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The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s signing of Yoshihiro Akiyama represents a significant business first – the first time a true native top-level drawing card from Japan has signed with a foreign mixed martial arts organization.

UFC has talked with most major Japanese fighters, but talks always came down to economics. Because they were more valuable to the Japanese promotions than they would be to UFC, the money offers were better, plus there were more sponsorship dollars available for fighting on a shows broadcast on network television in Japan.

Those with knowledge of Akiyama’s decision say he was unhappy about his role as a villain in Japan, due to his role in his country’s version of the “Greasegate” controversy that came out of last month’s Georges St. Pierre-B.J. Penn match. Instead of embracing his status, he wanted to start fresh in a new setting.

UFC president Dana White has long talked about wanting to promote in Japan, but there are a multitude of challenges, including the UFC’s television clearance on a station only a small percentage of the public gets and the difficulty foreign promoters have experienced trying to get a foothold in the Japanese marketplace.

And while Akiyama is, with the exception of only Kid Yamamoto, the biggest television ratings draw of Japanese MMA fighters, he is also hated in the country.

Akiyama has a strange dichotomy, because as much as he’s hated in Japan, he’s loved in South Korea, as the country’s current martial arts hero.

At this point there are no plans to run live events in South Korea, but UFC does have television in that country and Akiyama on its roster greatly bolsters its standing.

But putting marketing aside, there is another reality to Akiyama. After Akiyama was knocked out cold on December 31, 2007, by Kazuo Misaki, he has not been the same fighter. He is slower to react, which is the kiss of death against top competition. Fighting Entertainment Group, the promotion behind K-1 in Japan, was well aware of this, putting him against two non-fighters in his only matches this past year. Unless his reflexes suddenly snap back to pre-knockout levels, UFC is paying big money for a fighter who may very well be shot. And unlike in Japan, UFC is not going to put fighters who couldn’t even win in minor-league shows against him because he’s a draw.

Posted by a Sherdog moderator:

Since we're a pretty small crew here in Japan, and since I'm often pressed for time to do interviews within the schedules of the interviewee and our three-person team, we don't always have time to break the ice with fighters/promoters such that we can speak amicably and openly with them (which is what we want, because that's when personalities really take shape in an article of 1400 or so words).

Needless to say, we represent a Western and thus outside news entity--we not only report and publish things differently, but we ask questions that people just aren't used to here. Guardedness (and sometimes boring answers) are par for the course for us here, so it's my job to try and cut through all that.

Thus, with only one hour to interview him, and the fact that he didn't really know us personally, it was suggested by Jordan that we gamble by OPENING the interview with the Sexyama stuff to break the ice (hopefully). That's something that he'd definitely not expect, but we're foreign, so why not, right?

Jordan and I didn't know how he'd react to it, or if he had a sense of humor at all, but we were both pretty hopeful it'd break the ice just enough to get him amped up to do an interview for the English-speaking fans he likely never knew he had. We figured that so much gold came from the thread that there had to be very little chance he'd be offended by it and kick us out.

Starting the interview, I *didn't* show him examples from the thread, just yet. I just told him about it and the nickname Sexyama. It was the first he'd heard of it, and it took him by surprise. A careful smile was forming on his face at that moment, so he hadn't really developed an opinion adequate enough to really comment on it just yet, but it gave me hope that the plan was working (if, slowly). He asked me my opinion first, what it was all about, and things like that. I basically told him that of the online, hardcore MMA fanbase, there were people who thought he was great and that he had a particularly sharp sense of style that set him apart from other fighters. That's when I showed him the example posts.

The moniker, along with the example posts I'd printed out earlier that day eventually won him over, and like Daniel says, he was constantly leafing through them during the interview, muttering "Sexyama" under his breath, trying out the name and apparently liking it. When we wrapped up details with his management after the interview, he was in the management office, sitting at one of the desks, STILL looking through the example posts I'd printed.

I think it's safe to say he really appreciates the attention, and thinks the tongue-in-cheek nickname is cool. Now, all we need to do is get Rogan to say it during the UFC 100 telecast.

cowboyronnie wrote:Yoshi and Akiyama are both Korean. Korea is where the UFC is aiming.