There's a fine line sometimes between success and failure.
At UFC 195, after a close but impressive split-decision win over Joe Soto on Saturday in Las Vegas, Michinori Tanaka appeared to re-establish his status as a solid young prospect in the bantamweight division.
Had the third judge scored it for Soto, however, the 25-year-old Japanese judoka might have walked away from MMA.
“I figured I would get cut [from the UFC] if I lost,” Tanaka said through a translator after the bout, according to a report from Steven Marrocco and Ken Hathaway of MMA Junkie. “ I didn’t know who [the decision] was going to go to. And I asked my cornermen, and they didn’t know about it. I was worried, and I was praying for my name to be called.”
Tanaka and Soto—himself a high-level jiu-jitsu player—exchanged some blue-collar stand-up and some excellent grappling exchanges. After three rounds the bout was close, but swung to Tanaka.
Tanaka (11-1) rose to prominence in Asia's Shooto and PXC promotions, where he used his judo base to handle all comers. He won and defended the PXC bantamweight belt, after which point the UFC came calling.
In his UFC debut in 2014, Tanaka made a statement by defeating a division veteran Roland Delorme. Three months later in September of that year, Tanaka lost to Kyung Ho Kang at a UFC event in Japan, but the contest was good enough to earn both competitors a $50,000 Fight of the Night performance bonus.
Things were looking good for Tanaka despite the loss, until things hit a sizable snag. He failed a pre-fight drug test for ephedrine and pseudoephedrine and was suspended nine months. The UFC also rescinded his bonus.
UFC 195 marked Tanaka's return to competition. Though it is unclear whether Tanaka actually would have been let go with a defeat—three consecutive losses is a general threshold for a fighter's release—it is conceivable that a bad performance Saturday night, coupled with his drug-test failure, could have shortened his career.
Thankfully for fans of young prospects, however, Tanaka won and remains in the UFC. No new fight has been announced, but Tanaka presumably holds value as an exciting and relatively high-profile fighter from Asia, where the UFC has long struggled to gain and maintain a foothold.
If the UFC returns to Japan or elsewhere in Asia some time in 2016, perhaps a matchup with Takeya Mizugaki makes sense. Francisco Rivera, Felipe Arantes or fellow UFC 195 victor Michael McDonald might also make sense.
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