The Big Bad Blog 2009 Female Fighter of the Year

I don't normally do these kind of year end review things. But a couple of months ago I started to see supposed experts talk about the 2009 female fighter of the year. Of course the common names brought up include Cristiane Cyborg Santos, Sarah Kaufman and Megumi Fujii. But the one name missing from most of those lists was DEEP Lightweight Champ MIKU. And based on results and the level of competition she faced in 2009, it's not even close. So as voted on by a panel of one, MIKU is the Big Bad Blog 2009 Fighter of the Year. She's also probably the most improved fighter in the world over the last couple of years. She's now 23-4 and hasn't lost since 2006. MIKU had three wins in 2009. She won over Nicdali Calanic in 21 seconds on Apr. 16 and her third fight was a win over WINDY Tomomi on Oct. 10. But her biggest win was on June 28 over Lisa Ward in front of her hometown fans in Toyama. This was the main event of the show and there's no question it's the biggest win of MIKU's career. MIKU's last loss was to Lisa on Sept. 15, 2006. And if you watch both fights, it's very clear how much MIKU has improved since the 2006 match. She's been working a lot on her striking and worked a couple of matches in Shoot Boxing to hone her skills. I've got the video of MIKU's win over Lisa Ward for you so check that out. The next challenge for MIKU is likely to be a title match with Megumi Fujii. Fujii also won three fights in 2009 but MIKU's level of competition was higher. Sarah Kaufman got major points for accepting her April match with Meisha Tate on short notice. But Strikeforce dropped the ball when they didn't have Sarah face Takayo Hashi in November as they should have. Cris Cyborg did great in August but loses points for her shenanigans at the April match against Hitomi Akano. And I want to recognize Mika Nagano, Asami Kodera and Alexandra Sanchez for winning the recent ROUGH STONE tournaments. Biggest disappointment? Not much question Shizuka Sugiyama gets a big fat raspberry for psyching herself out and losing to Sanchez in Sept. She's not ready for prime time. And another big fat raspberry to VALKYRIE matchmaker Yasuko Mogi for booking herself in the main event of the most recent show when Yuka Tsuji was unavailable due to injury. A lot of these promoters need to smarten up in 2010.