This Saturday, at the Suwon Convention Center in South Korea, Saori Oshima will take on Ye Rin Hong at the Deep versus Black Combat themed event. This fight, the first women’s bout in Black Combat’s short history, will also be Oshima’s first fight outside Japan. While not watchable live outside of Korea, the fights will eventually be uploaded to Youtube and if the promotion’s other videos are any indication, we should expect some good production value. Interestingly, Black Combat also announced that they will work on an app, so people in Japan can watch Black Combat events live in the future.
A look back at 2022
Despite being a young mother of twins and taking time off to support her husband ahead of an important Judo tournament, Saori Oshima still managed to be the second most active female fighter in Japan last year, fighting four times, just one less than Moeri Suda, who fought at every Deep Jewels show. While she ended up having a pretty good year, things got off to a rough start when she lost to Hime at Deep Jewels 36. Going into the fight, Oshima received a ton of attention because of her high profile win over Kanna Asakura near the end of 2021, a fight that to date is the 7th most watched video on Rizin’s Youtube channel, with 8.6 million views. With that win came pressure and high-expectations that combined with Hime’s size and style, as well as catching COVID 3 weeks ahead of the fight, led to a disappointing performance. However, much like with her loss to Si Woo Park, Oshima rebounded stronger than before.
Just 2 months after losing to Hime, Oshima defended her title against the young armbar machine, Moeri Suda. She absolutely smashed her, submitting her with a double wristlock in just under 3 minutes. After the fight, Oshima cried as she addressed the crowd, announcing that her future in the sport was uncertain. While she had just won her match, that same day her husband, a professional judoka, had lost and as a result, his future in judo was uncertain. If he were to retire, that would mean that the family would move to Tokushima, effectively removing Saori from her ability to receive quality training and compete.
With her future uncertain, Oshima wanted to fight as much as possible while she could, which is why she ended up fighting the Japanese wrestling pioneer Miyuu Yamamoto two months later at Rizin 36. She ended up defeating Yamamoto via a razor-thin split-decision. Looking back at 2022, Saori told us that it was this win over Miyuu that made the biggest impression on her, adding, “The only thing I could hear were her cornermen and I thought I was losing so I fought desperately for 15 minutes.” It’s a good thing that she did, because it was that aggression that convinced 2 of the 3 judges that she won the fight. After this win, she announced that she was going to take some time off to support her husband ahead of an upcoming judo tournament.
With her husband winning his division at the tournament in August, Oshima returned to action in November, where she successfully defended her Microweight Title against Mizuki Furuse, submitting her in under 2 minutes. In the end, she ended up going 3-1, defended both her titles, and defeated a high profile opponent on a huge stage. Not bad, considering it was only her third year in the sport.
Fighting abroad for the first time
This weekend, Saori will fight at Black Combat V in South Korea, her first time competing abroad as an MMA fighter. Even though she competed in places like Russia and Hungry during her judo career, Saori told us that she’s always wanted to compete abroad at least once in MMA, so she’s really excited for this opportunity. While admittedly not too familiar with Black Combat, since she can’t read Korean, she did watch the women’s episode and told us she’s impressed by the number of followers they have on Youtube.
Ahead of this fight, Saori told us since her husband has a match coming up, he’s in training camp and she’s balancing her training with taking care of her kids and other housework. When she can, she has physical training in the morning, where she works on her stamina and power, and technical training in the afternoon. This seems pretty normal for the young mom.
Looking ahead
Always an active fighter, Oshima told us she wants to fight four times this year, but perhaps more interesting, she told us she has a specific goal for 2024, and in order to achieve it, she wants to win all of her fights this year. She didn’t tell us what that goal is, but it is interesting that is in 2024 and not 2023.
Going forward, the two-division champion has already experienced the ups and downs of the sport, especially after the Hime fight, where she had been worried that if she lost, she might lose the recently gained support from her win over Asakura and in fact she did receive negative comments and people around her changed. But now that she’s gone through that, she told us that she’s now able to give her all without fear of losing.
Closing Comments
“Thank you for reading to the end. I will do my best again this year to put on aggressive fun fights for everyone watching. Thank you for your support!”
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