(NOAH) GHC Heavyweight Champion Kaito Kiyomiya learns how to deal with "Wild Beasts" from Shinya Aoki, who has well established groundwork.

20th October 2022

Tokyo Sports

On Noah's official YouTube channel, GHC Heavyweight Champion, Kaito Kiyomiya (26) was shown a secret technique taught by "stupid survivor" Shinya Aoki. 

Kiyomiya, who will face "The Beast", Kazuyuki Fujita, in his first defense at match at the Tokyo Ariake Arena on the 30th October, analyzed the clues to capture The Beast saying, "I think the ground will become important", so he asked Aoki, who has a reputation for ground fighting, to teach him. However, before anything else, Aoki, who showed up at Noah's dojo on his bicycle said, "I often work with Fujita. I wouldn't do it", and took a pre-emptive punch. In addition, he was told to watch the match from New Years Eve 2015, where Fujita kicked Atsushi Sawada in the face, broke his left orbit and fractured his nose. After this recommendation he froze and said, "It's better to be frightened by seeing that".

This was followed by 15 minutes of grapple sparring in the ring. In the video, a horizontal triangular choke was decided on the horizontal triangle choke, and the submission could be seen. However, on teaming with Aoki he received positive words, "Serious about strength. Isn't there something honest and unaffected emerging?" He added in analysis, "Because he is honest, I think there is a lot of places where he loses power or gets tripped up. I feel that there is good and bad coming out." On top of that, "After all, I think Fujita is old." Following this, Kiyomiya asked for advice, and was taught the secret method of a clutch and a Cobra Twist clutch. 

After finishing the lesson, Kiyomiya said with a fulfilled expression, "He taught me the finer details, such as how to apply my weight, and how to read ahead, so I want to show it off in the ring." 

Aoki, on the other hand, expressed his respect for Fujita and his ally Kendo Kashin regularly, and took the form of showing humanity* before the important title match. When asked, "Do you want Kiyomiya to win?", he said in a hoarse voice, "I'm going to be in big trouble if I say something like which side I am on". In addition to that, he escaped on his bicycle after saying "I want to see where the power of youth exceeds". 

By the way, Aoki said in regards to the interview with this paper afterwards and said, "Now, I am interested in Kiyomiya. I want to work with him someday, and I also want to fight". 

It will be interesting to see if there is any progress. 

Link to original article from Tokyo Sports

Picture credit: Tokyo Sports

Notes

*Original phrase was "sending salt to the enemy". This is a proverb which basically means to not take advantage of their weakness, and save them from their predicament. Sadly, there is no similar proverb in English.