Akira Shoji (14 - 16 - 5):



Well, I'm waiting for the videos of this weekend's UFC to trickle onto the interwebs, and it was a long weekend, so you get a post on Akira Shoji.

Pride had a stable of Japanese fighters that they would throw against top tier foreign fighters like they had a quota. Most of them weren't very good, although they all fought with a lot of heart.

Until I started watching videos for this post, I would have included Shoji in the list of Japanese tomato cans. But Shoji was actually pretty damn good. Unfortunately, he was fighting the best fighters in the world at their peak in an organization with no weight classes. In most of his fights, he got beat something fierce, often by much larger opponents.

Shoji exemplified the fighting spirit of the Japanese fighters. There was absolutely no quit in him.