UFC Japan: Ultimate Japan
UFC mixed martial arts event in 1997
UFC Japan: Ultimate Japan (also known as UFC Ultimate Japan or UFC 15.5) was a mixed martial arts event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship on December 21, 1997, in Yokohama, Japan. The event was seen on pay per view in the United States, on cable TV in Japan, and was later released on home video.
History
The event was arranged in partnership with Kingdom Professional Wrestling to capitalize on the popularity of shoot wrestling and the rapidly-growing Japanese MMA market, amid the emergence of promotions such as PRIDE, and was intended to serve as the inaugural event of a planned “Ultimate Japan” sub-brand, with plans for an eventual "UFC Japan" ran by local promoters. Although the UFC subsequently returned to Japan for Ultimate Japan 2 (UFC 23) in 1999 and Ultimate Japan 3 (UFC 25) in 2000, the planned sub-brand never developed into a regular series amid the UFC's financial difficulties and the increasingly competitive Japanese MMA market.
The event featured a four-man heavyweight tournament, the first ever UFC Middleweight Championship bout, a Heavyweight Championship bout, a Superfight and an alternate bout. Ultimate Japan 1 featured the first UFC appearance of MMA legends Kazushi Sakuraba and Frank Shamrock.
The event was the first appearance of longtime UFC announcer Mike Goldberg, who replaced Bruce Beck as the play by play announcer. Another notable first was the use of unique entry music for each fighter, though this was not repeated in UFC 16. Also, this UFC event was the first to be located in a country other than the United States or its territories.
Sakuraba's Tale
In an attempt to gain attention for the Japanese Kingdom Pro Wrestling, Hiromitsu Kanehara and Yoji Anjo signed on to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship's Ultimate Japan tournament.
The public source identifies “UFC Japan: Ultimate Japan” as uFC mixed martial arts event in 1997. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Japan, Ultimate and mixed.
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This entry incorporates text from “UFC Japan: Ultimate Japan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.