This Sunday, in the lone women’s bout on the card, Shooto’s Atomweight Champion Ayaka Watanabe will face Deep Jewels’ Machi in what will be both of their Rizin debuts. At 26 years old, Watanabe is one of the top prospects in Japan. In just four fights, she’s won a title and more impressively she’s finished established veterans. In fact, she has a 100% finish rate. With this being her Rizin debut, I thought this would be a good chance to talk to the champion and get to know her a little bit more. We discussed her pro-debut and the subsequent injury that almost ended her career, he return to action, her upcoming fight, and her plans for the future.
Getting into MMA
When Ayaka first got started in MMA, things looked to be going well, as she finished her first opponent in the opening round. However, things took a drastic turn for the worse when she suffered a severe concussion in training. According to her, she was unconscious for roughly 30 minutes and had to take an ambulance to the hospital. Afterwards, she continued to suffer effects from the injury. This required her to regularly go to the hospital and it took her around a year to recover.
During this time period, when she couldn’t fight, she was forced to watch fighters like Seika Izawa, fighters who had started around the same time as her, rapidly climb up the ranks and become champions. She told us that this frustrated her to no end, watching them all advance while she seemed stuck in place. This combined with the state of her injury led her to seriously think about quitting.
However, it was around this time that Saori Oshima reached out to her. The two had met at the Deep office and Oshima had noticed that Ayaka’s fight had been canceled, so she checked in to see if she was ok. Through this, Oshima eventually invited her to come train at AACC and that is how Ayaka started training there.
Becoming a striker despite her grappling background
When Ayaka first decided to get into MMA, she decided to get to the top of the sport. She also made another interesting decision, to be exciting. Growing up, combat sports had been a regular fixture in her life, as her father is an avid fan who regularly watches it on TV, with Ayaka’s current training partner Rena being one of his favorites. As a result, she’s very familiar with the sport. So when I asked her how she’d come to be known as a striker despite her long judo background, she told me that if she became another judo based grappler, that’d be boring. That’s the last thing the Japanese MMA scene needs, another judo based grappler. So she’s worked hard to become a complete MMA fighter, not just grappler.
This hard work has paid off. She tells us that she’s now able to study her opponents, find the weaknesses in their game, and come up with game plans that exploit them.
Making up for lost time
Having lost two years of her career due to injury and the pandemic, Watanabe returned to action in October of last year and after Sunday, will have fought four times in 12 months. Her first fight back was against the veteran Emi Fujino, a bout that she accepted on one week’s notice and came up short. After that, she faced another veteran in Mina Kurobe and knocked her out with an uppercut, only the second time Kurobe has been finished with strikes in a 25 fight career. This stunning result earned her a shot for the Shooto belt against Satomi Takano at the inaugural Shooto Colors event, where she made the most of her opportunity and dropped the champion with a high kick and finished her with punches.
In all of her fights since returning to action, Ayaka has faced former/current champions who’ve competed not only in Rizin but internationally. When asked about facing veterans like this so quickly, Ayaka told us that none of the younger fighters were accepting the offers to fight her, so she had not choice but to challenge these higher ranked fighters. She did also add that it was kind of strange and surreal for her to be fighting them though, as these were all fighters she’d been familiar with before she’d even started training herself.
Facing Machi, Shooto vs Deep Jewels
Rizin Landmark 6 will take place at the Dolphins Arena in Nagoya, Japan, a part of Aichi prefecture, where Ayaka Hamasaki defeated Kanna Asakura in their second bout. Having been born and raised in Aichi, Watanabe was actually at that fight two and a half years ago. In fact, it was the first time she’d ever seen MMA in person. Now she tells us that it is like destiny that she will make her Rizin debut at the same place she first saw it live.
With just four fights under her belt, Ayaka is set to face fellow prospect Machi at 52kg this Sunday. When asked about making her Rizin debut so quickly, Ayaka was quick to dismiss that notion, laughing as she told me that both Machi and Izawa made/will make their debuts with less experience. She also reiterated that from the beginning of her career, she’d decided that if she was going to fight in MMA, she was going to get to the top, so fighting in Rizin is just a natural part of that.
When asked about her upcoming match with Machi, who comes from a judo background like her, Ayaka made it clear that this isn’t going to be a judo match. That’s not to say that Machi isn’t going to try, on the contrary, Ayaka expects her to come forward and aggressively look to grapple, even going so far as to sacrifice technique and just muscle Ayaka to the ground. However, Ayaka’s not going to let that happen. She told us that if Machi grabs her, she’ll break her grip, again and again if she has to because she’s looking for the knock out. She also added that this fight has special significance to her, since in her mind, Machi will be representing Deep Jewels and she’ll be representing Shooto, so she wants to make sure to show the strength of Shooto’s fighters.
The Future
During our interview, Ayaka made the comment several times that she’s decided to get to the top, so naturally I asked her what that means and she replied that it means the UFC. Her ultimate goal as a fighter is to get to the UFC and become a champion there, which might explain why this fight is at 52kg instead of 49kg. Before that, she told us she’s going to overthrow Izawa and become the one that people call the best in Japan.
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