Kyoji Horiguchi debut in the UFC and the impact for JMMA

JMMA TODAY

As the MMA world awaits the 3rd installment of the Velasquez vs. Dos Santos trilogy tonight for the UFC heavyweight championship of the world the night will begin a little earlier for you if you are a Japanese MMA fan (You probable are if you are reading this blog).  Kyoji Horiguchi Crazy Bee product, A-class shootist and former Shooto 132 pound champion will make his UFC debut against Dustin Pague (11-8 MMA 1-4 UFC). This fight while first on the card means a lot for the state of Japanese MMA, while Japanese prospects in hard to come by in MMA Japanese prospects in the UFC are even fewer and further in-between.

While it is nice to see a Japanese prospect make his debut in the UFC we must first look at the recent string of bad luck for Japanese products in the UFC Hatsu Hioki was being touted as the man who might possible be the man to beat Jose Aldo he has since gone 2-3 in the UFC, Yoshihiro Akiyama is 1-4 in the UFC while Kid Yamamoto is 0-3 in UFC. All of this coupled with the recent cut of Yushin Okami makes this bout very important not just for the UFC in Japan but for MMA as a whole in Japan the Japanese crowd love to see one of their own win and not just win, but win against foreigners.

The UFC has gone to Japan twice since 2012 but cards had one or more former PRIDE stars the stars of yesterday will not be able to fight forever though and for young Japanese men and women to begin to join gyms and train they need to see a young Japanese kid start winning fights to feel like they have opportunities. Enter  Kyoji Horiguchi a 23 year old 11-1 prospect in the biggest show in the world tonight will be the first hurdle if he can win beat a few others and start beating some top 10 fighters will he inspire a whole new generation on Japanese talent? Who knows there are a lot of ifs there. So even though it is the first fight of the night this fight could be a great triumph for JMMA not just for JMMA in the UFC but for JMMA as a whole.


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PRIDE4EVER



Special thanks to
KSW for hooking this blog up, SRC for giving me the idea for my first article, all the JMMA fans, The whole global-mma.com crew

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