This Saturday, Deep Jewels will hold their first event of the year at Shinjuku Face, right in the heart of Tokyo. In the main event, Japanese MMA legend and current Deep Jewels Flyweight Champion Rin Nakai will face the brawler from Osaka, Aoi Kuriyama. Elsewhere on the card, up-and-comers Machi, Hime, Eru Takebayashi, and Kate Lotus are all also set to appear. For those unable to attend, the event will be available on PPV with a victorious Saori Oshima doing commentary.
For the past couple years, Nakai has been very vocal about her desire to return to the Octagon, so with her headlining this upcoming show, it is a good opportunity to take a look back at her already storied career.
Early Life
Born in Shikoku, the 4th biggest island in Japan, Rin Nakai has been an athlete almost all her life. When she was 3 she started going to the local Judo dojo with her brother and just a couple years later, she got involved in gymnastics. In fact, her passion for the latter almost ended her Judo career. When she entered middle school, she was told to pick a sport to focus on and she actually chose gymnastics. However, fate intervened, and Rin’s mother withdrew her from gymnastics and put her back in Judo, thinking that Judo was the safer option.
While Rin’s mother chose Judo, the school didn’t have a Judo club. This meant that she had to go to a dojo outside of school 3 days a week in order to train. Despite these less than optimal circumstances, Rin still managed to finish 5th in her weight class at the national junior high school tournament. Wanting access to better training, Rin left Shikoku and went to Takanawadai High School, a school located in Tokyo that is connected to the prestigious Tokai University. While there, Rin lived in a dorm and finished 3rd in her weight class at the national tournament.
Having received such high results, getting to the Olympics was a realistic possibility so Rin went to Teikyo University, with that goal in mind. Unfortunately, things came crashing down when she injured her knee as a freshman. The injury ended her judo career and resulted in her dropping out of school and returning to Shikoku.
Turning to MMA
After injuring her knee, Rin returned to her parents’ house and sunk into a depression. Having competed in Judo since she was 3, she didn’t know what to do and those around her weren’t able to help. Her father suggested that she run, exercise and even offered to pay for her to go to another college. However, there wasn’t anything she wanted to study. In her mind, the only thing she was ever good at was sports.
During this time, while she was training at a public gym, she met Fumio “Wild” Usami, a former amateur wrestler and MMA fighter. He was a tough trainer and after training win him, Rin believed that he could definitely help make her stronger. Usami for his part was equally as impressed, thinking that she had both the talent and physical gifts to become a good fighter. A few months later, he opened a gym and invited her to come train and even though it was an hour way, Rin started training there. Shortly after, she made her pro-debut under the Pancrase banner, where she quickly TKO’d her opponent. Not wanting to get out of the ring and filled with joy from winning, she did a backflip, something that has become a signature celebration for the former gymnast.
Making history
After making her debut, Rin competed across a who’s who of now-defunct promotions and won the Valkyrie Championship. She then returned to Pancrase in 2011 and quickly became the face of WMMA in the promotion. At the same time, she also started to garner international attention. One reason for this is that Pancrase started to upload videos of RIn on their Youtube Channel that were met near immediate success. To date, nearly a decade later, if you look at Pancrase’s 100 most watched videos, Rin appears in 58 of them, with 5 of her videos reaching more than a million views. It was also around this time, that Rin started to face and defeat international fighters, fighters like Tara LaRosa and Sarah D’Alellio.
This ultimately led to her being signed to the UFC, making her the first Japanese woman to fight for the promotion. While Rin turned heads when she wore a prom dress to her pre-fight press conference, she struggled against the physically larger opponents in the UFC and lost her first and only fights to date. After losing two fights, RIn’s contract was not renewed, so she dropped to Flyweight and returned to Pancrase.
After picking up two finishes at flyweight, Rin made her Rizin debut, fighting on the first day of their annual NYE card against future Invicta FC Champion and UFC fighter Kanako Murata. Ahead of the fight, Rin stole the show at the weigh-ins, wearing a crazy outfit that got the internet talking. To date, that weigh-in video has over 1.8 million views. In the bout itself, Rin submitted the wrestler with a RNC.
Injuries and bad luck
Following her victory at Rizin, Rin got in a dispute with Pancrase and relinquished her title and asked to be released. Also around this time, she injured her left elbow and right wrist. These issues combined to keep her out of action until 2018, more than a year later, when she made her Deep debut. She was then scheduled to face the popular Shizuka Sugiyama in Rizin, but she suffered acute nephritis, kidney inflammation, and the fight was called off at the weigh-ins. Afterwords, she made her Deep Jewels debut, but was unable to fight in 2020, when the Osaka card was canceled due to the pandemic. These injuries, a general lack of opponents in Japan, and the pandemic, all combined to grind Rin’s career to a halt, resulting in her not-competing in 2017, 2020, and 2021. (Though she did compete in a mixed-rules bout in 2021 for Heat)
Returning to Action
In 2022, Rin fought 3 times for the first time since 2016. Those bouts took place in the Deep Jewels Flyweight Tournament, where Rin easily defeated and finished all of her opponents, becoming the inaugural champion in the process. Having won the title, Rin made it clear that she wants another shot in the UFC, especially since they now have a Flyweight Division. Towards this aim, Rin has signed with a U.S. based management company, has gone and trained in the U.S., and has made it known on social media that she wants the opportunity. Ahead of her next fight, this Saturday, she also came to Tokyo to train, where she trained at AACC.
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