Japan’s Judo Gold Medalist Satoshi Ishii Looks For A ‘Home’ In MMA

It may be a bit of a stretch to call Satoshi Ishii the Michael Phelps of Japan, but not by much. His victory in the heavyweight judo competition at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was easily the defining moment of the games for his countrymen and was considered by most media outlets the #1 highlight of the year in all of sports. Though Japan does well at the Olympics for a country of its size and has won gold medals in a number of sports, its important to keep in mind that until the late 1970s judo was the countrys most popular sport. While its popularity in the intervening decades has been supplanted by imported team sports like soccer and baseball, judo still holds especially high prestige among the Japanese sports fans and general public.