Olympic Gold Medalist Satoshi Ishii Signs With World Victory Road
by Nate Wilcox on Jun 1, 2009 12:25 PM EDT
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Sergio Non has the story:
Judo champion Satoshi Ishii agreed to a deal with World Victory Road to appear on a Sengoku card within a year, Nightmare of Battle reports. Ishii, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist in the 100+ kg weight class, also had been pursued by the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Dream.
UFC reportedly signed Ishii several months ago, but the 22-year-old judoka reconsidered after getting a lucrative offer from a Japanese promotion.
"The thing is this: the kid’s sitting on a lottery ticket right now," UFC President Dana White said in February, according to MMAWeekly.com. "He’s being offered millions of dollars in Japan. ... If he comes back and tells me I want to take this lottery ticket, I’ll give it to him. He needs to decide what he wants to do with his life. Just because I have a contract with him, I’m not going to try to tell him what he should do with his life."
This is a huge coup for WVR and should help them immensely in their campaign to get a network TV deal. Ishii is a big star in Japan and could potentially carry MMA back to prominence in his home country.
Ishii clearly is a top shelf athletic talent with a perfect pedigree in one of the chief feeder disciplines of MMA. Judo provides an outstanding base in takedowns and takedown defense from the clinch as well as a decent base in submissions. He'll need to rapidly enhance his striking skills and will probably want to study BJJ intensively as well to beef up his submission game.
Ishii has the youth to fill in the gaps in his skill set and is possibly the most exciting prospect in Japanese MMA history.
Unlike previous Olympic Judokas entering MMA, Ishii is not coming in at the end of a long athletic career, but rather very much at the beginning of one.
The big question is, will WVR bring him along patiently? Any MMA debutante needs some fights to build up his experience level gradually, facing a series of increasingly challenging opponents rather than being thrown in at the deep end.
Japanese promoters have a terrible track record of throwing stars from the Judo world in at the very deep end of MMA competition. We'll see if WVR makes that same mistake with Ishii.
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"Ishii is a big star in Japan and could potentially carry MMA back to prominence in his home country."
Or, he could go the Tatsuya Iwasaki route.
Success in one TMA does not necessarily translate to MMA greatness.
NB.
Although detractors decry (MMA) as a brutal, bloody form of human cockfighting, aficionados know it is a brutal, bloody, totally fucking awesome form of human cockfighting. -The Onion
by The Kittitas Kid on Jun 1, 2009 11:52 AM EDT reply actions
of course
I’m strictly referring to his high profile in Japanese culture in that point.
Ishii’s skills in the cage remain unproven.
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
Ah...I was hoping he would come to the UFC.
I love seeing a judoka in action in the cage. Something about being able to accomplish judo throws sans gi just amazes me.
I think he needs to earn his way into the UFC
long term, if he proves himself, I’d love to see it but I don’t think he’s another Brock Lesnar, ready to jump in against top competition with a 0-0 record.
Lesnar benefitted from the relatively thin UFC heavyweight class and his own overwhelming size.
Ishii will either be a small heavyweight or cut down to the murderous Lt Heavy class.
I’d love to see WVR build towards an Ishii vs King Mo match but both need time to build to that and King Mo has a year’s head start.
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
Also...
Lesnar had a crazy wrestling base. Which just translates so much easier to MMA than judo. It’s not a knock on judo as a whole…it just takes more work to turn it into a workable skill in MMA.
Contributing Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
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by Brent Brookhouse on Jun 1, 2009 12:15 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm not 100% sold on that assertion
I think that both disciplines prepare you very well for the takedown phase of the game — perhaps wrestling gives you a slight edge from the outside and working your sprawl. But I think the big leg up judoka have on submissions training makes up for that.
I think a lot of the edge wrestlers have coming into MMA comes from the intensity of their training and competition regimes. I think that judo at the highest levels matches that.
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
I think you are right about that. The training and work regiment needed to succeed in wrestling is insane. But also, at the highest levels, the guys that are making that transition are great athletes and can do it all and pick up on MMA quickly. A guy like GSP is one of those athletes that happened to not wrestle before, but got great quick. Lesner is an anomaly because of his size. He took a strange path and didn’t end up in the NFL. That’s where most of the US athletes of his caliber end up. The same time I agree with you about the wrestling work-hard ethic, I know some wrestlers that were not athletes and they survived on drilling and robot like stamina. They can hardly make the transition from walking to chewing gum without a problem, but they have wrestled there whole life and have gotten good. These are the wrestlers that will never be any good off there back and can’t strike there way out of a paper bag.
ishii won a gold medal in judo – he’s fit/trained at the highest level.
by Ronnie Liddle on Jun 1, 2009 5:06 PM EDT up reply actions
Insofar as Judo emphasizes the gi, it can’t be as easy to transfer compared to a no-gi grappling like freestyle or collegiate wrestling. But the athlete in question is the principle factor in that conversion.
"I see him beating Anderson Silva. I see him picking him apart. Him at a 131 years old...(trails off)." - Tito on Belfort at Affliction:DOR
that's a good point
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
judo is also about using your opponent's energy against him
and that will work, gi or no gi.
I’m starting to get a sense that most fighters in the UFC have figured out how to defend single and double leg takedowns. It’s almost a Darwinian thing in that those who had poor wrestling defense quickly got GnP out of the UFC by all the wrestlers.
while it is important to have solid wrestling, you have to take it to the next level with trips and body shots out of the clinch (ala Bones Jones) or even tripping while punching (ala Machida)
the new and improved wrestling = old wrestling + Judo (or judo-like skills)
the new and improved wrestling = old wrestling + Judo (or judo-like skills)
aka Greco :-P
"I see him beating Anderson Silva. I see him picking him apart. Him at a 131 years old...(trails off)." - Tito on Belfort at Affliction:DOR
by Rundownloser on Jun 1, 2009 10:16 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Greco's kewl but
it forbids attacks below the waist. So wrestling + Greco + Judo (for all the trips) as your new wrestling skills sounds good.
The point is the days of thinking you can take anybody down w/ a single or double leg are over. The greats are evolving.
The big deal with Lesnar isn’t his size, lots of MMA fighters are bigger than Lesnar(Tim Sylvia is bigger than Brock Lesnar). It’s Brock Lesnar’s athleticism at that size, while incredibly powerful he moves like a much smaller man. It’s that level of athleticism for large guys that normally ends up in the NFL. Sometimes people want to key in on Brock’s size but if it was just size then the heavyweight divisions would of always been dominated by the biggest guys and that has never been the case. It takes more than just being large to win at this level of competition.
true
but that’s still an advantage that ishii doesn’t have. He’s very athletic obviously but he’s not freakishly large + freakishly fast.
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
At 5’11" and 240lbs Ishii is going to be small for the division, he might be better served to drop down to LH. Still some of the greatest heavyweights ever in the sport were on the small side too, talent and athleticism trump size in the heavyweight division.
If MMA can start stealing some of those giant freaks of nature that are way to strong and fast from ball sports then I imagine it will become more and more difficult to compete as a small HW.
I dislike Matt Hughes.
Agree completly. Imagine a guy of Brock Lesnar’s or Shane Carwin’s size and athleticism actually starting MMA training in his teens/early 20’s instead of his 30’s. The future of the heavyweight division could be pretty scary.
droool
hmmm, that didn’t come out right.
Psh. Let’s imagine them starting training when they’re three like Machida.
Bolts from the Blue // "Game over." - Jamal Williams
Bloody Elbow // "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." - H.L. Mencken
by Richard Wade on Jun 3, 2009 11:52 PM EDT up reply actions
Couple more notes from the conference:
- Ishii entered to the “Last of the Mohicans” theme, a la Rickson
- the contract will be for two years and Ishii will officially sign at a public ceremony this week
- Ishii says he’s ready to fight whenever, and restated his intention to train with Fedor in the near future
Dana's contract with him...
was just for the UFC to have exclusive negotiating rights with Ishii for a few weeks. He never officially signed a proper fight contract. At least to my knowledge. If he did I don’t think Dana would let him walk away from it.
See Randy Couture.
by Stefan Manojlovic on Jun 1, 2009 12:16 PM EDT reply actions
There is a huge difference between at the time world champion Randy Couture and never fought in MMA (not to mention mostly unknown in the US) Satoshi Ishii. It just doesn’t hurt the UFC to let Ishii go fight in Japan where as it would of been devestating to allow Randy Couture to walk away with a UFC belt and fight someplace else. Heck for the UFC allowing Ishii to fight in Japan takes a lot of the risk out of signing him, they can see if he will develop into a legit elite fighter with another organization paying him the big money.
well, the biggest difference betwen randy and ishii is that the dude above is right. they didnt have a contract for any fights. big ups to ishii though pulling the kid yamamoto special – nothing like getting money and pr for sitting on your ass.
Agree with that but even if they did have him signed for fights it was still a completly different situation. The bottom line is that Ishii is just vastly more valuable in Japan than he is in the US currently and the UFC has no immediate plans to “invade” Japan.
its a totally untestable theory, but history says anytime anyone tried to bounce out of the ufc, theyd fight it, even when the ufc and the fighters didnt draw flies.
Jeff Monson, Tim Sylvia, Cro Cop,…. the UFC has let many guys out of contracts when asked before without it being an issue at all. Randy was different he didn’t ask he quit with a belt and then all but dared them to try and stop him fighting someplace else. The Randy situation is a completly different situation that has nothing to do with this topic.
Those guys had all fought and lost before asking for their release, which was then granted. If they had won and/or were bigger draws I think the UFC wouldn’t have been so keen to agree to release them. Ishii had a lot to offer the UFC, of course he had never fought before but I think the UFC’s pursuit of him was to use him as their way into Japan. Which he would of being a huge draw in, no doubt. I know the invasion of Japan has been pretty much abandoned now, but at the time Dana seemed dead set on going there. And if he had Ishii signed to a proper contract and Ishii said " Nah, release me." Well I don’t think Dana would be so quick to do so.
by Stefan Manojlovic on Jun 1, 2009 4:25 PM EDT up reply actions
i agree with that but White was very open from the start about not holding Ishii to whatever contract they signed. This situation is nothing at all like the Randy Couture situation, they aren’t even comparible. Heck letting a guy go that has never fought MMA before isn’t even as big of an issue as letting a top level fighter out of his contract when they asked after a loss.
Good move...
Ishii will not only get paid a shitload of money, but he’ll be getting paid all that money as a novice fighter for now in the sport. He has a lot of options. He can go through his tenure with Sengoku, and if he wants, head to the UFC after the two year stint, but my gut tells me the money is going to be ridiculous if he’s successful, not to mention sponsor money.
Follow my analysis of all things MMA on BloodyElbow.com
I love how some people are writing something like: He should fight in SENGOKU for now and then go to UFC after he wins a few.
Hasn’t it crossed your minds that if he does so good during that time that the UFC would want him, that the state of MMA in Japan would by then be many times better than now because of his success?
People act as if just because the state of Japanese MMA is bad right now it can never turn around again. Japan still has as much potential as any other country when it comes to MMA.
good point
I’m speaking merely as a fan fantasizing about the ideal scenario I’d like to see.
Even if this is the only opportunity for the UFC to sign Ishii, without a WEC league to build him up, I just don’t know what they’d do with him. He’d get killed if thrown into the deepest division in MMA with no experience.
"the spirit of your average dumbass with more overblown rhetoric" OR "the self-appointed savior of MMA"
If he had to sign with a Japanese org I would rather it would be with Sengoku. They seem to care more about the sport aspect of MMA and therefore be less likely to throw him to the wolves like with the other judokas.
lol
DREAM would’ve probably tried to set up a Fedor/Ishii match for Dynamite or some other nonsense like that.
100kg+ What is his exact fighting weight?
100kg+ Just means over 220 pounds but he does not look like he can weigh much more than that.
Also I’d imagine they will throw him against Wiuff since it seemed to work wonders with Mo.
Ishii said he wants to fight at heavyweight, and Sengoku said they’ll be upping the number of HW fights they put on.
No idea.
Here’s who’s fought for Sengoku at HW though:
- Josh Barnett
- Mu Bae Choi
- Marcio Cruz
- Kazuyuki Fujita
- Peter Graham
- Dave Herman
- Mo Lawal
- Jeff Monson
- Yoshihiro Nakao
- Pawel Nastula
- Valentijn Overeem
- Moise Rimbon
- Antonio Silva
- Fabio Silva
- Mo Smith
- Kazuo Takahashi
- James Thompson
- Travis Wiuff
- Dong Yi Yang
- Big Jim York
- Hidehiko Yoshida
If the UFC can’t have him, thank God Sengoku got him. They’re really good at building talent. Lord knows what would have happened to him had he signed with DREAM.
"I see him beating Anderson Silva. I see him picking him apart. Him at a 131 years old...(trails off)." - Tito on Belfort at Affliction:DOR
Ishii was getting killed at every gym he would train at… he would get crushed in the UFC.
I think he wanted to cash in on the lottery ticket :)
Maybe both. They don’t seem to be mutually exclusive.
Bolts from the Blue // "Game over." - Jamal Williams
Bloody Elbow // "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." - H.L. Mencken
by Richard Wade on Jun 3, 2009 11:52 PM EDT up reply actions
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