The countdown begins: Can Shohei Ono win the All-Japan Open Weight Championships?

With only 2 days to go before the All-Japan Open Weight Judo Championships, the judo headlines in Japan have again focused upon one athlete: Shohei Ono, the 2016 Olympic Champion in the middleweight (-73kg) division. The fanfare has been unusually lopsided, given the quality of the rest of the field. I don’t think I have seen the defending champion in a single headline in the Japanese news leading up to this tournament. What is understandable is the fascination the Japanese have with a lightweight(ish) athlete taking on the heavyweights. Though the chances of a lightweight winning are next to none in modern era judo, one can always hope.

It has been 45 years since a sub-80kg athlete won this tournament. 1972 Olympic Champion, Shinobu Sekine did it in 1972, though that victory was overshadowed by the two victories of Isao Okano, who won in 1967 and 1969. There is not a lot of footage, but you can see a clip of Okano here:

https://youtu.be/ltJUN5FU8G4

 

Since then, the closest a -80kg player came was in 1990, when Toshihiko Koga made it to the finals in an unbelievable run that might have gone his way had he been competing in the current time limit. He went nearly 8 minutes (the final was 10 minutes back then) with Olympic Silver medalist, Naoya Ogawa who outweighed the 76kg Koga by 54kg! From that day forward, no -80kg player has come even remotely close to winning, and from what I have read on the internet, many in the English speaking world are not aware that Ono has already had one crack at the elusive title, which ended in a third-round loss to the defending champion, Takeshi Ojitani back in 2014. Does he have what it takes to win it this time around? In order to answer that question, let’s first have a quick look at some of his matches against heavyweight opponents:

All 3 of the opponents in this playlist are top-class athletes. The first opponent, Kensuke Sakamoto was a former All-Japan university champion in the -100kg class. The second, Ryohei Anai was a former national team member in the -90kg category and made a switch up to the -100kg class in 2016. The third opponent in this playlist is Ojitani, who will likely come into this tournament at about 140kg. As you may have noticed if you watched these videos, Ono does not get off any throws, though he does defeat Anai by penalties.

For Ono to win, it would probably take nothing less than a miracle, especially under the current rule set. Koga, and even more so Sekine and Okano had privileges that Ono will not have in this tournament, the main one being leg grabs. Additionally, the pace and style of judo has changed quite considerably.

So, while it is fun to dream of a David vs Goliath type conquest from Ono in this tournament, I don’t believe there is much of a realistic possibility. I predict he will go out in his first match which I break down in this post, but if he somehow makes it out of his first match, I don’t see him getting past his most likely opponent in the third round, Aaron Wolf.

That said, Shohei Ono is truly one of the greats in judo and while I believe his selection to this tournament was more of a publicity stunt by the All-Japan Judo Federation, we wish him the best of luck and couldn’t be more thankful that he has decided to step up to this challenge.