The Champion of Champions tournament was held for the first time a year ago. It is an exclusive top-level karate commercial competition where the winners receive a prize of 10 million Japanese yen. The runners-up receive 2 million yen each, and the third-place winners get 600 thousand each.
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Only 9 men and 8 women receive invitations to the tournament. In 2025, Lithuania was very successfully represented in Tokyo only by world and European champions Brigita Gustaitytė and Eventas Gužauskas, who reached the finals and returned home with runner-up trophies.
This year, as many as 4 representatives from our country received invitations to the prestigious tournament – together with B. Gustaitytė and E. Gužauskas, European champions Aneta Meškauskienė and Paulius Žimantas went to the Land of the Rising Sun.
This year, 8 athletes from Japan and 9 from other countries were invited to the Champion of Champions competition. In the first stages of the tournament, all the host athletes will face off against the visiting athletes.
E. Gužauskas will face the challenge of world championship medalist Yusaku Watanabe in the quarterfinals, while Paulius Žimantas will compete against Yuki Okada, who is defending the KCC champion title.
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In the only round of 16, European champion and absolute weight category world runner-up Pole Maciej Mazur will face the 2026 Japanese champion Ryuji Toda, and the winner of this pair will face the winner of the Japanese championship without weight categories, Asian champion Andzej Kinzerski from Kazakhstan. In the last quarterfinal, another representative of Kazakhstan, world champion Anton Zimarev, will meet another world champion Kazushi Watanabe.
In the women’s competition, B. Gustaitytė will duel with the world championship bronze medalist in the weightless category Yuna Mokudai, while A. Meškauskienė will challenge another absolute weight category world championship medalist Momo Fujihara. The winners of these pairs will face each other in the semifinals.
On the other side of the bracket, European champion Hungarian Lili Mezo will meet multiple world absolute and heavyweight champion, winner of the first KKC tournament Mihiro Suzuki, while Kazakhstan’s world championship medalist Alina Ossipenko will face the world absolute weight category runner-up Ramu Amikawa.
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