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Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Shu Hirata makes the right call

By Zach Arnold | April 11, 2009

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Update: Sherdog is reporting that the fight is in fact back on. Given what Hirata said in both English and Japanese, he was clearly against this fight taking place given the weigh-in developments. We know that he said that he, Barnett, and Hooper were against it, but ultimately a decision would be made between Megumi Fujii and Hitomi Akano. Right after Hirata wrote what he did, it was announced that the fight was canceled. Depressingly, an agreement was reached at 2 AM this morning. There could be a 25-plus pound weight advantage when the fight takes place. If Akano gets seriously hurt, this will really give the industry a black eye.

This quote from Scott Coker is, well, telling:

“I don’t really want to say what the deal is but I think that, let’s put it this way [her] gym will have a much better relationship with Strikeforce than just one fighter,” said Coker.

So, in other words, take the fight at a disadvantage and put yourself at risk in order for others to get an opportunity to fight for the promoter.

The original post content can be viewed in full-page mode.

You can be a saint to everyone in the MMA industry and, yet, even Mother Theresa could generate heat. That’s just the nature of how things work. So, when Michael Rome and others start questioning Shu Hirata for backing his fighter (Hitomi Akano) in canceling her fight against Cris Cyborg due to Cris not making weight, Hirata and Akano should absolutely be supported in their decision. Akano gets paid for the fight, so why take a beating? It’s smart business by the Justice Management crew. Hirata made a completely logical point in asking why Akano should take the fight, considering that she was going up in weight class while Cyborg was going down in weight.

Just because Gina Carano missed weight multiple times and had opponents feel pressured into fighting her anyways doesn’t mean that Hitomi Akano should fight Cyborg after what transpired. It’s amusing to watch the reaction from American MMA fans towards Akano for canceling the fight — as if it’s her fault for not “manning up” to fight. If this happened in Japan, the media would be lambasting Cyborg and the ‘shame factor’ would come into play here. In American circles? Akano will deal with idiots saying she pussied out.

Let’s end the charade of Gina Carano making 140 pounds and Cris Cyborg making 145 pounds. Both should realistically be fighting at 150 pounds.

Hirata deserves credit here for stepping up as an agent. We often talk about how agents have no backbone and won’t stand up to promoters who put fighters in precarious positions. In this situation, Hirata put his foot down and made the right call in the best interests of his fighter.

Hirata has posted more details on this situation (in Japanese), where he basically says that if Akano proceeded with the fight that she wouldn’t have much more than what she was guaranteed in the first place due to the breach of contract.

Hirata also has a story talking about an encounter with Javier Mendez, the matchmaker for Strikeforce and head of American Kickboxing Academy. Suffice to say, Hirata is pissed.

Hirata noted that he, Josh Barnett, and Shannon Hooper all had the same take on the situation and that ultimately the decision was made between Megumi Fujii and Hitomi Akano to cancel the fight.

I attempted to copy and paste the Japanese text of Shu’s article here, but this posting system does not apparently support Japanese encoding — which makes me angry. Why can’t this posting system support the Japanese language?

Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | 31 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

31 Responses to “Shu Hirata makes the right call”

  1. Vox says:

    I absolutely agree with you on this…Akano shouldn’t take the fight if Cyborg is not making the proper weight…why should she take a beating for free? She’d be giving up enough weight difference if Cyborg was in weight…why give up more? and for nothing at all? I think she and her management made the right call.

    Ah, as for your posting system not supporting Japanese language…you are probably missing language support files…check the help forums of your posting system 🙂

  2. ilostmydog says:

    It’s good to see something like this finally happening. It seemed in the past that a lot of these women felt like they had to fight despite their opponent being overweight simply because they wouldn’t get paid otherwise. They should be at least getting their show money, if not their win bonus. They shouldn’t feel compelled to fight someone who isn’t living up to a contract they signed and is operating outside the rules.

  3. Fluyid says:

    I completely support a fighter not agreeing to fight when the other fighter isn’t professional enough to show up at the contracted weight.

    My opinion is that the fighter who fails to live up to his/her contract in this way should receive the negative notoriety and suffer the consequences. Maybe something would change if this became the norm.

  4. JThue says:

    Never mind the business side of this – I feel uncomfortable just thinking of watching this fight.

    Perhaps the Carano vs. Cyborg fight should just be changed to a weigh-in contest. Just go ahead and do it in public. Have them weigh in, and then set the division limit to be whatever the highest either woman weighed in at. Then bring out Kim Couture and set a division for her. And then stick another division right in the middle of the two, and promote three set weight classes of female MMA. It doesn’t really matter how they do it, as long as it’s done and we get an end to these constant size mismatches.

  5. Rob Maysey says:

    Bravo again Zach Arnold–spot on.

    She takes the fight after all, and Coker discloses the incentive as not for the actual fighter, but benefits obtained for the gym/other fighters?

  6. Mr. Roadblock says:

    To everyone who gets on their soapbox and says womens MMA isn’t a joke and isn’t a sideshow, please wake up to reality. File this under example gazillion. Can the press please stop covering womens fights and please stop polluting shows with it.

    That or just admit it’s a damned circus act.

  7. Mike Rome says:

    Jesus Zach, how naive are you? They held out for more money and got it.

  8. David says:

    Mike Rome has a great point… they waited out for more money to salvage the show.. Coker disguised it by saying that he will offer more opportunities for the manager/gym. Smart promoter! lol

    However, I think a 25 pound weight difference, for females, let alone a roided out Cyborg, is going to be a slaughterhouse for the already delusional/timid Japanese fighter.

  9. Black Dog says:

    Hirata and Akano were right not to accept the fight; if Cyborg can’t come in at weight, there’s no reason for it.

    My guess is Akano was offered a lot more money to take the fight, and perhaps there are other incentives.

    Cyborg’s weight problem proves the point that MMA still has a long way to go before it’s taken more seriously, especially in the women’s division.

  10. Michaelthebox says:

    This is ugly.

  11. Zach: it probably has to do with the character set in wordpress or on your database. Ya know, all that UTF-8 and UNICODE shit.

  12. frankp316 says:

    I have posted video of the weigh-in and a post weigh-in interview with Josh Barnett on my blog.

    http://frankp316.blogspot.com/2009/04/major-drama-at-strikeforce-weigh-in.html

  13. […] going on until 2am. Things looked very negative indeed for the majority of the evening. Zach from Fight Opinion pointed me towards a blog entry from Akano’s manager Shu Hirata, which should show you the […]

  14. Ivan Trembow says:

    Cyborg made 140 pounds less than a year ago for her fight against Shayna Baszler, and now she can barely get under 150 pounds?

    I agree that Akano’s side should have not accepted the fight for safety reasons. Also, Strikeforce should have booked Cyborg’s opponent in the first place as someone who normally fights at 145.

  15. 45 Huddle says:

    This is sickening. I can’t stand women’s MMA…. This just gives me little doubt to my decision.

    She should not be taking the fight.

  16. 45 Huddle says:

    What if a fighter in the UFC didn’t make weight, and Dana White said:

    “I don’t really want to say what the deal is but I think that, let’s put it this way [her] gym will have a much better relationship with Strikeforce than just one fighter,”

    People would be bashing Dana White until 2011.

    It’s kind of corrupt really.

  17. Zack says:

    “Jesus Zach, how naive are you? They held out for more money and got it.”

    Ding ding ding!

  18. Steve4192 says:

    “Cyborg made 140 pounds less than a year ago for her fight against Shayna Baszler, and now she can barely get under 150 pounds?”

    She can still make 140. She just didn’t feel like cutting weight. She looked like a zombie at her EliteXC weighins, but showed up for this one looking fully hydrated and ready to go. She obviously made no effort whatsoever to cut weight.

    Unfortunately, the promoter’s have no one to blame but themselves. The marquee female fighters know that they can show up at whatever weight they want to and the fight will still go on. This kind of thing will not stop until someone takes off the kid gloves and kicks someone to the curb for missing weight.

  19. Ivan Trembow says:

    “Unfortunately, the promoter’s have no one to blame but themselves. The marquee female fighters know that they can show up at whatever weight they want to and the fight will still go on. This kind of thing will not stop until someone takes off the kid gloves and kicks someone to the curb for missing weight.”

    I agree completely.

    Also, I don’t think the biggest problem with the Akano negotiations is that they offered to sign a few of her teammates in order to sweeten the deal. The problem is that there’s an unsafe weight difference and that the fight should’ve no longer been a possibility after Cyborg made weight. It would have been one thing if they had both made 145, but when they didn’t, the CSAC should not have allowed the fight to continue. And when the CSAC did allow the fight to continue, Strikeforce should have not let it continue.

  20. Ivan Trembow says:

    … with all of that said, the 45 Huddles of the world shouldn’t use this to bash women’s MMA as if this same kind of thing doesn’t happen in men’s MMA, because it is. And the 45 Huddles of the world should also not pretend that there aren’t plenty of men’s MMA fights with weight differences that are as big or bigger. This issue is a problem in all of MMA, not just women’s MMA. It’s hypocritical to feign ignorance and pretend otherwise just for the sake of bashing women’s MMA as a whole.

  21. Ivan Trembow says:

    Damn typos. My previous post should have said:

    “… with all of that said, the 45 Huddles of the world shouldn’t use this to bash women’s MMA as if this same kind of thing doesn’t happen in men’s MMA, because it does. And the 45 Huddles of the world should also not pretend that there aren’t plenty of men’s MMA fights with weight differences that are as big or bigger, because there are. This issue is a problem in all of MMA, not just women’s MMA. It’s hypocritical to feign ignorance and pretend otherwise just for the sake of bashing women’s MMA as a whole.

  22. frankp316 says:

    Akano has fought at 145 in the past and won over the 170lb HIROKO last year in the SMACKGIRL Open Weight tournament.

  23. 45 Huddle says:

    Two of the same things happening in men and women doesn’t tell the entire story.

    I will use the UFC as an example. I don’t know the exact statistics, but I would assume that 99.5% of the guys make weight for them. And I can’t remember the last time a guy didn’t make weight in DREAM or Sengoku.

    Compare that to just the females in EliteXC and Strikeforce here. Is it closer to 10%?

    Like I said, I don’t know the exact statistics, but even a dumby can estimate that the difference between men and women is way off.

    Obviously there are shows in Japan that have a lot of women who make weight. However, I’m looking at just the major fighters competing in America. And honestly, it’s amateur hour.

  24. 45 Huddle says:

    To clarify… 10% of the women not making weight.

  25. Chuck says:

    Two catch-weight fights on one card? Hooray! I thought my birthday wasn’t until May 2! But seriously, what are the odds? Especially on an American fight card?

  26. 45 Huddle says:

    That was sad to watch. The CSAC is pathetic for letting that fight happen.

    If that woman has one a title in Japan…. And she doesn’t even know how to throiw a simple punch…. It backs up my statement about it being a bunch of amateurs.

    On a side note, Mauro is especially horrible tonight. That guy makes Bill Goldberg sound good.

  27. ttt says:

    it was a horrible fight. numerous uncalled shots to the back of the head too.

  28. Chuck says:

    45,

    To be fair, Hitomi is purely a Judoka/submission type. It’s clear that striking is not her forte AT ALL. But she does have a good ground game, especially in the guard. It’s just that Cyborg was too damn big for Hitomi to do anything to her, especially her throws and suplexes. And Cyborg clearly has a good ground game too, if not better than Hitomi’s. But that fight should never have happened.

  29. Shu Hirata says:

    Hey guys,

    Just for the record, I have nothing against Javier Mendez the matchmaker. He actually supported Hitomi’s first decision, which is to NOT accept the fight.
    I am just still fully pissed at how Chute Boxe team reacted to the entire situation.
    BTW – After the ref stopped the fight, Cyborg didn’t come over to check on Hitomi…..and of course no one from Chute Boxe came over to shake her hands. They were all too busy celebrating…..talk about a class act, right?

  30. Shu Hirata says:

    Also, I am not part of Justice Management anymore. I am no longer in partnership with Bout Review… just for the record.
    Thanks

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