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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) must return to the “Land of Rising Sun.”
UFC has not held an event in Japan since 2017’s UFC Fight Night: Saint Preux vs. Okami, in which Ovince Saint Preux put Yushin Okami to sleep with a Von Flue choke (watch highlights). It’s honestly a damn shame that the biggest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion in the world has forgotten about Japan, which had a vital impact on the sport.
UFC CEO Dana White told MMAMania.com recently that the most significant reason the UFC has not gone to Japan in almost a decade is business and star power.
“Japan is a tough place to navigate in business in general,” White said. “If we end up with a Japanese star, yeah, I can see us going back to Japan. You have to have some stars. When we went to Korea, we had Korean Zombie. You gotta have the stars.”
Fortunately for UFC, they currently have some Japanese fighters on the rise who can bring them back to Japan. Newly signed Japanese Flyweight fighter Kai Asakura can sell out Saitama Super Arena tomorrow if they need him to—he has done it in RIZIN already.
No. 5 ranked Tatsuro Taira, who fights this weekend in the main event of UFC Vegas 98, is a budding star who can definitely bring the promotion to Japan. They also have hot Bantamweight prospect Rinya Nakamura, who has looked extremely dominant thus far in the UFC.
While yes, going to a country with a star makes it a lot easier, the promotion is going to Macau, China, next month with non-Chinese fighters in the main event. The point is that UFC is so big at the moment that all they need is a fun UFC fighter in the main event, and fans will come.
Japan obviously has a rich history with MMA. PRIDE was once the biggest and best promotion in the world. Now, RIZIN is basically the only major promotion that holds events in Japan.
UFC needs to go back to Japan next year and should be going every year.
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