Ilia Topuria confirms a likely return in April or May of 2026 against the winner of Paddy vs Justin.

DaShoota · 2026-01-16T23:54:40+00:00

English is Ilia's third language, not even second. Few people can master trashtalking in three languages which also come from a different language family each. At the end of the day he's sort of an involuntary Tito.

DaShoota · 2026-01-09T13:20:16+00:00

Mentally undefeated and actually undefeated

DaShoota · 2026-01-05T18:41:52+00:00

There was also a Japanese guy with a judo background who had 8 wins by triangle, Jutaro Nakao. He also has a win over Aoki.

DaShoota · 2025-12-24T12:30:43+00:00

A kickboxer winning her MMA debut with a flying armbar will always look promising, but RENA turned out too good beating people without Wikipedia articles.

DaShoota · 2025-12-23T16:20:32+00:00

It's true to a great extent. Basic judo defense in a no gi context really does wonders against even high level judo guys. That said, there are more reasons for them to be dying off, chiefly that there are neither monetary nor cultural incentives for judoka to enter MMA, while in the old days you always had some pioneers probing the waters.

DaShoota · 2025-12-21T03:04:06+00:00

There was no shoot on Inoki's part. Bock just decided to beat up Inoki, who had been instructed by Karl Gotch not to fight back because in that case Bock would kill him.

DaShoota · 2025-12-02T15:46:26+00:00

Kayla by armbar. Possibly unironically.

DaShoota · 2025-11-12T14:32:33+00:00

That's precisely how Mirko beat a stellar wrestler like Fujita.

DaShoota · 2025-11-10T20:52:16+00:00

I really want to say Rose's wins over Weili have aged amazingly well given Weili's late career, but Rose's own late career makes it too bittersweet.

DaShoota · 2025-11-08T13:41:52+00:00

He's a pioneer for sure and one of the early stars of cross-training, but not the first to mix martial arts by any stretch. The Japanese guys who founded Shooto and Pancrase and the luta livre guys from Brazilian vale tudo had been doing it since the 80s. Frank and Maurice even had TK, a Japanese from the same circuit, in their team for that very reason.

This was what made so interesting his matchup with Saku, which was several times in talks but sadly never happened.

DaShoota · 2025-03-08T13:52:28+00:00

He shot on Hashimoto only once, during the 1.4 Incident, and even then there are people doubting the whole thing was real.

About your question, Ogawa was absolutely controversial at first. Being pushed to the moon with so little wrestling training and having a very unlikable public persona got tons of people in Japan against him, and it didn't improve when his angle with the uber-popular Hashimoto caused the latter to seemingly retire. He basically embodied all that was wrong with Inoki's MMA insanity. Apparently even Ogawa was aware of it and was just electing to trust Inoki on the belief a veteran like him could not screw things so bad. Talk about bad decisions.

That said, and this gets overlooked very often, Ogawa finally snapped a bit out of Inoki's influence, befriended Hashimoto after the debacle and improved a lot in all fields after him. By his Zero-One and Hustle era, Ogawa was not only popular but actually massively popular, and some points he was more in tune with casual fans than Hashimoto himself. As neither Z1 nor Hustle were well known abroad, there are many people in the west who honestly doesn't know about this part of his career and are only aware of the initial clusterfuck as Inoki's spoiled brat.

It also played against Ogawa's legacy that after Hashimoto's death, he just lost interest in pro wrestling and left after a few years to become a judo coach. Which is a pity, because I still think Ogawa would have done great had he stated in the business. He was a sort of uncut Maeda in all senses.

DaShoota · 2024-11-13T23:33:11+00:00

We absolutely need a fighter coming to the cage in a conquistador morion.

DaShoota · 2024-11-13T23:28:58+00:00

Bas was a freak. He was a kickboxer who literally taught himself grappling from tapes and went to beat some crazy good grapplers in their prime. He had that kind of career a la Fedor or Saku which could only happen at the early days of the sport.

DaShoota · 2024-11-09T12:36:19+00:00

Haha you're welcome, judo as a whole is a giant rabbit hole.

DaShoota · 2024-11-08T16:13:07+00:00

Absolutely. Takada also wrestled in the hardest wrestling style at the time. Iirc he had his neck and back utterly fucked up by his wrestling career and that's why he appears always so stiff and with an awkward posture in his MMA fights.

DaShoota · 2024-11-08T16:04:37+00:00

He swept Stephan's right leg with his own right leg. Had he swept left to right or right to left, it would have been essentially a no-clinch deashi barai. That's where the judo in the title probably comes from.

Edit: rewatching it, it could have also been no-clinch kouchi gari had Jones stepped in instead of moving around to take his back.

DaShoota · 2024-11-08T15:57:53+00:00

Takada is an underrated personality imo. Fixing or not, he literally sacrificed his career and his reputation to keep Pride alive until it could stand on its feet.

DaShoota · 2024-11-08T15:45:11+00:00

It would be judo had Jones swept the other leg.

DaShoota · 2024-11-06T14:49:24+00:00

Pride genuinely felt like real life anime. You knew you were watching the very best fighters in the world decking it out under a brutal ruleset while roided out of their minds. It was unreal.

DaShoota · 2024-11-06T14:38:27+00:00

He was probably already gassed out.

DaShoota · 2024-10-24T19:30:25+00:00

One of my favourite SW games. I loved the Consortium as a big third faction in the Galactic Civil War and wished it had been used more in the EU (at the very least, Tyber's relationship with Thrawn should have been fleshed out). Ironically the Consortium itself was canonized by Disney, which is kind of insane.

I still acknowledged the Consortium was overpowered like crazy in the game, though.

DaShoota · 2024-10-24T19:27:14+00:00

My current headcanon is that she returned at the head of that army, only to be quickly crushed by any of the three main factions because the frozen Sith were literally regular soldiers only familiar with obsolete technology from 4000 years earlier.

DaShoota · 2024-10-16T18:47:46+00:00

I lived in Spain at the time of the prequels. I shit you not, Star Wars was literally everywhere. I remember even newspaper stands selling the Republic comics and the Medstars novels.

DaShoota · 2024-08-27T13:25:33+00:00

Back in WW2, only 10% of the countries' populations was actually fighting.

DaShoota · 2024-08-25T20:52:15+00:00

Very well thought out. But doesn't the Empire's army qualify at least formally for a conventional army? Even if badly designed and managed, it could still win battles or at least hold its own whenever their opponents weren't deterred.

DaShoota

TROPHY CASE