn.

The second round belonged to neither man for long. The two traded back control, Laramie locking in a body triangle while hunting another choke, and Shinryu escaped to finish the round on top, opening a cut around Laramie's left eyelid with a right elbow. It was the kind of damage that changes fights, and for a while it looked like it might change this one.

But the third round was where Laramie won the belt. Shinryu landed punches and an elbow early, and then Laramie drove through a double leg and took the fight back to the floor. A doctor examined the challenger's cut after they returned to their feet, and with 3:01 left on the clock the action resumed. Laramie went straight back to his wrestling, putting Shinryu down again and refusing to let him establish any kind of striking rhythm. Along the ropes Shinryu tried to build back to his feet; Laramie countered every rise and every throwing attempt, returning to top position again and again. A late ninja-choke attempt failed to dislodge him, and he closed the fight landing punches and hammerfists from above until the final bell.

Under RIZIN's rules the judges score a fight as a whole rather than adding up round scores, with damage first, then aggressiveness, then generalship — a system that rewards exactly what Laramie did in that final round. Two of the three judges gave it to him. Shinryu sank to his knees when the decision was announced, and Laramie received the belt.

For Shinryu, it was a bitter end to a first defence. He had won the title in Sendai in June, beating Hiromasa Ougikubo to avenge a defeat from the previous summer, after rebuilding at American Top Team following a submission loss to Kyoji Horiguchi in his first attempt at this belt in December 2023. For Laramie, the win completes a climb through Wataru Yamauchi, Takaki Soya — stopped in March — and Yuki Motoya, beaten on points in June, after a March 2025 loss to Yuki Ito had cost him a place in the flyweight grand prix.

Both men made weight comfortably — Shinryu at 57.00 kilograms, Laramie at 56.80 — and the physical edges were split evenly, the champion five centimetres taller, the challenger with a 4.5-centimetre reach advantage. In the end none of that mattered as much as the wrestling. Laramie was dropped, he was cut, and he still walked out of the arena with the belt.