The Original BMF: Yuki Kondo
A Japanese salaryman of the most violent order. Wake up, cook, clean, fight, collect a pay cheque; repeat for 30 years. Middle income earners are a rarity in combat sports due the basic fundamentals of the MMA game. Yet, Yuki Kondo could never stop.
In the wake of pioneering PANCRASE legends Minoru Suzuki and Masakatsu Funaki was an unassuming talent; Yuki Kondo. This Japanese-born fighter may not be filling Hall of Fame slots or an all-time Pound-for-Pound position, however, Yuki Kondo is more of a BMF than any other fighter in MMA history. Kondo was a scrappy fighter at the forefront of a brand new and developing sport in which he was willing to fight anyone, with a career spanning from 1996 to, incredibly, 2022.
It was his willingness to fight anyone in any style. Despite having no prior grappling experience, he was happy to roll against the best grapplers in the world, and fight for his life in the gym. It was the forward willingness, and a never-quit attitude, that came to define his finest achievements and greatest downfalls.
Throughout his career, Yuki Kondo fought in over 100 professional bouts against a series of notable fighters. He faced MMA legends such as Josh Barnett, Akihiro Gono, and Igor Vovchanchyn. He rolled against Jiu-Jitsu Champions such as Renzo Gracie, Roger Gracie, and Mario Sperry. Also, threw down with PRIDE FC and UFC Titleholders Dan Henderson, Wanderlei Silva, Tito Ortiz, and Frank Shamrock. Plus, he fought future multi-time K-1 Kickboxing Champion Semmy Schilt in several bouts.
In the Shadow of Pioneers
Despite Kondo being about the same size as Max Holloway, he fought everyone from middleweight to heavyweight. He threw down with future K-1 kickboxing stars, grappled with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champions, and brawled with the dangerous experts of Vale Tudo. But Kondo having to fight against various styles and sizes dictated his skill set. He did not have the best grappling and fastest hands, but he was forced to develop a narrow skillset to survive.
Having made his debut in 1996, the sport he was competing in did not even have a universal name. Hybrid Wrestling was the name they attempted to make stick. With a background in the martial art of Shorinji Kempo, he was inspired to begin training for PANCRASE under the harsh tutelage of PANCRASE founder Masakatsu Funaki. Kondo had no prior experience in this martial art, but idolized these figures, and didn’t know how to stop.
PANCRASE of the early and mid-nineties had certain style looks that were unique to this era. This fight organization was a step between professional wrestling and MMA, however, still kept a unique identity as being based on Catch Wrestling techniques taught by Karl Gotch. This Belgian wrestler taught students such as Funaki and Minoru Suzuki, who passed it down to people such as Kondo, Ken Shamrock, and several others. No gloves were worn, and no strikes with closed fists were allowed, but instead, fighters could use open-palm strikes.
Speaking with author Jonathan Snowden, Masakatsu Funaki explained:
“The concept was pro wrestling for the 21st century. Everything was a real meritocracy, not political … With the fighting style that we’ve been using, I decided to form a new team in order to keep that principle. We’ll never give up. I think making this team long lasting is the most important thing. A new fight is beginning.”
Brutality of the Gym
An interesting fold of this early 1990’s fighting era was that most of the competitors trained together in a brutal gym environment, and would later fight against one another. Minoru Suzuki, Masakatsu Funaki, and Yuki Kondo, among others, would train together in the gym and then later fight against one another in the ring in front of an audience.
While there was a rough brutality in the ring, life in the gym may have been even harder. Students would live at the gym in meager cots, cooking and cleaning for the higher ranked fighters. Lifting, sparring, cardio, and beatings were a routine affair.
The daily life of a student living at the gym was wake up in a dorm next to your stablemates. Cooking breakfast and clean up. Students would then begin squats, pushups, technique drills. Intense cardio, and then lunch. After cooking lunch and cleaning up, striking and mat drills, followed by sparring.
Reflecting on this time, Yuki discussed the matter in a 2017 interview. He said:
“I would wake up in the morning, do cleaning chores, practice, and when I'm done, I do chores again, practice again, and then I just go to sleep. Then it would done be in a blink of an eye. I thought I just went to bed, but it's already morning … life itself was really hard.”
He even thought about quitting, but he forced those thoughts out his mind. He continued:
“I thought, "I'm probably going to quit." I was homesick, had a hard time practicing, and didn't have time for myself, so it was really hard. I thought that if I wanted to quit even for a moment, I would probably quit, so I tried not to think about it. I tried not to put the word "quit" in my head.”
In fact, Kondo described his days with Suzuki and Funaki as the most challenging time in his life. But he would ever stop, or give up. In an interview with ONE, the Japanese athlete explained:
“The hardest time in my martial arts career is when I entered Pancrase after graduating from high school. I was a new student. I stayed in the dojo, and I cooked and cleaned there. It was hard. I didn’t have freedom. I just remember it was hard every day. Practice was hard and life was also hard. I couldn’t meet my friends.”
According to Ken Shamrock, general abuse in this gym was typical. In the book Shamrock by Jonathan Snowden, Ken explains:
“Guys like Suzuki would go up and slap and kick the young kids. And they couldn’t do anything about it but stand there and take it.”
In an early visit, he described the gym trial stystem in which a new athlete would grapple against multiple opponents at full strength one after another. He said:
“Each of these are about twenty to thirty minutes, so I’ve [trained] about an hour now … I’ll be the first one to tell you, if I was tired or not, those guys would have killed me.”
Shamrock would add that after hours of submission wrestling training, he was heel-hooked and choked unconscious. Then, Suzuki stepped in and wrestled Shamrock for another 30 minutes which ended with Shamrock being choked unconscious and heel hooked. Shamrock described being bloodied and dizzied from his day at the gym when he went to bed. Shamrock would later use the same philosophy in the Lion’s Den Gym
Considering the brutality of this era, it’s a miracle that any of the PANCRASE era gentlemen could recover from continuous severe injuries. Frank Shamrock described:
“It was a submission oriented game, so most of the finishing holds were joint locks. Over time the cumulative result of the tearing of the tendons was devastating.”
Yet somehow, between legends such as Bas Rutten, Ken & Frank Shamrock, Funaki, Suzuki; Yuki Kondo outlasted them all, ultimately. Rather than using his prize fighting fame to branch to new careers, he simply kept fighting.
Yuki Kondo and His Bag of Tricks
The towering Semmy Schilt stood exactly one foot taller than Kondo when they fought plus at least 50 lbs heavier. But it was facing men so much larger than him that would influence his style. Routinely, the Japanese fighter would be out-grappled and out-struck by opponents that would have a significant size and strength advantage over him. With him continuously out-matched, and out-sized he adjusted a style to cope.
Kondo was a product of the mid-nineties PANCRASE era and had a few techniques that worked effectively to exploit the systems that were being utilized during this time. Being a smaller fighter, and inexperienced as he made his debut at the age of 21, Kondo was constantly getting mounted by his opponents.
He soon perfected the technique of offering his arm to his opponent, for an armbar submission and rolling out when his opponent would attempt it. He had a very slick sliding hip escape.
It sounds like a cute trick that a clever fighter could use once, but as this highlight shows, it worked in nearly every match of his career:
PANCRASE bouts began on the feet and would typically find their way to the mat due to most competitors being grapplers. It was his inexperience which forced Kondo to develop a few crafts from adept to master.
Lead Hook and Rear Kick
Kondo had a few techniques on the feet that he would work nearly anywhere. Being a southpaw, with most of his opponent being orthodox, and with open palm strikes only, the jab was something he never bothered learning. Instead, he drilled a lead hook. With this, he packed power and could drop opponents, plus he could corral opponents into dodging towards his open-side, where they would often find a kick from him.
The second signature technique he had was a rear-leg roundhouse kick. Kondo could send this kick to the open side and aim it at his opponent's torso or head. PANCRASE fighters were either on the feet or ducking in for takedowns. Whether Kondo’s opponent was standing, dodging, or trying to come in for a takedown, a kick to the open side was a good bet.
When he threw his lead hook, his opponents had three options. Absorb it, dodge, or duck into a takedown. With any of those three options, throwing a roundhouse kick was a great option. In the 1990s PANCRASE, there were two phases, standing and striking or looking for the takedown with, very little in between. Kondo understood this and would use his lead hook to push opponents into his kick. Additionally, because of the expressway between standing and takedowns, Kondo also had a flying knee which he could time against the best of opponents. MMA legend Frank Shamrock got the full experience of this in their bout.
When Frank Shamrock got the assignment to fight Yuki Kondo, he thought great, an easy win. In an interview, he described:
“I remember Kondo. He was a young boy with me. You know, he was a punching bag. We would just beat him up. Like me, he was knucklehead. So we’d beat the heck out of him. So when they told me I was fighting Kondo I was like ‘Oh Great, I got the easy fight’ … And yeah he showed up an entirely different human being in spirit and strength. I think he gained like 20 pounds of muscle. He thoroughly kicked my ass.”
Much to Shamrock’s surprise, Kondo was game for war. Shamrock added, in a different interview:
“I got kicked in the face by Yuki Kondo. Literally, booted in the face, I fell through the second rope onto a concrete floor on the top of my head and knocked myself unconscious.”
Here is a brief highlight of kicks and knees from Yuko Kondo. Many of these head-kicks were set up from the lead hook.
Clinch Issues
This style with very little in between takedowns and standing also created a unique fold of Kondo’s game; passive clinching. Being a student of the era that he was brought up in, clinching was a halfway zone to getting somewhere else. Chest-to-chest clinch exchanges, commonly found in Greco-Roman wrestling, were less often utilized, as previously mentioned, during this era. Normally, clinching in PANCRASE was a head-to-head affair with trading of hands. Kondo was a product of this.
Kondo would leave PANCRASE to fight against the highest-level fighters in PRIDE FC and the UFC. Consistently, he shows very little work in the clinch. Instead, the chest-to-chest clinch exchanges are used as a short rest period for the Japanese-born fighter. This was also a factor of him nearly always being the much smaller fighter, he was unable to do anything in the clinch.
Stand and Bang
MMA fighters and other combat athletes frequently cite the ideals of honor and respect touted by traditional martial arts as points of inspiration. Kondo was a young man inspired by Jackie Chan and learned traditional martial arts then later competed in MMA for decades. After a lifetime of disciplined martial arts, many fighters are tempted by the illustrious allure of becoming a stand and bang brawler.
Kondo is most immortalized today being on the wrong end of Wanderlei Silva’s best highlight. The unstoppable Brazilian stomping, bouncing Kondo’s head against the canvas; this was impressively his first TKO loss. In eight years and over fifty bouts to that point, he had never been stopped by way of strikes.
On fighting Silva, Kondo described:
“I was completely defeated … I can’t remember anything.”
His game plan had become to march forward through his opponents’ strikes and land his own. This attitude cost him the biggest fight of his life. As he described, Silva’s punches never ceased, and Kondo didn’t know how to stop.
Given that he had never lost via KO/TKO in his entire career up until then, he began to believe that he was actually a brawler who could stand and bang against veterans of Vale Tudo. Kondo was willing to trade against a prime Wanderlei Silva, it was a strategic blunder in the biggest fight of his life, thus immortalizing himself as the true and original BMF.
The Toll of Being a BMF
The 47-year-old athlete has an incredible record of 64-37-9 and is still actively competing. However, he is not as fondly remembered by the MMA community as Minoru Suzuki, Masakatsu Funaki, Ken & Frank Shamrock. These folks were together in the early pioneering graduating class of 1990’s MMA. Unlike his mentors, Kondo was never able to stop competing.
Somehow through wars in the gym, ring, and cage, Kondo refused to quit. Battles against larger men such as Semmy Schilt, Tito Ortiz, and Wanderlei Silva, the BMF curse takes a costly toll from fighters.
It is an incredible career to have been battling for over 100 professional fights, but just like other BMF’s, his greatest legacy might be being a quality name to build someone else’s record.
In a recent interview, Yuki Kondo described that he wanted to become a martial artist and inspire fans. He succeeded in being fighter as one of the longest serving fighters in history. On why he never could stop competing, he couldn’t quite explain why, but he said:
“I had the base of martial arts hammered into me by them, including physical strength. I still make use of the experience. They improved me, physically and mentally, and I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m still a martial artist.”