Written by Lyman Hoyt
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Friday, January 01 2010
Satoshi Ishii (left) reacts as Hidehiko Yoshida is announced as the winner of their Fields Dynamite fight. SavSci Japan editor Lyman Hoyt was impressed with Ishii's toughness and heart, though there's much work to be done before he can compete against the top heavyweights in MMA.
The reining +100 kg Olympic Judo gold medalist and arguably Japan’s biggest sports star, Satoshi Ishii finally made his pro MMA debut against Hidehiko Yoshida at the New Year’s Eve Fields Dynamite event. After a slow start, Ishii was competitive in the final two rounds but eventually lost to the veteran by unanimous decision. Yoshida himself is an Olympic judo gold medalist, having won the 78 kg event at the 1992 games in Barcelona.
Olympic gold medal winners in judo automatically become huge mainstream media stars in Japan, and the boyish and likable Ishii became especially popular. His decision to join the world of professional MMA angered Japan’s judo establishment. While there’s nothing technically preventing Ishii from defending his gold medal at the 2012 Summer Games in London, the Japan Judo Federation has made it known that he’s now
persona non grata as far as they’re concerned. While they may reevaluate that position as the 2012 Olympics draw closer, Ishii has yet to give any indication that he’s interested in participating. For all practical purposes, he’s already a big enough celebrity in the country regardless of how his MMA career develops.
The matchup with Yoshida was attractive to promoters and fans due to the similarity in both men’s path into professional fight sports. Ishii’s decision was a much bigger deal in Japan, due to the explosive growth in MMA’s popularity. When Yoshida decided to try his hand at the sport, PRIDE had already become a huge promotion in the wake of Kazushi Sakuraba’s ‘feud’ against the Gracie family but MMA had yet to reach the ‘critical mass’ both within Japan and internationally that it has now. Furthermore, the ubiquitous reach of the Internet spawned an entire media devoted to covering MMA and that helped make Ishii’s move to the sport a much more significant event.
Ishii has taken a very circuitous route to begin his MMA career. He originally announced his plans to become a professional fighter not long after the Olympics and initially confirmed that he’d signed with FEG to fight in their DREAM promotion. His debut was planned for early 2009, but Sports Nippon then reported that he was slated to have his first professional fight at the year end Dynamite show. Ishii then announced that he had rejected FEG’s offer, and expressed a desire to take his game to the United States and fight in the UFC.
This led to a public ‘courtship’ between Ishii and the top US MMA promotion. Ishii made a number of public appearances in Japan wearing a UFC t-shirt, and at the time was negotiating exclusively with the promotion. The ‘Ishii to UFC’ reports reached a crescendo when he traveled to Las Vegas as the personal guest of Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White to attend UFC 92. There was speculation at the time in Japan that he’d sign a contract during his visit but that wasn’t forthcoming. Not long after, reports surfaced that he’d broken off talks with the UFC.
He spent some time in America training with American Top Team and Xtreme Couture before returning to Japan. In early June he finally ended speculation with the announcement that he’d signed with World Victory Road to fight in their Sengoku promotion. Sengoku made it official at a public signing several days later. In September, the promotion announced that Ishii would debut at Dynamite 2009 against fellow judoka Yoshida.
There has always been criticism surrounding the management of Yoshida’s MMA career, with the primary critique being that PRIDE rushed him into high profile events against tough opponents before he was ready. There’s definitely some validity to that, as the promotion wanted to capitalize on a popularity level that far exceeded his skills and experience at the time. Yoshida made his debut at PRIDE 23 beating rugged veteran Don Frye. While Frye is certainly a formidable opponent, his lack of ground fighting and submission defense made him a good matchup for Yoshida who beat him via a first round arm bar.
In the aftermath of Dynamite, there have been similar criticisms of the decision to match Ishii against Yoshida in his MMA debut. Putting aside the obvious promotional upside of the matchup among Japanese fight fans, it really wasn’t a bad matchup for Ishii despite Yoshida’s superior experience. Yoshida had lost four of his last five fights, defeating only 48 year old Maurice Smith who entered the bout with a 12-12 record and without facing a top opponent in nearly eight years. Yoshida hadn’t fought in nearly a year since an early January 2009 decision loss to Sanae Kikuta and at age 40 had been the subject of much retirement speculation. Additionally, as an opponent with a similar judo based skill set Ishii wasn’t required to defend against an elite level striker or BJJ practitioner.
Ishii’s biggest liability against Yoshida was clearly his inexperience. In the first round he looked nervous and tentative, throwing pawing, ineffective strikes as Yoshida repeatedly nailed him with power shots. For a moment it didn’t look as if Ishii would make it out of the first round, but he withstood the initial barrage despite a possibly broken nose. He began to fight effectively in the second round, showing some better striking form and overall controlling the action. He was penalized a point for a painful low blow that stopped the action for several minutes as Yoshida recovered. In the final round, Ishii looked like a much more confident fighter and competed with his veteran opponent on even terms.
Overall, Ishii showed considerable promise as a professional fighter. No amount of formal martial arts background, gym training or sparring can adequately prepare a competitor for his first fight so Ishii’s early ‘nerves’ were to be expected. There had been talk among Japanese MMA fans that he really wasn’t “committed” to the sport, but he demonstrated a fighter’s heart and resolve making it through a difficult first round. After that his confidence appeared to grow, and he began to show some decent striking skills—the most difficult component of fighting for a judoka to implement into his game. Near the end of the second round, he took Yoshida down and moved fluidly into side control but that gave only a glimpse of his ground fighting ability.
A major problem for Ishii, however, is the scattershot approach he’s taken to his training and preparation. He’s trained at various points in the US with Xtreme Couture and American Top Team, in Brazil with Lyoto Machida, and in Japan with Alliance Square and others. There’s definitely nothing wrong with availing one’s self of the best training the world has to offer, but that’s no substitute for finding a training ‘home’ and using it for a base. An obvious training ‘home’ for Ishii would be Yoshida Dojo, founded by his Dynamite opponent Hidehiko Yoshida. Yoshida Dojo has a roster of many top Japanese fighters, and there’s few better qualified to help him leverage his strength in judo while rounding out his skill set. Assuming he didn’t want to relocate to America to train at one of the top facilities there, he should at least align himself with a top MMA gym in Tokyo.
So what’s next for Satoshi Ishii and his MMA career? While he obviously would have preferred to win his debut fight, there was nothing to suggest that he can’t become a top notch competitor. To the contrary, after the slow start he demonstrated much that he can build on. He needs to become a more fluent striker, but that can be said about any number of experienced MMA fighters let alone a ‘rookie’. Most importantly, he needs to make sure that he doesn’t get thrown in ‘over his head’ too early. It’s inevitable that he’ll be facing opponents with more experience, but he needs to get a lot more training and experience under his belt before he steps up in class. At age 23, he’s got plenty of time to learn his craft but he needs to be regimented in his training and the management of his career.
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