Roberto Satoshi made a name for himself in the jiu-jitsu circuit before transitioning to MMA and becoming the most dominant champion in RIZIN history, but there\u2019s still a door open for him to return to grappling mats if the offer is right.<\/p>\n
Satoshi, who looks for his sixth lightweight title defense on Dec. 31 in Saitama against Ilkhom Nazimov on the New Year\u2019s Eve card, revealed he was offered matches with Mica Galvao, one of the greatest grapplers of this generation with wins in every single major IBJJF tournament in 2024, plus the ADCC gold.<\/p>\n
According to Satoshi, he was unable to get the deal done with ADXC because the first date was too close to RIZIN 48 in 2024, when he knocked out Luiz Gustavo to defend the title. The second ADXC offer was for later that year in Rio de Janeiro, a month before his scheduled RIZIN 49 title match with Vugar Karamov \u2014 he won via first-round triangle choke.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I liked it] because I never faced any of the new generation at lightweight,\u201d Satoshi told MMA Fighting. \u201cUnfortunately, I finished second at the [IBJJF] Worlds at lightweight in 2017 and ended up having to get shoulder surgery and right after that I started focusing 100 percent in MMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat new generation, the Ruotolo brothers, Mica, that whole group at lightweight and middleweight, I never ended up facing them. So when the invitation came, I was very interested and accepted right away and everything, but when they gave me the dates, it was always something like one month before or one week after my MMA fights. So it didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Satoshi hasn\u2019t competed in grappling contests since February 2020, when he submitted five opponents in a row inside the RIZIN ring, and he likes to see the growth of the sport worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see how professional grappling has become, with athletes under contract, making good money and all that,\u201d Satoshi said. \u201cI think that\u2019s really cool. I\u2019m very happy because back when I competed grappling the money was good too, but nowadays you see things like Craig Jones [Invitational] paying a million dollars. That\u2019s really cool. It\u2019s exciting to see that maybe jiu-jitsu as a whole not so much yet, but grappling has really taken a step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his interest in facing the elite of grappling in special events, Satoshi remains fully focused on his career as a mixed martial artist. The 36-year-old lightweight is currently riding a five-fight finishing streak \u2014 all in the first round \u2014 to boost his professional record to 20-3.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think jiu-jitsu is really cool for competing and everything,\u201d Satoshi said, \u201cbut right now my focus is whatever I can dedicate myself to in order to build and increase my legacy in MMA. Even from a financial standpoint, I prefer to focus more on MMA. Maybe when I retire from MMA, when I\u2019m no longer doing this to make money and earn a living, I\u2019d like to go back to competing in jiu-jitsu. But it would be more like that kind of thing, an event in the United States, an Open here or there, more as a hobby. For my career and my legacy, I think I\u2019m going to focus 100 percent in MMA, which is tough right now. It\u2019s not getting any easier [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roberto Satoshi made a name for himself in the jiu-jitsu circuit before transitioning to MMA and becoming the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,1859,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-379271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-rizin","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}