This Sunday, Seika Izawa is set to defend her title for the first time at Super Rizin 2, when she steps into the ring to face Claire Lopez. The fight is scheduled for 3 rounds and will be 1 of 4 title bouts set to take place at the historic Saitama Super Arena. Going into this fight, Izawa is coming off a submission victory in May, is undefeated, and has emerged as one of the rising talents on the Japanese MMA scene. We had a chance to chat with the 25 year champion ahead of this fight, discussing how much her life has changed since turning pro, the upcoming fight, and her goals for the future.
Marriage, a new gym, and more, Izawa’s life has changed a lot
Izawa’s rise has been so quick, it’s easy to forget that she made her pro-debut back in October of 2020, meaning she’s been fighting for less than 3 years. Considering that she only made the switch to MMA because the pandemic made it impossible for her to compete in judo, MMA has drastically changed her life. When we first spoke to her in February of 2021, she was a graduate student studying education, was working a part-time job, and was training at Takamoto Dojo, all while living in a tiny $300 a month apartment in Tokyo, an apartment so small that the laundry machine was outside. During this time, she was living off a diet of easy to make dishes like furikake gohan (seasoned rice) and sweets.
Nowadays, Izawa lives in a nice place with her husband, fellow Rizin veteran Coro, where his penchant for good food has changed her diet from cheap easy to make meals to tastier dishes like yakiniku (grilled meats) and sushi. She’s graduated from school, has 2 dogs, a cat, and recently opened a MMA gym with her husband, where they are the primary instructors. However, while some things have changed, some things haven’t. For example, Izawa still love of sweets, telling us that she’s currently a big fan of yogurt flavored ice cream, a good escape from the summer heat. She also still loves manga and anime, with Oshi no Ko and Haikyu being her favorites, the latter of which she likes since as an athlete herself, she can relate to the characters, who are volleyball players.
Izawa’s first Rizin title defense
To understand how this fight came about, it’s necessary to first look at what was supposed to happen. On March 6th, it was announced that Izawa was going to face Miyuu Yamamoto in her retirement bout on May 6th. However, Miyuu injured her knee and was forced to withdraw from the bout in April, which led to Seika fighting Amp at Deep Jewels instead. After defeating her in what looked like an easy victory, Izawa’s husband tweeted a picture of her with the caption, “She doesn’t feel like she fought, she wants to fight again quickly.” Many at the time thought this looked like she was angling to get on the Super Rizin 2 card, something that came to fruition on June 16th, when this bout was announced.
When asked about the challenger, Izawa told us that based off what she’s seen, Lopez is a capable grappler who likes to go for rear naked chokes, who’s biggest strength is her explosive striking, where she packs a powerful punch. Based off what she’s seen, she thinks Lopez will be aggressive and try to finish the fight with strikes, something Lopez herself has confirmed in interviews. However, Izawa does disagree with Lopez on one thing. In the lead up to this fight, Lopez has said that all of the pressure is on Izawa, who’s title is on the line, who’s undefeated and is competing on a big stage. To the contrary, Izawa tells us that she doesn’t feel any pressure going into the fight. This isn’t her first big event, she fought on the first Super Rizin card and on the Bellator vs Rizin New Year’s card, so this won’t be something new for her. To her, this is just another fight.
Staying at Atomweight and the future
When asked about her future, Izawa told us that one of her goals as a fighter is to collect a bunch of belts from different promotions. Upon hearing this, we naturally asked if this meant she was interested in fighting abroad, to which she responded that she’s interested in training or fighting abroad, as long as it’s at Atomweight. This was an interesting departure, considering that in the past she has commented that she wanted to bulk up to 52kg in order to compete in the UFC, but now she tells us that she looks at the Strawweights in the UFC and realizes that they are much bigger than her. However, if the UFC starts an Atomweight division, she tells us she’s definitely interested since it’s where she feels strongest. Even though she is the Deep Jewels Strawweight champion, she doesn’t cut any weight for those fights, adding credence to her thinking that she’s too small for the UFC.
Going back to her desire to collect a bunch of belts, when asked whether she was interested in facing Saori Oshima, another rising talent on the Japanese MMA scene, Izawa told us that she would like to fight her in the future, but not in Rizin. She wants to fight her in Deep Jewels with Oshima’s Atomweight belt on the line. Outside of a chance to win the belt, she told us that this would be a huge fight and by doing it in Deep Jewels, it would do a lot to bring awareness to and elevate the promotion, a promotion that Izawa clearly loves. This is evidence of another one of Izawa’s goals, her desire to help elevate women’s MMA.
Speaking of elevating women’s MMA, Seika stills wants to face Miyuu in her retirement bout. For those that are unaware, women’s wrestling is incredibly popular in Japan, with Japan winning more Olympic gold medals than any other country, and while Miyuu was in her wrestling prime before it was included in the Olympics, she and her sister, who were both world champions, did a lot to elevate the image of women in wrestling and sports in Japan. Seika, who wrestled as a child, remembers watching Miyuu compete as a kid and not only does she respect her as a wrestler and for what she did, she also admires how close Miyuu was with her brother and is with her sister, something that means a lot to Seika since her brothers and husband are also athletes. She went on to add that much like Miyuu who dreamed of competing on a Rizin card with Kid, she’d like to compete on a Rizin card with her brothers and Coro someday. When pressed, she also laughed and admitted that she is interested in seeing how her wrestling measures up to Miyuu’s.
Ahead of the potential Miyuu fight, Seika told us that she’d like to fight again, making her total for the year 4 fights. This is nothing new as Izawa has been an active fighter throughout her short career and now that she’s graduated from school, she has more time to focus on the sport.
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