RIZIN held a press conference today to announce several matches including Rin Nakai vs Shizuka Sugiyama for RIZIN 11 July 29 at Saitama Super Arena. This fight will be at Flyweight. Most fans should be familiar with Shizuka. She's a DEEP JEWELS veteran. Her record is 16-5-1. When she first started she looked like she could be a big star especially with her looks. But then she started to lose. And it's not so much that she lost but she looked terrible in losing. At one time it looked like she would retire and move to Australia. But Shizuka did return. She's done OK but she's a midcard fighter who beats who she should beat and loses to better fighters. Her main training is karate. She's not very good on the ground. She won her last fight over Sachiko Fujimori on the June 9 DEEP JEWELS show. Fujimori came out of retirement for that fight. I saw on Twitter that Shizuka plans to retire after this fight. I'm not surprised. She's married and probably wants to raise a family. Also most Japanese fighters are Atomweights. There are very few Flyweights. Rin is probably the only Flyweight Shizuka hasn't fought. And Rin is a better fighter than Shizuka with her judo skills. Rin's one big flaw is she gets off to slow starts and invariably loses the first round before she gets her act together. She can beat anyone if she's aggressive. That's why she lost her two UFC fights. She fell behind in both fights. This is a mental block that neither Rin or her trainer Wild Usami seem to be able to remedy. One problem is she lives way up in Shikoku and she doesn't have access to advanced training facilities or decent sparring partners. They have to fly her in for fights. Since we last saw Rin in RIZIN Dec. 2016, she's had some injuries though she did beat a Korean kickboxer on a DEEP show in Feb. She would be an elite fighter if not for that one big flaw. She should win this fight.
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