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Emmanuel Yarborough was a NCAA Divsion 1 All-American football player, an NCAA All-American wrestler, World Amateur Sumo Championm, and US National Judo Silver Medalist. He however is known to most fans of MMA as a competitor in UFC 3, where he fought and lost to Keith Hackney by TKO.
That was his first foray into mixed martial arts in 1994, but four years later return to fight twice in Japan. His second mixed martial arts bout was against Tatsuo Nakano at Shooto XX and he defeated his opponent by submission due to smother quickly in the first round. It may be the only recorded victory by smother in mixed martial arts, ever.
Two month later, Yarborough was asked to compete in Japan’s top MMA organization PRIDE. He fought Daiju Takase who only weighed one hundred and sixty nine pounds. Yarborough was billed as over six hundred pounds. The fight was a lot of the smaller Takase circling and avoiding his much larger opponent. Takase eventually made what seemed to be a terrible mistake, shooting a single leg takedown and being landed on by Yarborough. However, Takase was able to avoid being smothered and wormed his way out from under Yarborough and was able to reverse position and began landing punches to the head of Yarborough who was forced to tap out.
This was Emmanuel Yarborough’s last ever mixed martial arts bout.
More About Emmanuel Yarborough
Emmanuel was coached in judo by Yoshisada Yonezuka.[1] He was recruited for wrestling and football at Morgan State University and achieved All American status in the Heavyweight class in 1983 Division II and 1986 Division I.
He was 6 ft 8 in (2.03 meters) tall[2] and has weighed up to 882 lb (400 kg), holding the Guinness World Record for the heaviest living athlete.[3] He was the 1995 World Amateur Sumo Champion and is considered to be one of the most famous sumo wrestlers outside Japan.
From 1996 to 1997, Yarborough competed in professional wrestling for Catch Wrestling Association in Germany, where he had gimmick matches based around his sumo career. He took part in a sumo tournament against the entire staff of the promotion, being declared winner after beating everybody except August Smisl and Terminator Mastino. He later won another tournament, beating the likes of Osamu Nishimura and Jason Neidhart, Jim Neidhart’s cousin.
souce: wikipedia.com
