Wow. This fight is going to be huge in Japan. Satoshi Ishii will make his pro MMA debut against tough as nails veteran and fellow Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Freakin’ Yoshida! There’s a long running tradition of not ‘going easy’ on newcomers to MMA, particularly those from a judo background. [...]

Nice career compilation of Keiji Mutoh/The Great Muta with a whole heapin’ helpin’ of his sick, sick shining wizards:

While we’re at it, here’s The Great Muta in 1989 with the legendary manager Gary Hart in one of his early NWA appearances. Muta’s moonsaults at this point were so effortless its sick:

Here’s a great video of the legendary Keiji Mutoh aka ‘The Great Muta’ against Manabu Nakanishi at Tokyo’s Sumo Hall in 1997:

This is a video of the announcements for the final 16 pairings for K-1 World GP. It’s in Japanese:

Rumor afoot in Japan right now that Josh Barnett will face the winner of the Sengoku X fight between Antonio ‘Bigfoot’ Silva and Big Jim York for the new Sengoku heavyweight championship. Barnett hasn’t said much in the US media since his failed drug test that started the downward spiral for Affliction’s MMA promotion, [...]

Since we’re committed to covering Japanese MMA in a way that even American fans can appreciate the subtle nuances of their sporting culture, here’s a clip of the DREAM round girls on the Fashion TV network:

Here’s a TV promo spot for Sengoku X featuring an assortment of Japanese judo gods including Satoshi Ishii and the legendary Hidehiko Yoshida:

Yeah, we posted this video of the 2009 Sengoku Ring Girls a couple of months ago. Got a problem with that?

Here’s a highlight video of the incredible Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger, complete with his strangely hypnotic New Japan theme music. It could be a better song than Shinya Aoki’s ‘Baka Survivor’ entrance music:

Because we love you, and other MMA websites don’t, we ripped the Jushin Liger theme music ‘Ikari no Jushin’ into MP3 format so [...]