Looking back on the strange MMA career of Yuji Nagata
Despite being 53 years old, Yuji Nagata is scheduled to face off against Jon Moxley in a professional wrestling match on Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite show. Over the course of his extensive career, he has won titles for a variety of Japanese promotions and joined the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 2018. Like many wrestlers in the early years of the new millennium, Nagata was pressed into MMA service. The results were disastrous, and it is a testament to his professional wrestling ability that he was able to salvage his career. The following looks back at the statistical absurdity of Nagata’s two-fight MMA career.
His two fights came against Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic and Fedor Emelianenko, who are considered the #18 and #1 all-time heavyweights respectively by Fight Matrix. The debut against Filipovic in 2001 made some sense at the time. When Nagata fought “Cro Cop,” the kickboxer had only two MMA fights including a draw against the always overmatched Nobuhiko Takada.
On the other hand, Nagata’s fight against Emelianenko in 2003 was as absurd as it sounds. Emelianenko was already the Pride champion and the top heavyweight in the game. The story behind the fight is much more interesting, sorted and convoluted, but is it really more outlandish than one of the top boxers in history fighting an 0-1 Internet celebrity?
Perhaps fittingly enough, Nagata was “punked” in his first MMA fight, which is to say he landed zero knockdowns, significant strikes, takedowns or submission attempts. The name of the stat comes from fellow professional wrestler CM Punk who accomplished the feat in his debut against Mickey Gall. While it is a sign of pure domination, fighters get “punked” all the time. Aalon Cruz and Fabio Cherant have both already been “punked” this year. Technically Uriah Hall failed to register any stats against Chris Weidman, but somehow won the fight.
Nagata was able to get on the board with two landed significant strikes against Emelianenko, but he quickly suffered the same fate. He finished (hopefully) his MMA run with a 1.45 significant strikes landed per minute rate, 14.46 significant strikes absorbed per minute rate and a -13.01 striking differential.
The professional wrestler also suffered three knockdowns in his MMA career despite it lasting only a combined 1:23. That comes out to a 32.53 knockdowns allowed per 15 minute rate. Among ranked fighters only 27 of the 175 ranked UFC fighters have suffered more than three knockdowns in their entire UFC careers.
Despite fighting two of the best heavyweights of all time, Nagata was always more of a professional wrestler than a fighter. Four days after being brutally knocked out by Emelianenko, Nagata returned to his wrestling roots and had a four-star match against Kensuke Sasaki at New Japan’s annual Tokyo Dome show.