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On the same card as the superball fight, Rika Thongkraisaen will be fighting who ever this is Something like Jomukuwan Shittonsaku

It's funny that the pronounce it Ai-toh when in Japan it's pronounced E-toh Having one set of characters represent r's and l's has made translating Thai names from Japanese one of my least favorite things to do. I hope she does well. She seems to be having fights at a steady pace.

Your manga knowledge is strong

443 is her ring name. Some snooping revealed her real name to be Yoshimi Hatayama. Here is an article about one of her fights: http://www.mmarising.com/articles/2015/04/05/saya-ito-defeats-chihiro-kira-retains-wpmf-title-at-bom-7-in-tokyo/ That would be her, translating names from Japanese is not fun since they use phonetics for foreign words but are lacking several sounds.

Yukari Yamaguchi won her MMA debut over the weekend. Megumi Fujii will be aiding the Vale Tudo Japan matchmaker in making women's fights. She chose Yukari to be on the card. She won by RNC in 1:22 of the first round. On 3/29 she won at J-Girls by first round KO On 5/24 she won at the J-Girls vs Kickboxing event Next it looks like she will be taking part in the finals of some J-Girls tournament

Saya Ito has several fights coming up; 6/28 (Tokyo) for BOM against Superbowl Pardon Gym (Spelling?) 7/19 (Yokohama) for BOM against 443

Kevin, I believe she was knocked out by Rena.

Ceaser is the guy in the picture with her. He is Shoot Boxing's owner. Rena has had motivational issues before and I imagine it terrifies him since she is their biggest star. She is a very talented fighter, but he has not been able to bring in fighters to really challenge her. Ceaser's Gym in Tokyo is where she trained for her fight with Erika Kamimura. A number of women train at Ceaser's Gym. "V.V" Mei Yamaguchi, Emi Fujino and Ayaka Takahashi all train there. (Mei and Emi train at a lot of gyms) In addition, Andy Souwer trains there when he is in Tokyo. The trainer there is from Thailand, I believe. Rena has gone to Thailand with him before. There are a lot more women fighters in Tokyo and a lot of them do stuff together, which may be intriguing to her. Stuff I've read makes me think that Rena is slightly exhausted of training/ the injuries. She took a trip to Australia for a month and lived with another ShootBoxing fighter. It seems like that experience helped cement the idea that something needed to change. Sylvie: it is possible. She has fought outside of Shoot Boxing before. I'd imagine that now she is in Tokyo instead of Osaka she will be getting flooded with offers for fights. It all comes down to how often she wants to fight and what she will be doing there for money. In my opinion, she is easily the most talented kickboxer in Japan right now.

Rena has trained at the same gym since she was 12 and feeling a desire to experience things outside of fighting and to switch things up she's moving to Tokyo. I translated part of what she said; "Since I want to expand upon my dreams, I am transferring from Osaka to Tokyo, I will be switching from Oikawa-dojo to Ceaser Gym. I’ve won the Girl’s S-Cup 3 times now, so for several years I feel like my motivation has gone down. With regards to the gym, I’ve been going there and training hard since I was a kid and the though of doing the same thing makes me grow uneasy. Because of that, I went to Australia in February, I did a homestay at my friend/rival’s house for one month, I experienced freedom and the world. Doing martial arts in that situation felt more true to myself and more honest. After than I spoke to Oikawa-sensei and my seniors at the gym, I made sure they understood my feelings, I had a talk with the organization, finally I talked to the boss Ceaser, and told him about my selfish desires, he helped me transfer perfectly. The remainder of my martial arts life will be in Tokyo, I will do my best at Ceaser’s Gym, please continue to support me. I’ve been to train at Ceaser’s many times before. It’s an intense place, when I thought of changing gyms it was the only other option. Tokyo has everything at my disposal, there are a lot of women fighters, now I can finally mingle with other women fighters. I think I also want to start grappling while I’m there, I would like to learn from someone while I’m there. I want to challenge myself in a new place, I want to be excited about martial arts, look at V.V. Mei she just became an MMA champion, I think I’d like to learn from her."

I would imagine it really depends on person to person, circumstances to circumstances. It wasn't in MT, but JDS suffered from overtraining before his 2nd fight with Cain Velasquez. He developed Rhabdomyolysis, which is when muscle fibers die and go into the blood stream, leading to potential kidney problems. http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/rhabdomyolysis-symptoms-causes-treatments

I've also posted the video to her Girl's S-Cup final last year. She fought against one of Rena's training partners, Mio. I believe Yukari was 15 at the time

I believe she is unable to make 48kg anymore. I just got copies of her s-cup fights, thanks to a proxy and I will share them after I attach the audio ect.

Lady Go! shared this video with me and I thought I would pass it along. I would skip to 52 seconds Yukari Yamaguchi is an up and comer in Japan in both kickboxing and mma. For those of you that pay attention to Shoot Boxing or Invicta, her training partner is Mizuki Inoue. She is 16 years old and won the 48kg Girl's S-Cup last year. Interestingly she is also the daughter of their coach. Kind of interesting that a gym no one heard of several years ago is all of a sudden producing top talent.

Jack Dempsey soaked his face with beef brine to "toughen the skin" http://www.biography.com/people/jack-dempsey-9271466 Apparently "toughening the skin" is not recommended any more

She does find a way to have awesome hair every fight. I'm excited to see some of her students fight will they grow up.

Having watched the little documentary, it really does make you feel for her.

No she is performing better than ever. This fight reenergized her but she still had to overcome her foot/ankle injury. The year following this fight she competed at the Girl's S-Cup and won, despite still being injured. She had several operations and a year after that Girl's S-Cup she returned, back to full health. People forget that she is only 23. In my opinion she looks better than ever. Plus she's had a very positive effect. Shoot Boxing's promotion of her has allowed for other women to enter the organization and become popular. They've recently started promoting the 48kg division for women. They've also started promoting a slightly heavier 53.5kg division. The 48kg division was created for Rena's training partner Mio, but was somewhat taken over last year by Mizuki Inoue's training partner Yukari Yamaguchi (age 16). Whereas the 53.5 was created with Rena's old rival Ai Takahashi in mind but was taken over by Mizuki Inoue (age 20). So Shoot Boxing has never looked better for women to compete in. Here is her final fight from last year's Girl's S-Cup Here is the thai fighter's prior fight: The fans really enjoyed watching Ticha fight and I'd like to see her get invited back for this years tournament. I've always liked the tournament, it reminds me of Bloodsport or the Quest with fighters being invited from all around the world for a one day tournament.

With as much as Shoot Boxing had to lose if Rena lost, people have contemplated such. Erika never recovered. The fight was supposed to be her crowing moment. Rise, her promotion, created the title for the fight. She fought a couple more times, but was never the same. She wanted a rematch with Rena but Rena forfeit the title. So Erika entered a Girl's S-Cup that Rena was in, but Erika was royally sandbagged. It became evident that a rematch would never happen. (Not because of Rena but because of Shoot Boxing) In addition a close friend and training partner of hers, who was ko'd right before her fight with Rena, was forced to retired due to brain trauma, and I think that effected her a lot as well. Her other friend she trained with moved to America. Erika was notorious for anxiety and stress problems, had suffered permanent injuries, and without the motivation seemed to lose all desire to continue on, for what I imagine was not a lot of money. A doctor told her that hard training would make her injuries worse, so she chose to retire.

They clinch non-sense really ruined the fight. Both fighters seemed to be engaging in clinch work, so the ref should have let them do it, instead he became obsessed with breaking it up the second it started. Initially, Erika is given a yellow card for clinching. Then Rena and Erika are both given yellow cards for clinching, as a result, Erika's upgrades to a red card and she is deducted a point. This was the turning moment of the fight in my opinion as Rena realized that if she tied Erika up it would stop Erika from moving forward and if there was a penalty it would likely be given to both fighters. With Erika down a point already, this could never really hurt her. If she miss judged it would simply nullify the deduction. Her strategy paid off as the ref then became obsessed with breaking up the clinch but no longer penalizing. The lead up to this fight was pretty interesting. Rena had been absent due to injury and was pressured to come back and fight for the Shoot Boxing title before she was 100% and they changed the rules, which she was not used to. She lost the fight, then right before the Erika fight she lost to Jessica Penne (from UFC). Her injury was lingering and would require additional surgeries to heal. On top of that Erika embarrassed Rena at a Shoot Boxing event. Shoot Boxing is Rena's home promotion, and the two fought an "exhibition". It turned into a real fight with Erika knocking Rena down twice. This all led to an extremely frustrated Rena who told people that she would retire if she lost to Erika. A couple of months after the fight, I had the opportunity to speak to Erika and Rena about it. Some Japanese media commented on how strange the officiating had been, so I asked Erika about it. She agreed that the officiating was very strange, but didn't want to talk about it beyond that. In a separate conversation with Rena, Rena talked about how extremely frustrated she had been with her injury and Shoot Boxing not giving her time to let it heal. (I believe her ankle was broken) There is a lot of strange stuff going on in the background of this fight and there were major implications for both fighters and their respective promotions, which has led to speculation. I think it's a close fight, which would have been a great fight had the ref let the two fight. Based on what you've said, with Erika pursuing her, I can see how in Thai style scoring Rena would have the edge. In Japanese style, it would have been a draw, which it was before the deductions came into play. I just think its an interesting fight, with all of the background and the fight itself. During my time in Japan it was the most promoted women's fight I could remember. Possibly more than any men's fight. It was on the cover of magazines, there was a tv special, it was a big deal. Oh and she comes from a karate background actually. Erika did Karate with her father and grew up watching the famous kickboxer Masato.

Here is the fight video between Rena and Erika Kamimura. They were two of the most popular fighters in Japan. There was some pretty big build up to this fight. Before the fight, the build-up was the subject of almost all of the combat magazines in Japan. Erika had previously knocked Rena down several times in an exhibition and after subtle jabs at each other the fight finally occurred in Erika's promotion, Rise. The fight was semi-controversial because of the point deductions and ref's breaking up of the clinch. Just wanted to share the fight and see how you guys score it. Round 3: Round 4: Round 5:

Nice post! For the brave you can usually also buy your tickets from a fighter for smaller shows

haha it is far from perfect. She is a cruel mistress

Naturally take what I said as a broad generalization. If a fighter is moving forward and getting tagged without doing any damage themselves, then they are going to be looked at as desperate. It depends on what the retreating fighter is doing. It does create a lot of problems. A lot of people are wary about coming to Japan to fight, I notice this more in MMA, because they don't understand how the judges score fights. (i.e. that not every round has to be 10-9 for someone). This became somewhat of an issue with several of Rin Nakai's fights. Tara Larosa thought she won the fight because she out struck Nakai earlier in the fight, but the judges gave the fight to Nakai based off of a submission attempt near the end of the fight. A similar situation arose when Megumi Fujii went to fight in the U.S. That being said, I often feel that foreign fighters are under informed when traveling to fight abroad. Especially when there are so many unspoken/assumed factors to the judging. It is upsetting to see fighters lose a fight they thought they had clearly won, and would have under the system they are accustomed to.

This may be the big difference then. Japanese judges score clean punches and kicks. As far as fighting backwards, to make a broad generalization, Japanese judges favor fighters who are attempting to finish. If a fighter is nailing another fighter with counters, the judges are going to favor them, but I do not imagine they would favor a fighter who appeared to be retreating as opposed to the pursuer. My impression of Japanese fights across all combat sports, in general, has been that there is a go out on your shield kind of attitude. That attitude is also generally rewarded. Japanese fans and judges in general love fighters who in their minds leave it all in the ring. What I imagine is happening is that while both systems tend to look at the fight as a whole, the Thai system seems to be I'm beating you now come and get me whereas the Japanese system seems to favor a I'm beating you do something about it. Both favor a progression but probably look to the final rounds of a fight differently. Over the board, Japanese judges are very indecisive. I've never seen so many draws before. An example that comes to mind is Rena vs. Erika, which penalty deductions aside, would have been a draw.

I feel like Little Tiger is a strange situation. When I lived in Japan, she seemed to be more of a novelty above average fighter. People liked the fact that a famous pro-wrestler gave her her name. She performed well but was never able to beat the top tier in Japan. Then she started fighting a bunch of fighters non-Japanese fighters. I feel like that her career is very closely guarded by her gym, her coach is a Thai promoter. However, LadyGo has informed me that she looked very good in her last fight, so who knows what is going on. I imagine the number of Japanese women that fight for WPMF Titles ect. relates to money and proximity. Thai fighters probably find the offer to fight in Japan to tempting to resist and vice verca. Judging is in Japan is very unique. Japanese do not like to score round to round. They prefer to score the fight progression. With regards to clinching, I imagine that since most of these judges are probably from boxing or karate, clinching is not highly valued to them. As a result, clean punches and kicks are scored highly. (Little Tiger throws a ton of kicks). With regards to certain fighters there could always be some sort of underworld element behind the scenes as well, with regards to gambling ect. Also, I wouldn't put it past some refs to break up clinches early ect. in Japan.