Rizin 28 Reaction, Results, and Numbers -

Roughly a week ago, Rizin 28 went down and overall it was a great card. MMA returned to the Tokyo Dome for the first time in about 18 years and despite COViD-19 restrictions being in place, the event appears to have been a success. A new champion was crowned, two favorites in the tournament emerged, and the crowd was excited to be a part of the event. It is my assumption that had the restrictions not been in place, the Dome could have been sold out. The reason I waited to release this article is that I wanted to wait to see see what type of data emerged after the event. Who did the audience react to, what did they react to, how did the event do on Fuji TV? These are all questions I wanted to address and they are addressed in this article where I first discuss what stood out about the event, then I go over some of the data, then I posted the results at the end. (The header photo is courtesy of Akihito Tatematsu)

What stood out:

I will be the first to admit that I expected Bey Noah to be finished rather quickly via ground and pound or submission. However, he showcased his heart, stamina, and a smart strategy en route to a split-decision loss, which probably would have gone his way had he not received a red card for grabbing the ropes. Dominator, to his credit, never gave up and relentlessly tried to get the fight to the ground, it was just that whenever it looked like he had Bey Noah in trouble, Bey Noah escaped and got back to his feet. It was a great match to lead with as it was entertaining and suspenseful. Between Dominator asking Bey Noah to come to the ground and Bey Noah apologizing loudly for grabbing the ropes, everyone seemed to enjoy the match. Interestingly, the fight has also generated a lot of views on Youtube, so it seems likely that Bey Noah will be back, but we do not know whether it will be MMA or kickboxing.

Sudario has already transitioned to MMA better than any sumo wrestler before him and at Rizin 28 he faced his stiffest test to date. The first round saw some striking exchanges between the two heavyweights, but as the match went on, the action slowed down significantly. After the match, it was revealed that Sudario may have injured his leg in the match and Shibisai also had a heavily taped leg going into the match, which may have been giving him issues. Injuries aside, at some point, Shibisai’s strategy switched to waiting for Sudario to come forward and try to take him down. This eventually happened near the end of the 3rd round and he was able to secure a RNC. All in all, it should be a good experience for both fighters. It was the longest fight of Sudario’s career to date, the first to go past the first round, and it was also his most experienced opponent. It will be interesting to see how he rebounds and what Rizin does with Shibisai who has sneakily put together a 3 fight win streak. On a side note, there were a number of sumo wrestlers in the crowd, including the Ozeki (2nd highest rank) Takakeisho and what looked like Sudario’s twin brother.

Saito has continually been the underdog in his fights and has somehow found a way to win. In his split-decision victory over Vugar, the story of the fight is what Vugar did and didn’t do. As pointed out in the above Youtube comment, which has close to 3,000 likes, Vugar repeatedly committed fouls during the fight. This was hard to see from the audience as most of the fouls were committed while the two were grappling, so it was kind of confusing when Vugar received a yellow card. Now that people have had a chance to watch the fight on video, the fouls are more clear and it has created negative feelings towards Vugar from the Japanese fanbase. These negative feels have been fueled by Vugar’s comments on Twitter, which are likely made by his manager. Now that we have discussed what Vugar did do, let’s discuss what he didn’t do. Vugar did not follow up any of his takedowns with attempts to finish the fight or cause damage, so while it is true that he got a lot of takedowns, Saito was the one doing more damage and attempting to finish the fight. All of this discussion about Vugar shouldn’t take away from Saito’s hard fought win and it seems likely that he will fight Kleber next in a title match.

Both Naoki Inoue and Kai Asakura made big statements with their quick victories. As far as the tournament bouts on the card went, the first two were somewhat lackluster and the last two were explosive and fast. As a result, people are now pulling for Naoki Inoue to face Kai Asakura in the tournament finals, which seems highly likely at the moment. It is hard to tell whether Ishiwatari hurt Inoue or Inoue was off balance, but he came in aggressively and paid for it when Inoue hit him with a counter and followed it up with a soccer kick. The reaction in the crowd was almost one of disbelief at how sudden the fight came to its conclusion. The outcome in the Kai fight was more certain and less unexpected, but Shooto has become more popular, due in part to the Rizin promotional videos, and the crowd got excited when he went for a choke. However, it looks like he was badly damaged by the grounded knees and the violent punches from guard were too much for him. It should also be noted that the ring announcer for the Kai fight was Shoko Nakagwa, known primarily for voicing Pokemon characters. Here is a video of her practicing with the regular ring announcer. As can be seen in the recent Sakakbiara videos, Rizin is looking to collaborate with other stars and broaden Rizin’s appeal, so we should expect them to continue doing things like this.

Satoshi is definitely one of Rizin’s homegrown stars and he is in many ways a poster-child for the promotion. They constantly use his post-fight speeches in their promotional videos and he is very popular amongst the Japanese fans. That being said, no one expected him to defeat Musayef so quickly. Musayev, who is also quite popular among Rizin fans, hadn’t lost since 2014 and was so dominating in the 2019 tournament that it was hard to imagine he would be submitted in little over a minute of the first round. However, that is what happened. Much like how everyone was talking about calf-kicks after Horiguchi defeated Kai, now everyone is talking about triangle chokes. Satoshi is even more popular than he was before now and it will be interesting to see what Rizin does with him going forward. They will likely need to bring in foreign fighters for him to face or they will need to work with some of the domestic promotions to create some contenders.On a side note, before the fight, they played the national anthems of Japan and Azerbaijan, with popular singer May-J singing the Japanese national anthem.

After the event, it is clear that the match that got the biggest reaction was between Mikuru Asakura and Kleber Koike. It trended on Twitter and is clearly the most viewed fight from the event on Youtube. In the first round, it was fairly close, with Mikuru wisely choosing to avoid fighting on the ground and possibly rocking Kleber on the feet. However, Kleber took advantage of the new rules and blasted Mikuru with two standing elbows in the 2nd round which badly damaged his eye, afterwards he was able to get the fight to the ground and choked him unconscious with a triangle choke. Mikuru and Kai now haven’t won on the same card since 2018, with their 4 recent combined losses all happening when the other won on the same card. An interesting point of criticism emerging is that people are questioning the level of coaching that Mikuru and Kai are receiving. While it is clear that both Kai and Mikuru have a high fight IQ, the cornermen for Mikuru’s fight were his brother and his main sponsor. People are contrasting this with Horiguchi who they regard as receiving very high level coaching from American Top Team and Mike Brown.

Rizin by the Numbers:

TV Ratings

The Tenshin Nasukawa and Mikuru Asakura matches aired live on Fuji TV and brought in a 6.2% rating. This places Rizin at 4th for the week in sports, falling behind Sunday Sports (7.0%), the Japan v. Tajikistan soccer match (8%); and the Japan v. Serbia soccer match (8.7%). While Rizin was probably hoping for higher numbers, this seems like a pretty average rating for them.

Rizin 10: 6.1% (Horiguchi, Tenshin)
Rizin 11: 6.0% (Kanna, Rena, Horiguchi)
Rizin 13: 6.7% (Mikuru, Tenshin, Horiguchi)
Rizin 14: 7.5% (Floyd, Tenshin, Horiguchi, Kanna)
Rizin 15: 5.8% (Tenshin, Horiguchi, Rena, Mikuru)
Rizin 16: 6.9% (Tenshin, Kanna)
Rizin 19: 5.9% (Kai, Rena)
Rizin 20: 5.2% (Kai, Tenshin, Mikuru, Rena)
Rizin 24: 6.2% (Tenshin, Koji, Kai, Rena)
Rizin 26: 7.3% (Horiguchi, Kai, Tenshin, Mikuru)
Rizin 28: 6.2% (Mikuru, Tenshin, Kai)

Japanese Twitter Trends

Rizin
Rizin 28
Mikuru Asakura
Kleber Koike
Naoki Inoue
Musayev
Hiroya
Triangle Choke

Youtube Views

As far as Youtube views goes, Mikuru is far and above anyone else on the card. This may be due to his large Youtube following, or it may be due to people being shocked that he lost. Whatever the case, it is clear that he is a big star and his last fight brought a lot of attention to the event. It is likely that he was placed in the main event slot exactly for this reason. In fact, he generated so much interest, that Kleber’s post-fight interview generated over 1 million views. In comparison, Tenshin’s only generated 255k views. Interestingly and perhaps unexpectedly, Bey Noah and Dominator’s fight has generated a lot of views, roughly 727,000. This makes it the third most viewed fight from the event on Youtube. Knowing that Rizin is interested in building their Youtube audience, it seems fair to assume that Bey Noah will be back. Here is a list of the top 10 most viewed videos related to the event after its initial broadcast:

Mikuru Asakura’s own Youtube video: 4.2 million views
Mikuru Asakura vs Kleber Koike fight video: 2.6 million views
Mikuru Asakura post-fight interview: 2.3 million views
Kleber Koike post-fight interview: 1 million views
Kai Asakura vs Shooto Watanabe fight video: 1.1 million views
Kai Asakura’s own Youtuve video: 972k views
Tenshin fight video: 958k views
Akira Maeda reaction video: 897k views
Beynoah vs Dominator fight video: 727k views
Shibatar video on Rizin: 612k views

Search Trends

Looking at some of the search trends right before, during, and after the event also reveals some interesting facts. First, while Mikuru generated a lot of interest for the event in Japan, that is not the case globally. In the U.S. for example, Tenshin generated more interest. However, it only makes sense that the Japanese searches dwarfed the non-Japanese searches, and Mikuru clearly generated the most searches for the event. After the fight, Mikuru hinted that he may retire, but he has since gone back on this statement, with fighters like Kyoji Horiguchi asking him not to retire publicly on Twitter. Needless to say, Rizin is obviously very interested in keeping him around. It will also be interesting to see if he becomes more popular outside of the Japanese market, or if the Japanese language limitation of his Youtube channel limits his global appeal.

**Red**: Mikuru Asakura; **Yellow**: Tenshin Nasukawa; **Green**: Rizin; **Blue**: Kai Asakura

Outside of the big stars on the card, Naoki Inoue made a big impression following his KO victory over Ishiwatari. It makes sense that searches related to him would spike as the fight involved a brutal finish and followed a couple of somewhat lackluster fights. Unlike the searches above, similar results were seen in and out of Japan, with Inoue generating a lion’s share of the searches. On a funny note, one of the trending searches was whether or not he had a girlfriend. Outside of Naoki, there is an interesting revelation regrading Ougikubo and Ishiwatari. For some reason, Ougikubo generated a higher percentage of searches in the U.S. than in Japan and Ishiwatari generated a higher percentage of searches in Japan than in the U.S. Perhaps this is due to Ougikubo being more familiar in the US due to his time on the Ultimate Fighter but it will be interesting to see whether this changes.