Weight Class: Strawweight
Record: 6-0
Age: 19
Height: 5’3”
Born In: Japan
Training Out Of: DROP
Combined Opponent Records (at the time they fought): 17-39-3
Key Wins: N/A
Still just 19 years old, Sukai China is set to challenge Sora Sugiyama for the DEEP strawweight title in a battle between undefeated fighters at DEEP 131 Impact.
Sukai’s professional MMA career kicked off in 2023 at Shoot Okinawa Vol. 8, where he submitted Yuta Takahashi in the second round. He returned a year later to submit Noboyuki Fujii with a first-round twister before closing out 2024 with a buzzer-beater submission of Rui Tomoro that also came in the opening round.
The 19-year-old kicked off 2025 with a DQ win after being kneed in the head while on the ground, but he moved on from that result and once again showcased his grappling skills with another first-round submission last November. In his most recent outing in March, the undefeated strawweight submitted Musashi with a first-round triangle choke to set up a title fight with Sugiyama.
A southpaw, Sukai uses lots of feints on the feet and relies heavily on a diverse kicking game when trading with an opponent at range. He was goaded into a bit of a firefight during his bout with Tomori, but in subsequent fights he’s been a lot more measured with his striking and usually only bites down and throws wild combinations if he’s trying to counter an opponent that’s coming at him aggressively.
His left hand is unsurprisingly his biggest weapon outside of his kicks, and he likes to use brief blitzes of punches to try and set up his takedown attempts in open space. Preferably, Sukai likes to force things to the cage and start to look for outside trips from the clinch while landing knees to the head and body.
Sukai is happy to try and jump on the back from a standing position while looking for his trips, and if he can get one hook in he’ll use his weight to drag things to the mat. If he ends up in top position, Sukai likes to smother an opponent’s head with chest and shoulder pressure while trying to isolate one of their arms.
The 19-year-old can get a bit overzealous when attacking an arm lock, but he also is happy to settle for wrist control so that he can open up with punches and elbows with his opposite arm. As evidenced by his record, Sukai has a diverse submission game that makes him a threat to end things during any grappling exchanges, and he excels at snatching up submissions during scrambles.
I would have liked to see how the rest of his fight with Taguchi would have played out before things ended prematurely with that grounded knee, but this next matchup represents a great test for Sukai after Sugiyama defeated a very experienced fighter in Haruo Ochi to win the DEEP strawweight belt.
This very much looks to be a striker vs. grappler matchup on paper given that Sugiyama comes from a successful kickboxing background, and it’s not often you get such an intriguing fight between two very young and still-undefeated fighters.
