Best Current Japanese Fighter?

Back in the day, there were lots of high level Japanese fighters. Sakuraba, Funaki, Gomi, TK, Kid, Sakurai, Sudo…

And now…

I guess Aoki is still fighting…

Some pretty good guys in ONE

The Korean Zombie!!!

(Let’s see who bites)

Kyoto Horiguchi is the #1 135lb fighter right now imo. Kinda hard to tell since he hasn’t fought the UFC guys since he was like 20 but I don’t see anyone there beating him and he beat the Bellator champ twice. KOd the last few UFC castoffs he fought and just avenged his weird loss to Asakura, I really think that was a fluke in a weird 3 round fight. Weili Zhang is champ too, kinda hard to deny her as a great.

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It’s gotta be Horiguchi, right?

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I’d say Horiguchi as well. JMMA has fallen off quite a bit. Their boxing is really good at the moment though. They even have a guy who is in the conversation for P4P best.

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Horiguchi,
I still love Shinya Aoki .
With it being Japan, surly they can have this superfight

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Yes, Horiguchi is very good, his lopsided loss against DJ notwithstanding.

Zhang Weili is not Japanese.

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Tomato tomato

Brian stann

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Shinya Aoki and Horiguchi

Tenshin Nasukawa is outstanding.

Horiguchi is for sure the best current Japanese fighter. 14-1 since the loss to Johnson and he avenged the Asakura loss. He was also 15-1 prior to the Johnson loss. The only loss prior to Johnson loss was a majority decision vs Ueda who was 14-1-2 at the time Ueda was in his prime and Horiguchi was still young.

I’d love to see Horiguchi vs Fig at FLW or Horiguchi vs Yan or Sterling at BW. Horiguchi could capture both the UFC FLW and BW titles.

Hamasaki is the best AW on the planet and the best Japanese female fighter. She is 23-3 and two of her loses were up at SW. At AW she only has one loss and it was a controversial SD vs Seo He Ham who Hamasaki already had finished and had two wins over in the past. So in her weight class she is 22-0 over 12 years besides a controversial split decision loss.

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I’ve been waiting for another Japanese HW to come along as good as Fujita, TK and Ishii. It rare for Japan to produce a good HW like that so its just something I root for.

Ishii has given up his Japanese citizenship and is now a Croatian citizen. Imagine if this new citizenship allows Ishii to morph into a kickboxer like Crocop while maintaining his judo and grappling skills… no can defend Jap-Croatian Crocoshii.

I totally forgot about Tenshin.

@Overscore Tenshin is very fun to watch

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Tenshin is retiring from kickboxing and will be going to pro boxing before long, just like Takei. He’s got no interest in MMA. The window for Tenshin vs Takeru is getting thin.

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Tenshin in mma would make me actually watch flyweight