By:  | November 6, 2023 6:44 am

It seems Itsuki Hirata is not particularly popular with her fellow fighters. She has come in for a lot of criticism after repeatedly missing weight and failing to live up the considerably hype that her early results generated.

Ayaka Miura scored a brilliant submission win over Meng Bo at ONE Fight Night 16 and afterwards she was surprisingly asked about a possible fight with Hirata. They compete in different divisions and the Japanese submission specialist replied in an extremely blunt fashion,

“I’ve never considered fighting Itsuki Hirata. I’m not interested in her at all.”

Special day

Fight fans probably weren’t aware of this but it was a special date for Miura. She says the fight fell on the anniversary of her professional debut,

“I was really happy that I was able to get the victory today. I had to win this fight. Ten years ago today, I made my professional debut and so today was a special day. After my win, I celebrated with my coach because of how meaningful this day was for me.”

Either the record keeping is wrong or Miura has her dates confused because her first pro fight is listed as having taken place in 2014. The 33 year old was just happy to show she is back to her best after three losses in her previous four fights,

“Tonight, I was able to show who Ayaka Miura is. I still see opportunities in where I can grow and develop my takedowns but the performance I put on display today is Ayaka Miura.”

 

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Completely different

She definitely doesn’t want to face Itsuki Hirata but Miura would be very interested in a rematch with Xiong Jing Nan. The two fought in 2022 and the Japanese fighter simply could not take the reigning strawweight champion down.

It wasn’t the most entertaining contest and there was precious little action to speak of. Miura is confident that a rematch would play out completely differently,

“I struggled to get takedowns during our fight, so I improved my takedown skills and I now have a lot of different ways to get a takedown. The next time I face Xiong Jing Nan I’m confident I’ll be able to control her on the ground.”