I’m not buying the Satoshi Ishii hype…

Props: MMAMania

“I don’t think I will sign a contract this time. That will probably be next time I go over. While I’m there this time, I want to invite (Dana White) to a training session to show my potential. Nogueira is a wall that I will need to get through. Next year will be a year of challenge.”

I’m all for young fighters coming in and trying to make a name for themselves, take for instance when Junior Dos Santos literally knocked Fabricio Werdum out a job with a brutal uppercut at UFC 90, or when Dave Terrell came in an brutally wrecked Matt Lindland at UFC 49, or when Antonio Schembri stopped the legendary Kazushi Sakuraba at PRIDE 25 in one of the biggest upsets in the organization’s history.  I love when that happens….but I don’t know about this.  You’ve got Satoshi Ishii, famed Japanese Judoka who just swept the 2008 Beijing Olympics and knabbed a gold medal, never fought a lick of Mixed Martial Arts, previously calling out WAMMA heavyweight and PRIDE heavyweight champion Fedor Emelienanko, and now calling out UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Minotauro Nogueria.  There’s a couple problems with this and you’ll see below:

• No MMA experience, calling out arguably the #1 and #2 ranked heavyweight MMA fighters in the world.
• Relying only on a martial art (judo), which hasn’t proven to be a dominant skill in the sport of MMA.

Now, I give the guy credit, he’s taking the steps an aspiring fighter with a lot of hype behind him should do.  He’s apparently training at the famed Florida-based MMA camp American Top Team.  Out of there, you’ve got a HUGE list of well rounded athletes who can easily help build this guy into something special.  I also give him props for straying away from the Japanese based organizations like DREAM and Sengoku, who would no doubt pad this guy by tossing him cans upon cans until he sports a solid looking record, where he’d then possibly get his first real test.  Instead, he wants the UFC, where Dana White, the president of the organization, is known for not giving two shits who you are or where you come from and immediately throwing you in with some of the divisions best (see Brock Lesnar, Junior Dos Santos).  I’m simply not sold on him, I won’t be until I see him fight, and even then, and in all truth, the success rate of Japanese based fighters in the UFC is slim, just look at Keita Nakamura, Kuniyoshi Hironaka, Michihiro Omigawa, and Kazuhiro Nakamura.  All of those fighters (a couple of them judo based), got more or less ran through in the UFC wheras finding success in the Japanese organizations.  It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses, if it even does.  Ishii will apparently be appearing at UFC 92, sitting in the crowd, which is a strong sign that Dana White and the UFC are seriously considering him as an addition to their heavyweight division.