Kota Miura is the son of Japanese football legend Kazuyoshi Miura. His dad scored 55 goals for the Japanese national team and is one of the best players the country had ever produced.
But the 20 year old has decided to embark on a totally different career path. He made his pro MMA debut at Rizin 33 and finished Yushi with a soccer kick.
This Friday he is involved in another high profile fight. Miura is facing Muay Thai legend Buakaw Banchamek in an exhibition kickboxing match at Rajdamnern Stadium.
It is unclear just how serious a fight this will be. But Buakaw has a huge advantage in terms of experience with Miura never having competed in kickboxing before.
Given that it is being billed as an exhibition Buakaw will probably take it easy on the mixed martial artist. But both men were required to weigh in this morning and Miura took the opportunity to show off his football skills:
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Buakaw has also played his fair share of football. The Thai actually played for RBAC in Division 2 of the Thai League, making a solitary first team appearance in 2016.
It isn’t clear whether Buakaw was selected due to his outstanding ability or if this was more of a publicity stunt by the now defunct football team. There is no record of whether it was a substitute appearance or how many minutes he actually played.
A one on one football match between the two fighters could certainly be competitive:
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Different level
An actual kickboxing bout definitely would not be. Miura has only ever competed once in MMA and does not appear to have any experience of Muay Thai or kickboxing.
By contrast Buakaw is a veteran of nearly 300 Muay Thai and kickboxing bouts. He is a big name in Japan because he won the K-1 Max tournament twice during the promotion’s heyday there.
In the past Buakaw has participated in several exhibition bouts in Phuket which are basically glorified sparring displays. But we also saw Floyd Mayweather absolutely destroy Tenshin Nasukawa in a boxing match that had been billed as an exhibition.
So it will be very interesting to see just how competitive tomorrow’s bout at Rajdamnern Stadium in Bangkok is. We hope for Miura’s sake Buakaw isn’t going to try and do him any serious damage!
