MMA is a niche sport, it is not for everyone, nor is it as televised and loved as other sports franchises such as the NBA, NFL, or NHL, but MMA and the UFC are still very much well known.
MMA has had a fair share of action on the UFC spreads, and it’s the personalities who fight in the ring that make these spreads so active. There are many pioneers and figures in the sport that have built it up into what it is today.
One of these many legends who built up MMA to what it is today is Megumi Fujii. She was a legendary MMA fighter who crafted a very long, but somehow overshadowed legacy that ran through the world’s fastest-growing sport.
A story was recently released on Megumi Fujii, going over how she ended up where she was and how her legacy came to be, we will break it down for you, so you understand exactly what made her great!
How It Began
Back in the early 2000s, MMA was still finding its place in the world, there were rules and boundaries needed to help to evolve the sport from how it was viewed, guidelines gave it a better sense of being a legitimate sport instead of a violent spectacle, and at the time most participants were men.
After she graduated college she was introduced to something called Combat Sambo, this was the first time she ever attended a pro MMA event, it was shocking, and she was scared, but it was thrilling and she was excited.
Megumi had no intention to participate after she saw Emelianenko’s fight-ending spectacle. However, four years after she went to the first event, she started to teach and realized that to teach technique properly she needed to be a practitioner.
This is when she started practicing. The stars aligned and one might see Fujii and Emelianenko were in one place.
Of course, to be as good as she was, she did attend a dojo as young as age 3, with her family, when she started in the dojo to continue, herself, she was 10 and women being in a dojo was rare, and she was often seen as being a strange girl for being there.
This is where a part of her legacy came in. She never visualized a career in Judo because there was such prejudice towards women being in martial arts in this time, when she graduated she retired from Judo and made her go into Combat Sambo.
When she first attended Hiroyuki Abe’s gym, she was already a silver medalist at the Sambo World Championship. With a Judo background and throwing techniques, all that she needed to work on was her tackle.
Eventually her heart won over her head, and the reason for her passion for martial arts dwindled, and she decided to take her shot with MMA.
There were no real semblance of stable weight classes then, and so she competed in fights that ranged from 106 lbs to 125 lbs across her 9-year-long career. Since there were not many female fighters then either, she mainly competed with overseas competition too.
The Peak
Back in 2011, TMZ asked Dana White the UFC president when women will fight in the UFC, White said “Never”. However, the Western world in MMA did not share that idea, but they were even less accepting than those in Japan.
Megumi started her MMA career at around 30, which in the eyes of some may seem late, and she started to hear of herself around 4 or 5 years into her career, she would hear things like:
“Megumi Fujii is something to look out for”.
She brushed comments off, she did not want to lose to men, she was in a war with MMA prejudice, she wanted to be seen and not overlooked because of her being a woman. She wanted to win in a way where no one could. She wanted to take everyone by surprise.
Her second fight against Erica Montoya, the best female fighter at the time, was an impressive one. Beating Montoya did put Megumi on the map, but it was still a while before she was really seen.
Collectively she fought 22 times and won each and every one of the fights she had in this time, 18 of these fights she finished with a submission, 13 of them being attacks to the arms, and she had 2 different streaks of successive submissions too.
A Legend Born Before Her Time
Megumi Fujii was a female version of her male counterpart Fedor Emelianenko, together they were taking MMA by storm.
Megumi’s whole life was martial arts, she had been a student, a teacher, a competitor, and as long awaited as her Bellator run ended up being, it was the end of her career when she hit 36, and she started tearing up.
She was small but strong, and if she had fought in today’s MMA and UFC scene, she would have been one of the most prominent fighters, however, she also paved the way for women to be more prominent in MMA fighting and the martial arts.