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Hayato Sakurai

It took years for mainstream mixed martial arts to embrace lower weightclasses. The UFC was active for five years before they crowned their first champion at 170 pounds in 1998; Pride lasted even longer, not promoting an officially-recognized lightweight fight for seven in 2003. Until that point, those lighter weight classes existed almost solely in Japan--almost solely in Shooto, the eldest of the MMA organizations. In those early days of MMA, there was an easy consensus #1 at welterweight: Hayato "Mach" Sakurai.

Sakurai was an early adherent to mixed martial arts, training and competing in Shootboxing as a teenager--a sort of proto-MMA that allowed striking, throws and standing submissions, but no grappling on the ground. Sakurai was recruited into Shooto by Tiger Mask himself, Satoru Sayama, who saw a potential star in the 21 year-old kickboxer. As often tended to be the case, Sayama was extremely, thoroughly correct.

Mach fought in Shooto's 170-pound division and became its posterboy almost immediately by the simple, time-tested method of never, ever losing. From his debut in 1996, Mach went just shy of five straight years without losing a fight. He was one of the first truly complete fighters in the world, a picture of well-rounded skills aided by his natural gifts: His explosive athleticism showed not just in his aggressive grappling but in the stunning power he wielded for a 170-pound fighter, and his smart, tactical approach to combat allowed him to outmanuever almost everyone he fought. He held the Shooto 170-pound championship for three years, in a run that saw him knocking off MMA luminaries like Jutaro Nakao, Ali Elias, Luiz Azeredo, Tetsuji Kato and Frank Trigg. When he finally lost the title, it was a hard-fought decision against a little-known welterweight named Anderson Silva--and at the time, it was a shocking upset.

Two things happened soon after that fight that permanently changed the course of Mach's career. The first was a terrible car accident that left him with a broken arm and two herniated disks. The second was his decision--within just two months of the accident--to leave Shooto, come to the UFC, and challenge its welterweight champion, Matt Hughes. To put this in proper perspective, this was Matt Hughes at the height of his power: 30-3, freshly-anointed as the champion, outweighing Sakurai by a solid twenty pounds after his weight cut, the most dominating wrestler in the mixed martial arts world. Mach had only regained the full use of his arm a couple weeks before the fight--and he still almost won, wobbling Hughes twice before getting smashed into a fine paste over the course of 20 minutes of ground and pound. Mach returned to Shooto for one more fight, and found himself once again on the wrong side of an overwhelming American grappler, this time at the hands of Jake Shields, the man who'd hold his belt just a year later.

After a half-decade of dominance, Mach had been bounced from the top ranks three times in a row. A number of factors coalesced--his first real taste of defeat, aging out of his athletic prime, struggling with the accident and his own mental well-being, an addiction to the deliciousness that was Korean barbecue--and left Mach diminished. He was no longer in peak condition: He started showing up to fights slightly pudgy or visibly tired, and no longer had the total killer instinct that had defined his early career. He wasn't the young lion of Shooto anymore.

Unfortunately for the rest of the MMA world, a diminished Mach was still a handful, and he spent the rest of his career making it abundantly clear that taking him for granted was a mistake. He went 8-3 in Pride, in the process notching a vicious knockout over UFC champion Jens Pulver and making it to the finals of Pride's incredible 2005 Lightweight Grand Prix only to be beaten by the unstoppable freight train that was Takanori Gomi. He went on to join DREAM after Pride folded, and briefly destroyed heartthrobs Katsuyori Shibata and Shinya Aoki, but couldn't get past Marius Zaromskis or the then-ascending Nick Diaz. After seventeen years of uninterrupted competition, he finally retired in 2013--but popped up three years later to knock out Wataru Sakata for Rizin's big new year's eve special. He hasn't committed to stopping entirely, but he doesn't have any delusions of being truly competitive again.

And he shouldn't. At 38-13-2, with one of the greatest streaks in mixed martial arts history, Mach has nothing to prove. He had ups and downs, and some things professionally and personally could have gone better--for the love of god, don't ask him about his sex tape scandal--but a huge part of lightweight mixed martial arts was built on his back. His contributions to the sport are legion and his legacy concrete. He earned his right to eat bulgogi without guilt.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride: Bushido 9 vs Pulver / Shooto: Las Grandes Viajes 3 vs Nakao / UFC 36 vs Hughes / Rizin WGP 2016 vs Sakata).