The Japanese bantamweight believes recovering from a serious shoulder injury helped him rediscover his love for MMA.<\/p>\n
Rinya Nakamura is ready to step inside the Octagon again. The Japanese bantamweight returns to action this Saturday at UFC Vegas 121<\/a> to take on Brady Hiestand after spending more than a year recovering from a serious shoulder injury. Nakamura revealed that the layoff made him question his desire to become a UFC<\/a> champion before ultimately falling back in love with the sport.<\/p>\n Rinya Nakamura Says Injury Changed His Perspective<\/p>\n Nakamura has not competed since August 2025 when he defeated Nathan Fletcher by TKO. A few months later, the Japanese fighter suffered a serious injury during training, tearing a shoulder tendon and injuring his MCL. Although Nakamura was forced to step away from competition for over a year, he insists the recovery has left him in the best shape of his career.<\/p>\n “I tore a tendon in my shoulder, MCL,” Nakamura told reporters during media day. “That’s why I took a long time since my last fight. But my condition is best ever. […] One hundred percent \u2013 over 100 percent. I can show you a new version of me, and I can’t wait to show you guys.”<\/p>\n Rather than focusing only on the physical recovery, Nakamura said the time away became a mental challenge. The Japanese fighter admitted he repeatedly asked himself whether he truly wanted to become UFC champion, answering the same question several times before finding his motivation again.<\/p>\n “I took back my love to this sport,” Nakamura said. “Actually, that was not easy time for me. I’ve been always asking to myself, ‘Do you want to truly be a UFC champion?’ Over 100,000 times. I always answered to myself, ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ I repeated, repeated again. Then I get back my love to the sport and competing in this stage. So my spirits, I feel like are reborn. I can be reborn this Saturday.”<\/p>\n Nakamura also revealed that his childhood dream was to become a PRIDE champion, making the UFC title the modern equivalent of that ambition in his eyes.<\/p>\n The 31-year-old enters UFC Vegas 121 with a 10-1 professional record and will look to continue his rise in the bantamweight division after more than a year away from competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Japanese bantamweight believes recovering from a serious shoulder injury helped him rediscover his love for MMA. Rinya…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[155615,314071,49,48,641,638,314070,82,640,314072],"class_list":["post-909415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-bantamweight","tag-brady-hiestand","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-rinya-nakamura","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-fight-night-289-rosas-jr-vs-barcelos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909415","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=909415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}