Yuki Nakai - Vale Tudo Japan 1995

Vale Tudo Japan 1995

In 1995, as the current Shooto welterweight champion, Nakai was selected by the Shooto Commission to represent Shooto in the Vale Tudo tournament Vale Tudo Japan 1995. His first opponent was Gerard Gordeau, a Dutch Savate fighter. Gordeau illegally eye-gouged Nakai during their fight, causing Nakai to lose vision in his right eye. Despite the eye injury, Nakai proceeded to defeat Gordeau by heel hook in the fourth round. The next fights, on the same night he came out with a bandage on his eye, ready to fight. In his second bout, Nakai defeated American wrestler and WCW performer Craig Pittman, who sported a 100-lb weight advantage, by armbar. In the third and final bout, he lost to the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master Rickson Gracie by rear naked choke at 6:22 of the first round.

Yuki Nakai became permanently blind in his right eye due to Gerard Gordeau's illegal tactics and his own failure to have the subsequent infection sufficiently treated. For years he kept his blindness a secret to protect the reputation of mixed martial arts. The injury forced Nakai to retire from mixed martial arts competition, but impressed with Rickson Gracie's technique, he took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where he became the first person from Japan to hold a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and is the president of the Japanese Confederation of Jiu-Jitsu.