A little less than two years ago at Deep Jewels 30, the now Deep Jewels and Rizin champion Seika Izawa made her pro-debut. Elsewhere on the card, five other fighters did the same, including a then 16-year-old Moeri Suda. Unlike Izawa, Suda lost. Two months later, the two fought on the same card again with the same results. While it may have been disparaging to lose her first two fights, Suda has been flawless since, winning five fights in a row, including armbar victories over the Rizin veteran Eru Takebayashi and the former title challenger Hikaru Aono. Now, she is scheduled to challenge the Atomweight Champion, Saori Oshima this Saturday at the famed Korakuen Hall.
When asked about losing her first two fights and the impact that had on her, Moeri told us, “I was really frustrated by losing those two fights in a row and missing some big opportunities. However, it felt like I had hit rock bottom so the only way to go was up, so I started practicing non-stop…I stopped hanging out with friends and my private life has all but disappeared because I’m training with the thought of making it to the top.”
The daughter of a fighter
Just three months shy of her 18th birthday, the Osaka-based high school student Moeri Suda has put together an impressive 5-2 record in less than two years of competition. She has done all of this while training under the watchful eye of her father, Tomoyuki Suda, an MMA fighter, BJJ black belt, and the owner/head coach at Scorpion Gym.
Interestingly, despite her father being a fighter and having his own gym, Moeri wasn’t originally focused on MMA or BJJ. Rather, she chose to focus on basketball when she was in junior high school. It wasn’t until high school that she prioritized BJJ, but this was upset by the pandemic. Unable to train or participate in competitions, she started to lose motivation, so her father suggested she try MMA, as MMA events were still taking place. Following his advice, she started training.
Training with her father provides a lot of perks. He is able to give her advice, actually trains with her, and is also able too to empathize with what she goes through as a professional fighter, something for which she is very grateful. He also arranges for her to spar with other women in the Kansai area, including Aoi Kuryiama, who also fights this weekend. According to Moeri, the two of them are talking about martial arts all the time, it’s all they think about.
Fighting for the title
In March, Karen Pravajra became the Queen of Pancrase just days after graduating from high school. Moeri wants to do better. She wants to become the Deep Jewels Atomweight Champion while still in high school and she will have a chance to do just that on Saturday.
Standing across the cage from her will be the two-division champion and Rizin veteran Saori Oshima. While at a glance the champion and challenger may appear quite different, they actually have some interesting similarities. Both fighters are grapplers who favor armlocks, both debuted in 2020, and both were born to parents that operate a martial arts gym, with Oshima’s parents teaching Judo and Suda’s dad teaching BJJ and MMA. When asked about the champion, Moeri stated, “she’s a top-level finisher, a very strong fighter with good takedowns, and I respect her very much.” When asked about this Judo vs BJJ stylistic matchup, she replied, “Jiu-Jitsu can be done from the top and bottom, so I hope I can show my strong points.”
At the moment, Moeri and her father want her to become the Atomweight champion, but ultimately the young fighter told us she wants to “fight for a long time without getting injured and become a legend.” When asked about potentially fighting in Rizin and fighting some of their fighters, she commented, “There are a lot of strong Atomweights in both Rizin and Deep Jewels, so if I get the chance, I would like to challenge them. I have trained with Izawa several times in Tokyo, she is really strong and I respect her. I’m in no position to pick a fight with her. I will do my best to catch up to her and Hamasaki as quickly as I can.”
You can watch Moeri Suda challenge Saori Oshima on PPV here for 2,500 yen.
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