Chu Sung-hoon (추성훈)

Chu Sung-hoon (Akiyama Yoshihiro) is a Japan born, 4th generation ethnic Korean that started his career as a Judoka in Japan. He is really only known by his Korean name in Korea, everywhere else he is known by Akiyama Yoshihiro, his Japanese name. I'll refer to him by his Korean name for the purposes of this post though. Sung-hoon is probably the most famous Korean fighter out there, as well as the most controversial. While he's definitely a talented fighter, he's been accused of cheating numerous times, stemming as far back as his Judo days. Three seperate opponents at the 2003 World Judo Championships complained that Chu's judo-gi was slippery, and cried foul. He switched to a reserve gi and promptly lost his next two matches, only appearing to incriminate himself worse.

He boasts an MMA record of 12-1 with 2 no contests. His one loss was also to a much, much larger Jerome LeBanner (seriously LeBanner is huge). Notable wins include over Melvin Manhoef, and two other Korean fighters I'll talk about later, Denis Kang and Taiei Kin. His two most high profile fights are also his most controversial, against legendary fighter Sakuraba Kazushi and later against Misaki Kazuo. He was caught greasing against Sakuraba and the fight was turned No Contest. Later against Misaki, Misaki beat his ass pretty thoroughly in a really exciting fight and ended up getting finished with a huge soccer kick to the face. The kick was deemed illegal later, and the fight result was overturned to a No Contest (in the new rules, soccer kicks to a downed opponent were illegal. Sung-hoon was in the process of getting up when kicked in the face, and in reality it was illegal by mere inches). Since that fight, he beat professional punching bag Shibata Katsuyori and some other dude. Recently, he signed with the UFC and will debut at UFC 100 against Alan Belcher (who just beat Denis Kang by guillotine).

Chu Sung-hoon - Fashion ico-hahahahahahaha

My analysis: Good fighter but a dirty cheater. He's really talented, he doesn't NEED to cheat and I hope he puts that shit behind him. Misaki gave him a pretty good talking to after he kicked his face off so hopefully he took his advice. Seriously, you can't cheat against Sakuraba. It's SAKURABA.