UFC signs Kid Yamamoto!!!!!!

Dude this is Japan we are talking about. Home of this guy...

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I just want to make sure everybody appreciates the irony of this in a thread about Kid Yamamoto, huge star in Japan at his peak, even bigger loud mouthed ******* with a total lack of respect for just about everything.

 

:huh

He is a legit contender, the UFC is bringing the lower weight classes into the UFC now, how is this not a legit signing?

 

Japanese MMA will make a come back. If so much as one Japanese fighter makes it through a UFC contract without losing, he can go back to Japan a hero. He could theoretically return home and help launch a new Japanese org much like the way Takada's fight with Rickson Gracie helped give birth to Pride.

 

Takada was a hugely popular and famous pro wrestler though, there is nobody like that in Japan at the moment.

Outside of all the details with the different promotions and what not, MMA just isn't as popular in Japan at the moment. Japanese pop culture moves in waves, things become very popular for a time and then fade away, it seems as though the mass public just doesn't have interest in MMA at the moment.

The MMA fans that are always MMA fans are still there and the production lines of Shooto, Pancrase, and DEEP/ZST are still turning out good young talent.

I think it is moving in a direction a bit like Brazil or Holland, great producers of talent, hardcore fans who follow well run companies who put on great shows and run a sustainable business model, but lack a huge promotion, meaning their fighters have to eventually go abroad to get big fights.