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From MMA’s inception to the late 2000s, it was impossible to faithfully summarize he sport without mentioning the role of Japan. But the past decade has marked a drastic decline in the popularity of Japanese MMA as well as the success of Japanese fighters at the highest level. That looks like it may be changing, however, as a new round of exciting Japanese prospects have recently made their way into the UFC. Tatsuro Taira garnered lots of interest through five UFC fights, but Rinya Nakamura is the one that catches my eye most.
Nakamura is 28 years old and started his MMA career in 2021. Since he’s so new to the sport, he has pretty much his entire development curve ahead of him, and should be making steady, significant improvements from fight to fight. His age isn’t ideal, as it will put him at 32-34 years old during the window that most fighters peak, between their 7th and 9th year in the sport.
But Nakamura’s advanced age is due to his extensive background in Freestyle Wrestling. He wasn’t just a guy who did some wrestling, he has serious and impressive credentials on the world stage.
Nakamura won a World Under 23 Championship and beat skilled and accomplished wrestlers. His best wins in Freestyle were Olympic silver medalist, Rei Higuchi, Yuki Takahashi, who would win gold at worlds a year after being tech falled by Nakamura, Islam Dudaev, a two-time U23 bronze medalist, and Sandeep Tomar, who won gold at the Asian games and competed in the 2016 Olympics. When Nakamura wrestled the best in the world, such as Takuto Otoguro, Haji Aliyev, or Yowlys Bonne Rodríguez, he lost decisively, but the fact that we’re even discussing his matches with wrestlers of that quality puts Nakamura on a level far above nearly every other wrestling convert in MMA.
Given the level he competed at in Freestyle, it goes without saying that Nakamura is one of the best athletes at Bantamweight. Between his freakish athleticism and high level wrestling background, he has the perfect foundation for a successful MMA career.
In his wrestling matches, Nakamura displayed a fairly typical Japanese style, with aggressive handfighting and active collar tie snaps. His highest percentage takedown was a split-step high crotch, which isn’t a takedown that translates exactly into the distance and stances of MMA, but it’s a relatively simple adjustment to turn that sort of deep penetration into a more standard double leg or snatch high crotch. He also had a tricky ankle pick, hitting it off his collar tie snap or as a counter, even nearly catching Olympic silver medalist and thee-time World Champion, Haji Aliev with it.
Nakamura’s ankle pick has also proven one of his most consistent takedowns in MMA. It’s his go-to with his opponent pressed to the cage, where he can pin their upper body in place and use the ankle pick to pull out their base.
He’ll use the ankle pick as the finisher in a chain, or hit it directly from the clinch. Interestingly, he likes to underhook the leg he’s about to pick out like he’s going for a Metzger, then distract the opponent by threatening an outside trip or a double leg before picking out the ankle. He’ll then keep hold of the ankle and use it to step into a leg mount, shelving the opponent’s legs underneath his own to make it more difficult for them to get back up. His riding game against the fence is very basic though - he’s not quite sure how to get the leg mount deep enough to stick, and lacks transition options from the position.
The ankle pick is a strong chaining option in clinch wrestling exchanges, but so far Nakamura hasn’t shown much else on the cage. As he fights better competition, he’ll need some threatening first or second options to go to before the ankle pick, as more skilled defensive wrestlers will grip fight actively with underhooks, whizzers, and wrist control to keep him from easily changing levels to the ankle. Most high level cage wrestlers favor a single leg lift, which can be chained easily into the ankle pick.
Nakamura’s style of grappling is interesting because he works best away from the cage. With the most recent generation of MMA grapplers, we’ve seen a move away from open space wrestling and top control, prioritizing cage riding positions that exploit attempts by the bottom fighter to wall-walk back to their feet. But Nakamura has the athleticism to hit explosive takedowns in open space and his top control is optimized to take advantage of them.
Nakamura has a cannon of a blast double leg, but as a southpaw he has some trouble getting to it consistently, given the increased distance of open-stance matchups. His blast doubles have typically come against other southpaws, or as an orthodox opponent briefly steps into southpaw on the attack, which Nakamura uses as a trigger to penetrate immediately and dump them straight onto their back.
Nakamura has also shown strong chain wrestling, though we haven’t seen quite enough in his eight MMA fights for common patterns and favored routes to reveal themselves. He’s been able to take most of his opponents down without working too hard for it, but when he has to he can relentlessly pursue the takedown, chaining knee taps and snaps to a front headlock.
The biggest issues I see in Nakamura’s wrestling right now are a lack of striking setups and an unclear route to penetration against orthodox opponents. As we’ll see soon, Nakamura does some stuff on the feet that could be used to finesse his way into takedown entries, but when he’s going for a takedown he tends to just let it fly without hiding it. As he develops and grows in comfort on the feet, hiding his takedowns behind strikes will be necessary to get in clean on the hips of better defensive wrestlers.
His takedowns against orthodox opponents have mostly been driving them to the cage and picking out their ankle, or shooting when they step into southpaw. He hasn’t struggled to wrestle in any of his fights so as of yet I’m not sure if he finds it awkward shooting on an orthodox opponent from range, or if he’s just not shown it yet. But given the increased distance, setting those shots up with strikes becomes even more important. Some consistent options for open-stance distance takedowns are hiding an outside step double leg or high crotch behind rear straights, using a snatch single leg, or stepping through into orthodox off a long rear hand and going for a traditional double leg/high crotch.
On the feet, Nakamura performs a very nascent imitation of the standard “bouncy southpaw striker” game. He bounces in and out of range actively, but doesn’t yet use the full advantages of that style to set up striking entries with the rhythm of the bouncing footwork.
His in and out bouncing has made him difficult to kick though, allowing him to draw out and avoid committed kicks from opponents by showing the bounce in and retreating.
At this point it seems that Nakamura hasn’t quite sorted out his broad strategic outlook - where he wants to be in the cage, what direction he likes to move, what his high percentage strikes are, and how he prefers to get to them. But for a fighter only three years into their pro career, that’s to be expected.
He has the disposition of a counter puncher, operating most effectively off the backfoot when his opponent is closing distance aggressively, but he’s shown no eye for reactive takedowns yet, so his wrestling relies on moving forward.
Nakamura likes the classic hop-step straight counter, where the southpaw baits a committed rear hand from the opponent and hops out of range while feeding them a huge left on the open side. He’s able to hit these when his opponents forget their defense and run at him, but hasn’t figured out how to draw out the shot to counter against a more patient opponent. Though he has played around with covering the lead hand to force his opponent to throw their rear hand, but he tends to give too much ground to effectively counter.
The highlight of Nakamura’s striking is his open side kicks. He works actively with quick, sharp rear kicks to the body, legs, and head, slotting in the odd front kick here and there. He’s already scored one headkick knockout in his pre-UFC days and came close on a few other occasions. The hard body kicks provide excellent cover for the head kick, and as he’s such a great wrestler, he’s free to bang away with kicks all he likes with little worry of getting taken down off them.
Right now his kicks are still fairly disconnected with his hands, but as he grows more comfortable operating in close, his rear straight will provide an effective setup for both the body and head kicks, drawing out the opponent’s parry to kick around.
Nakamura is 28 years old and started his MMA career in 2021. Since he’s so new to the sport, he has pretty much his entire development curve ahead of him, and should be making steady, significant improvements from fight to fight. His age isn’t ideal, as it will put him at 32-34 years old during the window that most fighters peak, between their 7th and 9th year in the sport.
But Nakamura’s advanced age is due to his extensive background in Freestyle Wrestling. He wasn’t just a guy who did some wrestling, he has serious and impressive credentials on the world stage.
Nakamura won a World Under 23 Championship and beat skilled and accomplished wrestlers. His best wins in Freestyle were Olympic silver medalist, Rei Higuchi, Yuki Takahashi, who would win gold at worlds a year after being tech falled by Nakamura, Islam Dudaev, a two-time U23 bronze medalist, and Sandeep Tomar, who won gold at the Asian games and competed in the 2016 Olympics. When Nakamura wrestled the best in the world, such as Takuto Otoguro, Haji Aliyev, or Yowlys Bonne Rodríguez, he lost decisively, but the fact that we’re even discussing his matches with wrestlers of that quality puts Nakamura on a level far above nearly every other wrestling convert in MMA.
Given the level he competed at in Freestyle, it goes without saying that Nakamura is one of the best athletes at Bantamweight. Between his freakish athleticism and high level wrestling background, he has the perfect foundation for a successful MMA career.
In his wrestling matches, Nakamura displayed a fairly typical Japanese style, with aggressive handfighting and active collar tie snaps. His highest percentage takedown was a split-step high crotch, which isn’t a takedown that translates exactly into the distance and stances of MMA, but it’s a relatively simple adjustment to turn that sort of deep penetration into a more standard double leg or snatch high crotch. He also had a tricky ankle pick, hitting it off his collar tie snap or as a counter, even nearly catching Olympic silver medalist and thee-time World Champion, Haji Aliev with it.
Nakamura’s ankle pick has also proven one of his most consistent takedowns in MMA. It’s his go-to with his opponent pressed to the cage, where he can pin their upper body in place and use the ankle pick to pull out their base.
He’ll use the ankle pick as the finisher in a chain, or hit it directly from the clinch. Interestingly, he likes to underhook the leg he’s about to pick out like he’s going for a Metzger, then distract the opponent by threatening an outside trip or a double leg before picking out the ankle. He’ll then keep hold of the ankle and use it to step into a leg mount, shelving the opponent’s legs underneath his own to make it more difficult for them to get back up. His riding game against the fence is very basic though - he’s not quite sure how to get the leg mount deep enough to stick, and lacks transition options from the position.
The ankle pick is a strong chaining option in clinch wrestling exchanges, but so far Nakamura hasn’t shown much else on the cage. As he fights better competition, he’ll need some threatening first or second options to go to before the ankle pick, as more skilled defensive wrestlers will grip fight actively with underhooks, whizzers, and wrist control to keep him from easily changing levels to the ankle. Most high level cage wrestlers favor a single leg lift, which can be chained easily into the ankle pick.
Nakamura’s style of grappling is interesting because he works best away from the cage. With the most recent generation of MMA grapplers, we’ve seen a move away from open space wrestling and top control, prioritizing cage riding positions that exploit attempts by the bottom fighter to wall-walk back to their feet. But Nakamura has the athleticism to hit explosive takedowns in open space and his top control is optimized to take advantage of them.
Nakamura has a cannon of a blast double leg, but as a southpaw he has some trouble getting to it consistently, given the increased distance of open-stance matchups. His blast doubles have typically come against other southpaws, or as an orthodox opponent briefly steps into southpaw on the attack, which Nakamura uses as a trigger to penetrate immediately and dump them straight onto their back.
Nakamura has also shown strong chain wrestling, though we haven’t seen quite enough in his eight MMA fights for common patterns and favored routes to reveal themselves. He’s been able to take most of his opponents down without working too hard for it, but when he has to he can relentlessly pursue the takedown, chaining knee taps and snaps to a front headlock.
The biggest issues I see in Nakamura’s wrestling right now are a lack of striking setups and an unclear route to penetration against orthodox opponents. As we’ll see soon, Nakamura does some stuff on the feet that could be used to finesse his way into takedown entries, but when he’s going for a takedown he tends to just let it fly without hiding it. As he develops and grows in comfort on the feet, hiding his takedowns behind strikes will be necessary to get in clean on the hips of better defensive wrestlers.
His takedowns against orthodox opponents have mostly been driving them to the cage and picking out their ankle, or shooting when they step into southpaw. He hasn’t struggled to wrestle in any of his fights so as of yet I’m not sure if he finds it awkward shooting on an orthodox opponent from range, or if he’s just not shown it yet. But given the increased distance, setting those shots up with strikes becomes even more important. Some consistent options for open-stance distance takedowns are hiding an outside step double leg or high crotch behind rear straights, using a snatch single leg, or stepping through into orthodox off a long rear hand and going for a traditional double leg/high crotch.
On the feet, Nakamura performs a very nascent imitation of the standard “bouncy southpaw striker” game. He bounces in and out of range actively, but doesn’t yet use the full advantages of that style to set up striking entries with the rhythm of the bouncing footwork.
His in and out bouncing has made him difficult to kick though, allowing him to draw out and avoid committed kicks from opponents by showing the bounce in and retreating.
At this point it seems that Nakamura hasn’t quite sorted out his broad strategic outlook - where he wants to be in the cage, what direction he likes to move, what his high percentage strikes are, and how he prefers to get to them. But for a fighter only three years into their pro career, that’s to be expected.
He has the disposition of a counter puncher, operating most effectively off the backfoot when his opponent is closing distance aggressively, but he’s shown no eye for reactive takedowns yet, so his wrestling relies on moving forward.
Nakamura likes the classic hop-step straight counter, where the southpaw baits a committed rear hand from the opponent and hops out of range while feeding them a huge left on the open side. He’s able to hit these when his opponents forget their defense and run at him, but hasn’t figured out how to draw out the shot to counter against a more patient opponent. Though he has played around with covering the lead hand to force his opponent to throw their rear hand, but he tends to give too much ground to effectively counter.
The highlight of Nakamura’s striking is his open side kicks. He works actively with quick, sharp rear kicks to the body, legs, and head, slotting in the odd front kick here and there. He’s already scored one headkick knockout in his pre-UFC days and came close on a few other occasions. The hard body kicks provide excellent cover for the head kick, and as he’s such a great wrestler, he’s free to bang away with kicks all he likes with little worry of getting taken down off them.
Right now his kicks are still fairly disconnected with his hands, but as he grows more comfortable operating in close, his rear straight will provide an effective setup for both the body and head kicks, drawing out the opponent’s parry to kick around.
Continued Here...
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