The 5 best MMA fighters from Asia

#3 Shinya Aoki

Shinya Aoki's submission skills were second to none

One of the most dangerous submission fighters in MMA history, Aoki is also one of the most divisive talents too – his fans would have you believe he’s an all-time great, and his record – with wins over Tatsuya Kawajiri, Gesias Cavalcante, Joachim Hansen, Vitor Ribeiro and Eddie Alvarez – would back that up.

His detractors meanwhile would claim he was the benefactor of a lot of biased Japanese refereeing, abused the rules to his advantage, was always a heavily one-dimensional fighter, and had no chin. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Aoki rose to fame in the dying days of PRIDE, debuting there with his rainbow-coloured long tights and tapping out Joachim Hansen with a gogoplata – one of the first times the move had been seen in top-level MMA.

When PRIDE was bought out by Zuffa in 2007, like many of his contemporaries he joined the new DREAM promotion, where he had his greatest successes. Aoki fought seventeen times for the promotion and won fifteen times, usually via submission.

In 2009 there was even an argument that he was the top 155lber in the world, but a one-sided loss to Gilbert Melendez in 2010 put paid to that idea and with the US, not Japan now being the home of the world’s best fighters, Aoki decided against a UFC run and largely ended up being forgotten as a top fighter. His record remains outstanding to this day, however – as do highlight reels of his submission skills.