A couple of weeks ago it was announced that top Japanese strawweight Mizuki Inoue is set to return to action this fall, three years after her last fight. As you may recall, Mizuki underwent knee surgery back in October of 2020 for an injury she suffered in training after her fight with Amanda Lemos. Unfortunately for her, this was not her first serious injury, as she’s had a broken leg, injured knees, an injured elbow, and an injured hand at various points in her career. However, while she has dealt with injuries and had surgeries in the past, this injury put her on the sidelines for the longest. Ahead of her return, we had a chance to chat with Mizuki about her upcoming fight, her recovery, teaching younger fighters, moving to Tokyo, and more. In Part I, we will focus on her recovery, getting back into training, and her foray into teaching.
Surgery and the initial recovery
Just a couple weeks after getting injured, Mizuki underwent surgery on her left knee in October of 2020. Afterwards, she went out to Vegas to begin her rehab at the UFC PI. As an active UFC fighter, she was able to take advantage of their physical therapists and trainers, while also receiving free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a perk that cannot be underestimated when it comes to a young fighter with no upcoming fights in the foreseeable future. After 8 months in Vegas, Mizuki returned to New York but this didn’t last too long as her visa expired in January of 2022, meaning she had to leave the U.S. and return to Japan.
Finishing her recovery in Japan
After her visa expired, Mizuki came back to Japan for the first time in over 4 years. Prior to her departure, she’d gone through rehab and had started moving and using her knee, but she hadn’t started sparring or training hard yet. As someone who’d gone through surgeries before, she was focused on safely getting her knee back to 100%. She also told us that there was a fear there, a fear of re-injuring her knee. This meant getting back into normal training slowly, little by little, paying close attention to her knee and making sure it could handle the load. As she put it, by the time she’d gotten to Japan she’d already finished her rehab, she just needed to ease her way back into training to confirm that her knee could handle it, which in turn gave her the confidence she needed to start training at 100%. The way this played out is she started sparring lightly last July, about once a week. As time went on, she increased the intensity and frequency of those sessions until about this February, when she started sparring regularly again.
Now, she tells us, her condition is very good. She’s able to spar and she isn’t having any problems with the knee. She’s currently preparing for her upcoming fight at Me, We and Cute Gym, gyms she was introduced to by her good friend and training partner Kanako Murata, who trained at the former before moving to the U.S. and works at the latter as a kid’s wrestling coach. At these gyms Mizuki has access to female training partners like Shizuka Sugiyama, Yuka Okutomi, and Yoko Higashi.
Going to Thailand
Mizuki has never been one to let an injury stop her from training. The perfect example of this is when she was a teenager and broke her leg. Instead of sitting idly by while she recovered, Mizuki focused on her boxing and developed the lightning fast punches she is known for today. Fast forward to her most recent recovery and shortly after her return to Japan, before she was full on sparring again, Mizuki went with Kanako to Thailand for 45 days to train at Bangtao under George Hickman. While there, they got to train with solid female fighters like Loma Lookboonmee.
When we asked Mizuki about the trip, she spoke very highly of the experience but she also highlighted a mistake she made. When she was there it was the rainy season and she made the mistake of not renting a bike or scooter. This meant she had to walk through the water on her way to and from the gym, something that I did not know until speaking to Mizuki is not a good idea. Those puddles of water are filled with bacteria and they got into cuts and scratches on Mizuki and she eventually had to make numerous trips to the hospital where they had to cut the infections open and clean them.
Teaching the next generation
Perhaps because she hadn’t been able to fight for some time, Mizuki started to think about teaching private lessons when she was in New York. She ended up not doing it then, but when she moved to Tokyo, where she could teach lessons in Japanese, she started offering private lessons to amateurs and professionals in the back of a fight shop store near Suidobashi, within walking distance of the famed Korakuen Hall. She’d never taught before and while she doesn’t necessarily see coaching in her future, she did tell us that coaching became a part of her life in Tokyo that she came to enjoy.
One of her students was Machi, a promising prospect in Deep Jewels who’s undefeated as a professional. She comes from a grappling background so it only makes sense that she hired Mizuki, who is one of the best strikers in Japanese MMA. Ahead of Machi’s last fight, Mizuki told us that she was in communication with Machi’s coach and they worked together in order to create a game plan and counters for her opponent. Mizuki did this by putting herself in Machi’s shoes and thinking about how she’d beat her opponent, something she said was a good exercise in coming up with a strategy, especially since she got to see it carried out. Now that she has a fight scheduled, Mizuki isn’t really coaching anymore but it will be interesting to see if she returns to it down the road.
Part II
In Part II we will discuss her upcoming fight, her life in Tokyo, and the differences in training between Japan and the U.S.
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