Rin Nakai returns to action this Saturday

This weekend at the New Pier Hall in Tokyo, Japan, Rin Nakai will face Shoko Fujita in the opening round of Deep Jewels’ Flyweight Tournament. With 25 professional fights under her belt, spanning close to 16 years, Nakai has been competing longer than any other fighter in the tournament and has the second most fights. In fact, if you remove Sugiyama from the equation, she has nearly double the fights of the other contestants and has been competing longer than their careers combined. Despite this clear advantage when it comes to experience, there is an elephant in the room. Rin Nakai has not been as active recently as her competition. Aside from a mixed-rules exhibition match that took place last year, Nakai has only fought three times since beating Kanako Murata in 2016 and most recently competed in October of 2019. (Cover photo courtesy of LadyGo!)

Legitimizing the tournament

Despite her recent inactivity, Rin Nakai fighting in this tournament is a big deal in that it legitimizes it. Since the winner of the tournament will be crowned the new Flyweight champion, Deep Jewels needed top-level fighters to participate. Shizuka Sugiyama and Rin Nakai fill this role nicely. Outside of them, only Kana Watanabe can realistically make a claim to being the best Flyweight in Japan and with her in Bellator, she is not longer actively competing on the Japanese scene.

As the first of three women to ever fight for the UFC, a former Valkrye Champion, and a former Queen of Pancrase, Rin Nakai is one of the most highly esteemed women fighting in Japan today. For those who are unfamiliar with her past, Nakai was an extremely talented Judoka before making the transition to MMA. She got involved in the sport when she was just three years old and despite only being able to practice a couple days a week, she rose the ranks and was ranked 4th in her division in junior high school. For high school, like Saori Oshima and Ayaka Hamasaki, she moved into a dorm at a school with a prestigious Judo program. During her time in high school, she finished 3rd in her weight division at the national tournament. However, her dreams of going to the Olympics were not to come true as she injured her knee in her first year of University. After this injury she dropped out of University and returned home. After taking some time off, Nakai decided to give MMA a go and made her pro-debut when she was 19 years old. She went on to go 15-0-1 before joining the UFC and their Bantamweight division. She was undersized and went 0-2, the only losses she has suffered to date.

Bringing Attention to the tournament

Outside of helping legitimize the tournament, Rin will also bring attention to it, both international and domestic. Before signing with the UFC, she used to make what can only be described as strange Youtube videos to help promote her fights and this fights generated a lot of views, especially when you consider that it occurred before the recent Youtube boom among Japanese fighters. Let’s take a look at Pancrase’s official Youtube channel. On a channel that is over 10 years old, videos featuring Rin Nakai represent 17 of the 25 most viewed videos, with five of them having more than 1 million views. In comparison, Panchan RIna only has 1 video with more than a million views on her Youtube channel.

As the below chart from Google Trends shows, when Rin is competing, she gets a lot of attention. Around the time of her fight with Kanako Murata, where she wore a crazy weigh-in outfit, she generated slightly more searches than Tenshin and Mikuru ever have. Interestingly, when compared against other women in Japan, she still generates respectable searches, despite her inactivity.

Facing the Karateka

This weekend, Rin Nakai will return to action against Shoko Fujita, the sister of Yamato Fujita, who fought Tenshin twice in Rizin. Training at Me, We with the likes of Shizuka Sugiyama and Yukari Nabe, Shoko Fujita is a striker with a background in Karate. With a five inch height advantage, Shoko will likely try to keep this a striking affair. It is worth noting that she has struggled with grapplers in the past. Rin Nakai for her part, has been training at Muneta Dojo in addition to her normal training under the tutelage of Wild Usami. Muneta Dojo is the Judo dojo she has been training at since she was three. When she was young, the head coach was the inspiration for a manga character and now the coach, his son, is a multiple time world champion. If her training regime is any indication, it looks like Rin will be leaning into her Judo skills, so we should expect to see her trying to get this fight to the mat rather quickly.

How to watch

You can watch Rin Nakai and the rest of Deep Jewels 36 via PPV here. If you order in advance, the event costs 2,500 yen, if you order it the day of the event, it is 3,000 yen.

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