Last week we posted about Darren Uyenoyama as a ‘fighter to watch’ and with good reason–the guy basically personifies prize fighting at its best, be it MMA or boxing. Most recently, his fight with Hideo Tokoro tore down the house–and when that house is in Yokohama, Japan and filled with the best MMA fighters in the world that’s quite an accomplishment.

Aoki meditates on
Uyenoyama’s awesomeness

Apparently we weren’t the only ones impressed with Uyenoyama, as a certain Japanese submission machine also spoke highly of his talents in a column for Kamipro.com. Here’s the translation from SukiMMA.

The most impressive fighter was Uenoyama. He is a young guy who holds a Jujitsu brown belt from Ralph Gracie Academy, which is famous about having very high standard to pass a test for a belt. He was very skillful as I expected. In a party we had after the event, he was asking other fighters to take pics together. He was very nice guy and not noticeable. I knew that was him after taking a pic with him. Both Ralph Gracie and Cesar Gracie Academy brought up many strong MMA fighters such as Nick Diaz, Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez. I want to know how they can do this

That would be, of course, effusive praise from SHINYA FREAKIN’ AOKI!! As you’re no doubt aware, the entire SAVSCI staff are huge Aoki marks so this recommendation carries more weight with us than a papal decree. Not that he didn’t tell us something we didn’t already know in this case….

(Note–Aoki spells Uyenoyama’s name without the first ‘y’. The spelling we use is the one he uses on his MySpace profile which one would assume is the correct one.)

Aoki’s column giving props to Uyenoyama @ Kamipro.com (in Japanese)

Translated version @ SukiMMA