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Masakazu Imanari

There's an apocryphal story--and I stress apocryphal, I heard it from multiple grappling folks back in the day but it is decidedly unsourced--that Bellator and Strikeforce had tried to book Masakazu Imanari for fights in America only to be told by customs that Imanari was permanently banned from entering the United States, and when his agent was asked if he knew why, he replied "No, but I'm not surprised."

I do not, and will never, know if that's true. But I want it to be true, because I want Masakazu Imanari to be as weird of a person as he is a fighter.

Imanari wasn't supposed to be physically capable of fighting. He was born with a spinal condition that severely limited his mobility and would ultimately require three separate surgeries to regain it. He and his brother spent their childhood watching martial arts movies and professional wrestling, and Imanari found himself deeply curious about the point where they intersected. When he turned eighteen and graduated from high school, he sought training from the best: Kickboxing at Toshio Fujiwara's gym and catch wrestling under Satoru Sayama. He'd sharpen his shootfighting skills under mixed wrestling banners--Inoki's UFO and the extremely short-lived Kingdom Ehrgeiz--before he felt prepared to make his debut.

The year 2000 had not seen a fighter like Masakazu Imanari. Hell, it's almost twenty years later and I'm still not sure we've seen another. There have been many very skilled, very aggressive grapplers, but none that would, say, curl into a ball, hurl themselves at their opponent's feet and wind up getting a heel hook out of it. (The Imanari Roll is, to this day, my second-favorite grappling move.) Even by the standards of specialists, he was a specialist: In 38 career victories he scored 26 submissions--17 of them coming by some form of leglock or heel hook--and only one knockout, which came not from strikes or ground and pound but an upkick while the opponent was diving into his guard. Every single technique he employed as a fighter existed to enable his grappling attacks.

Unfortunately, because his offense was so submission-oriented, the fighters he couldn't submit became the hard ceiling that stopped his ascension every time he found the spotlight.

The first time this arc played out, it was in regional organization and Pride feeder league ZST's lightweight grand prix. Imanari met the 5-0 black belt Jorge Gurgel in the first round and submitted him with a heel hook that tore Gurgel's knee apart in just thirty-two seconds. Gurgel's blood-curdling scream of agony still comes back to me now and again. Imanari's opponent in the following round was Marcus Aurelio, the man who'd given Gurgel his black belt. He outgrappled Imanari, won a decision and, ultimately, won the tournament.

The second time happened during his following Pride stint. From 2004 to 2008 he won and defended three championships--the featherweight and bantamweight titles from DEEP and the featherweight title from Britan's Cage Rage--but in his only calls up to the big show, he was outfought by Buscape Firmino and viciously knocked out by Joachim Hansen.

After Pride folded, the conflict played itself out again in failed revival federation DREAM--three times. First he entered their 2009 featherweight grand prix only to get bounced in the quarterfinals by eventual champion Bibiano Fernandes. He tried again in 2011's bantamweight tournament, made it to the finals--and got outstruck and outgrappled by the legendary Hideo Tokoro. When DREAM tried to save itself from bankruptcy with yet another bantamweight grand prix just a few months later, he was once again eliminated two rounds in by Antonio Banuelos, the Robin to Chuck Liddell's Batman.

The cycle never stopped. It's still playing out, as of this writing. He started fighting for Singaporean ONE FC, but couldn't get past its top contenders. He returned to DEEP, but found himself on the wrong end of Mizuto Hirota's fists and Kazunori Yokota's ferocity.

That's the patch on Masakazu Imanari's career. His singular focus turned him into one of the scariest fighters for any lightweight to face--but as a result, his opponents know exactly what to expect from him, and anyone who can successfully stop those grappling attacks stymies him. He's so specifically associated with one repeated avenue of assault that his nickname, "Ashikan Judan," means "The Great Master of Leglocks." It's his defining feature as a fighter, and when your defining feature can be identified and defended against, you either adjust and grow or get left behind.

And Masakazu Imanari decided long ago that he hated legs more than he loved championships.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (Pride: Bushido 8 vs Hansen / EliteXC Cage Rage 25 vs Silva / DREAM 9 vs Bibiano / Polaris Pro 7 vs Williams). Will dive on your legs repeatedly. Be warned.