Media Why is Japan struggling in the UFC?

[spastikbecher]

Too proud for extreme weight cutting and steroids

 

[cmw43]

Yeah and outside of Mark hunt who do they have? For a culture that's all about violence and fighting they sure do fail to produce winning championship fighters. The expectation is that they would be good fighters as opposed to Japan whose culture is built around the exact opposite.

I don't think you realise how small 200k people is, you can basically fill the Rose Bowl twice or just take the town of Amarillo and that's everyone.

Just Hunt, Mighty Mo, the Tafas and Tuivasa would be over representing them for now tiny their population is.

Theres over 600 Japanese for every Samoan, 1700 americans for every Samoan they're 3% of the NFL which means a a Samoan is 40 times more likely to make the NFL than the average American.

 

[marvinparsons]

The same reason why do Japanese men struggle in physical male sports as a whole. They just aren't built for it typically. There's an occasional exception in the lower weight classes (Naoya Inoue), but it's rare.

Japanese had the third most gold medals last Summer Olympics and won in wrestling, Greco-Roman, and judo. Japan is good at rugby and baseball. Japanese people aren't tall, so yeah they aren't good at basketball or volleyball, but they are obviously athletic.

And MMA is a sport with weight classes so lack of height doesn't matter. It's most likely Japanese DGAF about competing in MMA.

People here are just racist as shit and want to come up with ways to portray Asian males as weak or effeminate.

Watching and hosting Pride, which was a freak show spectacle, never meant that a lot of locals wanted to train/fight. It was more like an extension of pro wrestling.

 

[Kyojiro Kagenuma]

their culture. it is not conducive to building individuality. MMA is an individual sport. their society is not particularly conducive to violence. it's that simple. sure, not cutting weight and whatever, but you have to be an animal in fighting. you have to be like Kid Yamamoto, or Takanori Gomi. these guys wanted to smash your face.

it's like asking why there's so many Samoan fighters when Samoa is WAY smaller than Japan. that's because Samoa's entire culture is built around violence and fighting. you come from a violent warrior society, guess what, you get violent warriors.

That is fucking nonsense lol.

 

[ChickenBrother]

Japan won the most medals at the 2024 Olympics in Judo and wrestling, including 8 golds in wrestling compared to the runners up at 2 golds each for Iran, USA and Bulgaria. And given Japan has always been well-represented in other combat sports, it's fair to say they do well at combat sports they actually care about.

Now someone mentioned sumo and how Mongolians tend to eat the Japanese's bento boxes in their own national sport. That is notable. Japan doesn't fuck around when it comes to sumo and they still do very well but it's interesting that Mongolians for some reason do it better.



But I guess that's like England inventing soccer, rugby and cricket but not being the top nation in any of them.

 

[Pancake Sprawl]

Are you fucking retarded?

are you? Japan is good at wrestling and boxing that's it. why do you think there's more Samoans in UFC than Japan? there's not even a million Samoans in the ENTIRE WORLD, there's over 100m Japanese. you tell me, they're overrepresented in combat sports because THERE IS MORE OF THEM WILLING TO DO IT THAN JAPANESE, it's that fucking simple. and why is this reason? because THAT'S PART OF THEIR CULTURE.

this isn't about "but the Samoans aren't good" i just told you they have 2 UFC champions, Japan 0. if you have more participants, the chances are higher you will find GOOD fighters. Japan obviously doesn't have more participants because they're WAY more Japanese in the world and yet barely any in MMA or UFC.

it's the same reason why there's more Hawaii fighters than a lot of other MUCH larger states, because in Hawaii motherfuckers ARE ALWAYS FIGHTING. it's not rocket science. i don't know wtf is everyone crying about what i said. look at when these streamers go to Japan and act like assholes, nobody does shit. those same streamers go to KOREA and get FUCKED UP, THAT is the difference. their culture prevents them from doing shit like that. OTHER cultures, not so much.

 

[arcadeperfect]

....wtf are you talking about. Japan is one of the top combat sports countries in the world. they legit have world champions in boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, judo, karate. i couldnt even name a samoan champion. david tua is probably the best samoan fighter ever and he never became world champion

The guy managed to nitpick Sumo of all things. The combat sport that has no worldwide depth but blatantly ignores the other sports you mentioned that actually have international competition.

 

[arcadeperfect]

How popular is MMA as a participant sport in Japan? That seems kind of important before debating 50,000 reasons.

There could be 20 dudes in Japan pursuing MMA as a career or 50,000, I honestly have no idea.

I'm Canadian and I can tell you MMA as a sport is extraordinarily niche. Hardly anyone takes it up as a serious sport and those that do aren't top athletes. It's that simple.

And even then MMA is probably more popular in Canada than it is in Japan. People don't seem to realize that it's still a niche sport to this day despite the partnership with ESPN.

 

[arcadeperfect]

They're probably the only Eastern Asian country that has a long history of ground fighting. They are the founders of Jiu Jitsu after all.

They're good at all the separate components of MMA, they just suck at putting it together. Cross training, cutting weight, selective match making, just a lot of problems really.

Japanese fighters just never cared much about losing, and thats why they lose so much.

There's also the factor that certain countries, all of their top talent go into other combat sports. People know that this is an issue even in the U.S but they don't apply this logic to other countries. Especially in an Asian country, if you're deemed an athletic talent you're siphoned right away, the rest are forced into a brutal academic schedule. The ones that find MMA aren't the lifelong athletes that were deemed gifted.

 

[arcadeperfect]

what do you mean? Japan has zero UFC champions. Samoans have 2, Robert Whittaker and Max Holloway. Mark Hunt is literally the ONLY non-European K-1 GP winner. they're also overrepresented in contact sports. which is my point. there's more Samoans WILLING to fight than there are Japanese which is why they end up doing better.

this is not just Samoan thing, this is ANY warrior culture. the Japanese get dominated in their OWN NATIONAL SPORT by Mongolians. why? because Mongolians have a warrior culture.

if the question was "Why is there zero Samoan Nobel Prize winners?" my argument would be the same. because they don't give a fuck about that shit the way other cultures do.

If you're counting Whittaker or Holloway as Samoan, then Machida should count for Japan.

 

[m249viking]

That's somewhat true maybe if you were born in the mid 1900s. Alot of MMA fighters are actually extremely intelligent. There is a lot variables, now it's mostly who are your coaches, how did you train, and how well can you keep calm when things don't go your way.

Yeah…..no.

 

[Hog-train]

The same reason why do Japanese men struggle in physical male sports as a whole. They just aren't built for it typically. There's an occasional exception in the lower weight classes (Naoya Inoue), but it's rare.

But there are two to three Japanese boxers in current top ten pound for pound lists.

 

[Plissken]

Considering how few japanese fighters are in the UFC the ones in the org. seem to be doing ok.

 

[PaulieVegas27]

Because they have no good fighters, it's not as easy to take steroids in the US, you actually have to be in your weight class to compete in it, and they don't have an organization that coddles and favors them over non-Japanese fighters.

 

[BluntForceTrama]

Asians have not mastered strength training and weight cutting like Westerners. They are usually outsized in fights by fighters who walk around two weight classes heavier than what they fight at, and temporarily dehydrate for weigh ins. Japanese culture emphasizes intellectual rather than physical pursuits. They honor scientists, engineers, and CEOs more than athletes. Also Japan does not have widespread income disparity. Poverty breeds toughness and killer instinct. You can't help being tough growing up in an American ghetto, Brazilian favella, Russian slum, or Mexican shanty town.

U’s ignant bud

 

[BluntForceTrama]

To answer it quickly - their training sucks ass for most of their history. When Gen Z and Alpha hit their primes, they will likely be big contenders.

Same in Korea. Actually especially worse.

A lot of these fighters simply don’t have the finance or resources to obtain TOP level training. I’m not going to say it’s THE reason but certainly a factor in overall growth

 

[BowserJr]

their culture. it is not conducive to building individuality. MMA is an individual sport. their society is not particularly conducive to violence. it's that simple. sure, not cutting weight and whatever, but you have to be an animal in fighting. you have to be like Kid Yamamoto, or Takanori Gomi. these guys wanted to smash your face.

it's like asking why there's so many Samoan fighters when Samoa is WAY smaller than Japan. that's because Samoa's entire culture is built around violence and fighting. you come from a violent warrior society, guess what, you get violent warriors.

Interesting take but I disagree almost entirely

 

[BowserJr]

I agree with most of this video, but would add the lack of weight cutting in Japanese MMA. They simply do not cut as much weight and fight more in the range of their natural weight leading to size disadvantages.

I haven't watched the video but will.

My observation from fights, fighters and interviews it's a number of things.

The time change. Most of them only come to the west for a few weeks. Yadong Song really improved in his fights when he started living in the US.

As OP mentioned the weight cut culture hampers them. They simply don't cut tons of weight so they're usually undersized.

Lastly and probably my hottest take is the culture around fighting in general. In Japan winning is not everything. Fighting with heart, spirit, honor and budo is more important. That is not the "smartest" way to complete in combat.

Fighting well per the criteria above will helps earn favorable match making and career paths in Japan despite some losses. In UFC 1 or 2 losses can send you packing

 

[Söze Aldo]

But there are two to three Japanese boxers in current pound for pound lists.

It shows the complete ignorance many UFC fans have of other combat sports. The Japanese are killing it right in the boxing, Olympic wrestling and of course Judo scene.

Globally MMA is a pissant sport compared to those. People here bringing up 19th century racial sciences to explain why Japanese don't care about MMA lmao

 

[wildchild88]

wrestling isn't really fighting, but boxing i'll give them that. how many combat sports do they suck at though? more than they're good at.

they're getting trashed in their OWN NATIONAL SPORT of sumo by, surprise, Mongolians.

Wrestling is a very physical / aggressive sport.

Japanese are also really good at kickboxing too. With recent champions in lower weight classes.

I think as others have mentioned in the thread they don’t utilise weightcutting in mma as well as they could have.

Also their mma training must be lacking in some way, they’ll probably close that gap in the next 20 or so years.