Super Rizin 5 results: Shaidullaev outpoints A.J. McKee

Shinya Aoki landed zero significant strikes. That is the number I keep coming back to from Osaka, and we will get to it, but the headline is that Rajabali Shaidullaev is 19-0 and did not need a finish to prove the point.

Shaidullaev beat A.J. McKee by unanimous decision in the main event of Super Rizin 5 at the Kyocera Dome Osaka on Thursday, and he did it by wrestling, which nobody had on the card. Five takedowns from eight attempts. Seven minutes and 26 seconds of control across three rounds to McKee's three minutes and 14 seconds. Thirty-four significant strikes to 16, 106 total strikes to 70. Jason Herzog refereed a fight that was never in dispute and never in danger of ending early.

McKee is 25-3 now, and this was the first loss of his career in which he was neither hurt nor competitive. He has a full career of finishes behind him and his last three fights have all gone to the scorecards.

I picked Shaidullaev to stop him inside two rounds. Right man, wrong everything else, which turned out to be the shape of my whole night.

On to the rest.

Asakura needed 159 seconds

Photo: ホタテマン0010 / CC BY 4.0

Mikuru Asakura knocked out Shinya Aoki with punches at 2:39 of the first round, and the statistical record of Aoki's night reads: one total strike landed, zero of them significant, one takedown attempted, none completed. He got 57 seconds of control. He did nothing with it.

The part I did not expect was the shape of it. Asakura landed his own takedown, one for one, went hunting for a submission on Shinya Aoki of all people, and then got back up and knocked him out. That is a kickboxing convert outgrappling the most technically frightening submission fighter Japan has ever produced, in Japan, on the way to a first-round knockout. Asakura is 20-6. The only man to beat him in his last two outings was fighting in the main event an hour later.

Aoki is 43 years old and 49-13. I do not want to write the sentence everybody writes about a legend after a knockout, so here is a different one: nobody in Japanese MMA has more credit in the bank than Shinya Aoki, and there is nobody left in RIZIN's featherweight or lightweight pool whose name is worth what another one of these costs him. If he wants a farewell, he has earned the right to name the terms. He should name a grappler.

The two results nobody had, and one of them was not close

Ren Hiramoto beat Karshyga Dautbek by split decision, and the split is the only strange thing that happened in the fight. Hiramoto landed 49 significant strikes to 37. He went six for eight on takedowns against a man who attempted none. He held 239 seconds of control to Dautbek's 176. Dautbek came in 19-3, closed at minus 242 after opening even shorter than that at minus 319, and he lost every category a scorecard is supposed to weigh. Two judges saw it. The third apparently priced the fight rather than watched it.

Hiramoto is 11-4 as a professional kickboxer, which is exactly the crossover profile RIZIN keeps feeding to imported wrestlers, and exactly the one the board keeps discounting.

Yutaka Saito beat Ren Sugiyama by unanimous decision, and this is where I want you to sit with a number for a second. Sugiyama, the kickboxer every Japanese fan knows as Ya-Man, closed at minus 370. In fifteen minutes he landed two significant strikes. Two. Saito landed 48, took him down five times from six attempts, threw three submission attempts, and controlled 11 minutes and 38 seconds of a 15-minute fight.

Saito is 38 and 22-9-2, and the market keeps forgetting what a 38-year-old MMA veteran does to a striker still learning the other 80 percent of the sport. There is a longer piece to write about how RIZIN cards get priced, and I have written it, but the short version is that both upsets on this card were against short favorites and neither was an upset on the tape.

Satoshi is still Satoshi

Photo: Gyutan329pii / CC BY-SA 4.0

Roberto Satoshi de Souza took a unanimous decision from Shunta Nomura and is 21-4. I had him by submission in the second, on the reasonable theory that Nomura has not fought anybody who can take his back, and instead Satoshi won a fight where the threat did all the work: 47 significant strikes to 14, six minutes and 39 seconds of control, two takedowns from three attempts, and Nomura never once in position to steal a round.

Nomura is 10-3 and gave away nothing cheap, which at 28 is a loss he can build on. Satoshi is 36 and has now spent years being the most avoidable man on the RIZIN roster, a status the promotion has never quite figured out how to monetize.

The rest, in descending order of how much you should care:

• Natalia Kuziutina submitted Rena Kubota with a guillotine at 3:14 of round two, and the significant strike count before the finish was 99 to 3. Ninety-nine, in a fight that did not reach eight and a half minutes. Kuziutina is 11-1 and the minus 613 average closing price on her was the single most accurate number on the card. Kubota is 15-7 in MMA and 32-3 in shootboxing, which remains the sport she should be fighting in.
• Vugar Karamov decisioned Ryo Takagi with six takedowns from nine attempts, three submission attempts and 7:57 of control. Karamov is 22-7 and remains the most reliably competent import RIZIN keeps on retainer, which is a compliment even if it does not sound like one. Takagi drops to 11-4.
• Hide Meison Usami beat Noah Bey by decision on the strength of two knockdowns. Bey out-landed him on total strikes, 122 to 92, and put 29 of his significant shots into the legs. Knockdowns beat leg kicks on a scorecard, in every country, every time.
• Daichi Tomizawa vs Ryo Kawabata came off the card and was never rescheduled onto the show, which is why you counted nine fights on the poster and eight on the broadcast.

What RIZIN should book next

Shaidullaev is 19-0 and has beaten the best import the promotion could buy, in the promotion's biggest building, without being extended once. Two honest options: bring him a UFC-caliber featherweight from outside, or send him out on loan and concede that the domestic pool is not a test. RIZIN has historically liked neither.

McKee is the more interesting problem. The loss was clean and he is 25-3, so the version of him that turns up next decides whether Osaka was a payday or a pivot.

Hiramoto has earned the co-main on the next domestic card and he will get it, because RIZIN has never once needed persuading to push a Japanese fighter who has just beaten a foreign favorite.

And if the New Year's Eve poster arrives with Aoki's name opposite another puncher, remember that the total strike line this time read one to eighteen, and that Aoki's one was not a significant strike.