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Hidehiko Yoshida

There are a lot of repeating tropes in these profiles: The celebrity fighter, the fighter with no formal training but a former martial background, the fighter who gets overly favortable matchups, the fighter who gets brutalized by the Pride meat grinder, the freakshow fights and professional wrestlers. Hidehiko Yoshida is one of the precious few fighters that hit every branch of the trope tree.

Yoshida, while not a trained fighter, was one of the most legit martial artists Pride ever employed: A lifelong judoka, Yoshida reached the apex of the art in 1992, sweeping the Barcelona Summer Olympics and taking home a gold medal. He would never reach those heijghts again--he qualified for the 1996 and 2000 Olympic games but failed to make the podium, and having just turned 31 prior to the latter games, he was aware his Judo career was over. By that point, Pride was just getting off the ground, and they had eyed Yoshida for competition almost immediately, but it took a couple of years to get him--and even then, they didn't -quite- get him.

Yoshida's Pride debut wasn't a mixed martial arts fight but a special grappling contest on the already-bizarre, co-promoted Pride/K-1 Shockwave supercard. He faced the legend himself, Royce Gracie, in a limited-rules battle: Striking was allowed only to the body while standing and entirely illegal on the ground, both men would wear the gi, and as always with the Gracie family no judges would be permitted: Someone would submit or the fight would be a draw. It's a fascinating stylistic battle, with Yoshida using his weight advantage and judo expertise to ragdoll Royce and Royce using his leverage to pull guard and lock Yoshida down. Yoshida was getting the better of the exchanges, but the two seemed very evenly matched, and looked likely to go the distance. And then Yoshida put Royce in a lapel choke and asked the referee if he was unconscious--and the referee jumped in and stopped the fight.

Conspiracy theorists to this day say it was a screwjob, but it just seems like a giant error--but it provoked a near-riot from the Gracie team. Yoshida's camp said Gracie's arms went limp, Royce protested that he was full conscious, no one was happy--except Pride, who had their new Japanese superstar, the national hero who choked out Royce Gracie. He had his first against Don Frye just three months later--his first three MMA fights, within the next twelve months--and, somewhat suspiciously, they were all against professional wrestlers who all failed to use their usual strengths against Yoshida.

But it was less suspicious when Wanderlei Silva beat the crap out of him in their next fight. Yoshida put up a much better struggle than anyone thought he'd be capable of, but still lost a unanimous decision. This became the weird duality of Yoshida's Pride career--very rarely was a fight of his evenly-matched. He'd get gimme fights against one-dimensional strikers like Hunt, Abbott and Nishijima--and then be thrown to the wolves, facing Wanderlei and Cro Cop. Even worse, the gimme fights sometimes backfired: He lost a famous gold-medalist matchup against Rulon Gardner, in the latter's one and only fight, and his final Pride performance was an absolutely disgusting matchup against James "The Colossus" Thompson, where the referee refused to call the fight while Yoshida absorbed a beating so hellacious he suffered permanent organ damage. There's a point where Thompson has Yoshida mounted and is raining down punishment, but they're in the ropes so the ref calls for a reset--and when Yoshida doesn't respond, the referee drags him across the ring, puts Thompson back on top of him and lets him resume the beating.

MMA is cruel to its veterans. Yoshida puttered on after Pride folded--he fought for the short-lived Sengoku, mostly losing--but retired in 2010 with one final fight on a card that was in itself a tribute to him and his career. His retirement fight came against his protege, Kazuhiro Nakamura, whom he'd ordered to not go easy on him--and Nakamura obediently battered him, winning a unanimous decision and ending his mentor's career, openly weeping as the scores were read. It was a fittingly painful ending to an incredibly tough career.

But it was a good career. Yoshida walked into MMA with no fighting training, beat a pair of former UFC champions, went toe to toe with Wanderlei Silva and retired at 9-8-1 with a well-deserved reputation as one of the most surprisingly tough men in the sport's history. His legend was earned and well-deserved.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride 23 vs Frye / Pride: Shockwave 2005 vs Ogawa / K-1 Dynamite!! 2009 vs Ishii / 1992 Barcelona Olympics). Had to get a little creative with the moves--i.e., substituting the mounted forearm guillotine for the ezekiel choke.