Rika Ishige has a message for Thailand on election day. She wants people to know that it is time to ‘move forward’.
Risk appears to be endorsing the Move Forward party which is one of the front runners to win the election. Voting takes place today and it is clear where the mixed martial artist’s allegiances lie.
Rika has 246,000 Instagram followers and many of them will be eligible to vote in today’s elections so her words do carry some weight.
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Online influencer
Rika started to make a name for herself as a mixed martial artist in 2017, fighting four times for ONE Championship that year. Two years later Thailand held its last election with the military backed Palang Pracharat party emerging victorious.
By this stage Rika’s MMA career was on the downturn. She lost two fights out of two in 2019 and suffered what appears to be her final loss the following year.
The 34 year old has a record of 4-5 but has become better known as a social media influence than a fighter. Rika appears to be using her influence to encourage people to vote for the Move Forward party, which took 17% of the vote in 2019 albeit under a slightly different name.
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First foray
This appears to be a first foray into the world of politics for Rika whose typical content is much more conventional. She posts about training, travelling and eating food which is a subject close to the heart of any fighter who has had to spend years carefully managing their weight.
Tomorrow Rika will be back to her usual routine. But today, like millions of Thais, Rika is going to vote and you don’t have to read too carefully between the lines to guess which political party will be getting her official tick of approval.
