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While promotions like Rizin and ONE FC still run shows in places like Japan and Singapore, and the UFC continues to make headway into the continent with shows such as its most recent in Shanghai, the unfortunate truth is that Asian MMA peaked just over a decade ago with the height of PRIDE FC and has largely gone downhill since.
Sure, some Japanese fighters still compete well in the UFC today, but for the most part, the truly great Asian MMA fighters are now either retired or years past their primes. In the past though, Asia was responsible for producing some of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport – particularly those hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun. Here are the top five in my eyes.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Yushin Okami – ‘Thunder’ was a top ten contender and a mainstay of the UFC’s Middleweight division for the best part of a decade, basically from his debut in 2006 through to his release from the promotion in 2013.
During his time with the promotion, he defeated the likes of Alan Belcher, Hector Lombard, Evan Tanner and Nate Marquardt, and captured a title shot in 2011 against the legendary Anderson Silva, although he was unsuccessful in winning the belt. He recently made a return to the Octagon as a last-minute replacement.
Kyoji Horiguchi – Prior to leaving the UFC for Rizin last year, Horiguchi had earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous fighters in the world at 125lbs. He came into the UFC with a violent knockout of Jeremy Larsen and went on to defeat the likes of Louis Gaudinot and Ali Bagautinov.
A 2015 title shot against Demetrious Johnson was unsuccessful, but the loss remains Horiguchi’s only one since 2012. Even outside the UFC, he’s still one of the world’s best Flyweights.
Hayato Sakurai – ‘Mach’ began his professional career back in 1996 and remained unbeaten until 2001, when a then-little-known Anderson Silva defeated him to take away his Shooto Middleweight title.
An unsuccessful stint in the UFC followed, but Sakurai then resurrected his career as a 155lber in PRIDE, where he defeated the likes of Jens Pulver and Joachim Hansen. Perhaps his biggest career accomplishments were his two wins over Shinya Aoki – one of which was a 27-second knockout.
Megumi Fujii – ‘Mega Megu’ fought in the women’s MMA division before it exploded in popularity thanks to the likes of Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey. Despite being largely forgotten today, in her prime she was unstoppable – winning her first 22 fights and finishing 19 of them.
A short Bellator run in 2010/11 was unsuccessful, but by that point, she was in her late 30’s and way past her prime. But she remains one of the greatest pioneers of women’s MMA prior to the Rousey era.
#5 Tatsuya Kawajiri
‘The Crusher’ earns his spot on this list for being one of the most feared men in the world at 155lbs and then 145lbs for over a decade. Best known for his powerful top game and ground-and-pound, in his prime Kawajiri could do it all – wrestle with the best of them, strike with even K-1 MAX veterans, and his submission game was pretty tight too – witness his 2011 arm triangle of renowned grappler Joachim Hansen.
He first burst onto the scene as a Lightweight in Shooto in the early 2000’s, and claimed a spot in the top ten back in 2004, when he knocked out the highly rated Vitor Ribeiro to claim the Shooto title.
A transition to PRIDE followed, and although Kawajiri was unable to win the PRIDE title, he became one of their most popular fighters and went to war with the likes of Takanori Gomi and Gilbert Melendez. A move to DREAM in 2008 led to more success as he defeated top-ranked opponents like Josh Thomson and Gesias Cavalcante.
By 2013 it seemed like Kawajiri was destined to be on the list of the greatest fighters to never fight in the UFC, but he surprised everyone by signing with the promotion in 2014. Wins over Sean Soriano, Dennis Siver and Jason Knight followed, but realistically he was past his prime at that point and he was defeated handily by Clay Guida and Dennis Bermudez. Kawajiri is still competing for Rizin, but how much longer he can continue is a question mark.
#4 Kid Yamamoto
For a period of time – around 2004-5 – many people considered Norifumi ‘Kid’ Yamamoto to be the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in all of MMA. A natural 135lbs, Kid was fighting at that point in Shooto and K-1 Hero’s, and was defeating men like Caol Uno, Royler Gracie and Genki Sudo – all at 155lbs, and usually with vicious knockouts. An Olympic-level wrestler, it was with his concrete fists – and bad attitude – that Kid made his name.
A brief excursion back to wrestling – Kid tried and failed to make the 2008 Japanese Olympic team due to a dislocated elbow – he returned to MMA in 2007 and picked up where he left off by defeating future top ten Bantamweight Bibiano Fernandes.
Before he could make his debut with the new DREAM promotion, however, disaster struck. A torn ACL sidelined him until 2009 and when he returned, he was never the same fighter, losing to the likes of Joe Warren and Masanori Kanehara.
A long-awaited UFC debut finally came in 2011, but as of this writing, Yamamoto is without a win in the Octagon in four attempts. He now hasn’t fought since February 2015 and, at the age of 40, is likely retired. In his prime, however, he was a genuinely scary talent and had the lighter divisions had the same kind of spotlight they do today, he’d probably be far more respected worldwide.
#3 Shinya Aoki
One of the most dangerous submission fighters in MMA history, Aoki is also one of the most divisive talents too – his fans would have you believe he’s an all-time great, and his record – with wins over Tatsuya Kawajiri, Gesias Cavalcante, Joachim Hansen, Vitor Ribeiro and Eddie Alvarez – would back that up.
His detractors meanwhile would claim he was the benefactor of a lot of biased Japanese refereeing, abused the rules to his advantage, was always a heavily one-dimensional fighter, and had no chin. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Aoki rose to fame in the dying days of PRIDE, debuting there with his rainbow-coloured long tights and tapping out Joachim Hansen with a gogoplata – one of the first times the move had been seen in top-level MMA.
When PRIDE was bought out by Zuffa in 2007, like many of his contemporaries he joined the new DREAM promotion, where he had his greatest successes. Aoki fought seventeen times for the promotion and won fifteen times, usually via submission.
In 2009 there was even an argument that he was the top 155lber in the world, but a one-sided loss to Gilbert Melendez in 2010 put paid to that idea and with the US, not Japan now being the home of the world’s best fighters, Aoki decided against a UFC run and largely ended up being forgotten as a top fighter. His record remains outstanding to this day, however – as do highlight reels of his submission skills.
#2 Takanori Gomi
Although the ‘Fireball Kid’ has looked atrocious in his recent UFC outings – losing five in a row – at his peak, nobody could deny his greatness. Rewind just over a decade – to the end of 2005, to be exact – and Takanori Gomi ruled over the 155lbs division with an iron fist.
This was a time when the UFC had no Lightweights and so the top fighters of the division were housed by PRIDE – the likes of Joachim Hansen, Jens Pulver, Hayato Sakurai and Yves Edwards – and Gomi stood head and shoulders above them.
He’d debuted in PRIDE in 2004 and immediately stood out, knocking out Ralph Gracie with a flurry of knees in just seconds, and by the time the promotion decided to focus their Bushido series on the lighter weight classes, Gomi had become the poster-boy. A tournament was set up in 2005 to decide the first PRIDE Lightweight champion and it was no surprise when Gomi came out on top, beating Kawajiri, Luiz Azeredo and finally Sakurai to win the belt.
As PRIDE shut its doors in 2007, Gomi had just regained his top spot by thrashing Mitsuhiro Ishida. A run in the new Sengoku promotion wasn’t as great though, as he lost in upsets to Satoru Kitaoka and Sergei Golyaev.
After getting back on the winning track he made his UFC debut in 2010 and immediately mixed it with top-level Lightweights like Kenny Florian, Tyson Griffin and Clay Guida. And while his run in the Octagon ended badly – with a record of 4 wins and 9 losses – he’ll always be remembered as the kingpin of the division in the mid-2000’s.
#1 Kazushi Sakuraba
A true legend of the sport, Kazushi Sakuraba was last seen on 12/29/2015, losing in sad fashion to Shinya Aoki at the age of 46. For viewers watching him for the first time, it was probably hard to believe that in his prime, he was arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
But that was the truth – prime Sakuraba was an incredible talent and only the weird nature of Japanese MMA – the need to pit the best native fighters against monsters from foreign lands – meant that he peaked far earlier than he should’ve done and took criminal amounts of damage.
After a brief UFC appearance in 1997 that saw him win an early openweight tournament, Sakuraba shot to fame in PRIDE as one of the most exciting talents on the scene. An incredibly skilled submission artist with a wicked wrestling game, at times it appeared that Sakuraba was unstoppable.
His peak came in late 1999 when he became the first man to defeat one of the legendary Gracie family – in this instance Royler – in a modern MMA fight. He followed this up by beating another three Gracies – Royce, Renzo and Ryan – earning the nickname ‘The Gracie Hunter’.
This was 2001 and if he’d been in the UFC, Sakuraba would’ve been fighting – and probably beating –the likes of Carlos Newton and Matt Hughes at 170lbs. Unfortunately, though, he was pitted against huge monsters like Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Cro Cop – men that outweighed him by massive amounts – in the ring of PRIDE and the damage began to add up even when he managed to beat large 205lbers like Kevin Randleman and Quinton Jackson.
By 2003 Sakuraba was seen as washed-up, but he continued to fight into the latter part of the decade despite taking hellacious beatings from the likes of Ricardo Arona and Melvin Manhoef.
Even as a battered shell of his former self, he was still able to pull out the odd win – witness his miraculous 2009 submission of Zelg Galesic. Despite slipping into self-parody at the end, Sakuraba in his prime was a one-of-a-kind fighter – a man before his time – and in any other era, he’d probably be a legendary UFC champion. As it is, he’s still far and away the best MMA fighter ever produced in Asia.
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