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Sayaka Shioda

Japanese grappler Sayaka Shioda won ADCC gold in 2007, finishing ahead of her clubmate Megumi Fujii, and took a world sambo bronze the following year.

Biography

Sayaka Shioda (塩田 さやか) is a Japanese grappler who won national titles in sambo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a world title in submission grappling while representing Abe Ani Combat Club (AACC). In 2007 she took the women's under-55 kg gold at the ADCC World Championship in Trenton, New Jersey. Megumi Fujii, the clubmate a Japanese fight report called her mentor, won bronze in the same class. Shioda was born in 1982. In June 2002 she finished second in the women's 64 kg class at the All Japan Sambo Championships in Tokyo, entered for a team called GIRL FIGHT AACC; at the same event the club's Fujii won at 57 kg. At the 2005 championships both women won their classes, Shioda at 66 kg and Fujii at 52 kg. Shioda was All Japan sambo champion again in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, and the Japan Sambo Federation named her to Japan's women's team at 56 kg for the world championships in Prague in 2007 and in Saint Petersburg in 2008. In jiu-jitsu her results follow her up through the belts. As a blue belt in 2004 she won the featherweight division at both the All Japan Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championship, in a class of nine, and the Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship. She was the purple belt featherweight winner at the 2006 Pan. Competing in the combined brown and black belt division at the World Jiu-Jitsu Championship, she was featherweight runner-up in 2007 and again in 2009, and won bronze in the open class in 2007 and 2008. She also won the brown and black belt featherweight title at the 2008 Asian Championship. In 2012, by then in the black belt division, she took featherweight silver at the No-Gi World Championship behind Ana Carolina Merlo Vidal Lebre of Gracie Humaitá. The way to Trenton led through the ADCC Japan Trial at Kitazawa Town Hall in Tokyo on 15 April 2007, where the winner of each class qualified for the world championship. Shioda won the women's under-55 kg bracket of eight, and none of her three bouts went the distance: she submitted Emi Tomimatsu with an armbar, Yasuko Mogi with a front choke in the semi-final, and Akiko Ninomiya in the final with a heel hook, a leg lock that twists the knee, applied from underneath. BoutReview closed its account of the final by saying that Shioda would now chase the world title together with Fujii, her mentor, who had been put forward for the same weight class. At the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton she took the gold, with Felicia Oh second. Looking back in February 2009, the Japanese fight site GBR called it the first ADCC title for a Japanese competitor since Sanae Kikuta. At the Gi Grappling 2008 tournament at Kitazawa Town Hall on 31 August, she won both the under-58 kg and the open-weight expert classes of the women's Queen Tournament, catching Mariko Fujimoto in an armbar 58 seconds into the open-weight final after pulling guard. In comments GBR reported after the final, she said it had been her first match in a long time and that she had been very nervous. She scored herself at around 60 points, saying she had left some joint locks unfinished and should have done better in the takedown exchanges. Next on her schedule were the World Sambo Championships in November; the field would be full of monsters, she said, but this time she wanted to get onto the podium. In Saint Petersburg she did. Twelve women entered the 56 kg class. Shioda beat Ekaterina Klinkova of Estonia with a kneebar, a straight lock against the knee, lost to Elitsa Razheva of Bulgaria 0–6 on points, and then took the bronze-medal bout from Olesya Savchuk of Ukraine with another kneebar. On the strength of that bronze, the International Sambo Federation (FIAS) picked her for the inaugural SportAccord Combat Games, held in Beijing in September 2010 with twelve athletes in each sambo class. Seeded past the first round at 56 kg, she was beaten 0–9 by Karina Stefanova of Bulgaria and then 0–6 by Anara Estebesova of Kyrgyzstan in the repechage, the second-chance bracket. Shioda and Fujii met head-on at the Asian qualifier for the 2009 ADCC World Championship, held in Tokyo on 22 February 2009. After a first-round bye in the women's under-60 kg class, Shioda won her semi-final against Sofia of Australia with a kneebar. The final was a meeting of AACC teammates, and Fujii won it 4–0 on points in extra time, taking the class's Asian place. Both were entered in the women's under-60 kg division at the world championship in Badalona, Barcelona, later that year. Reporting on the opening day for Sherdog, Jordan Breen called Fujii Shioda's senpai, a senior figure in the same gym, and noted that Shioda had beaten Bianca Andrade on points, as she had two years earlier. Shioda finished with silver behind Luanna Alzuguir. She also fought in mixed martial arts. Sherdog's fighter database credits her with four professional wins and one loss at flyweight between G-Shooto 02 in March 2005 and Real Fight MMA Championship 3 in October 2013; three of the wins came by submission, one by decision, and the loss by TKO. Billed as the 2007 ADCC world champion at DEEP X 05, held at Shinjuku FACE in Tokyo on 6 February 2010, she ended a 56 kg grappling match with a kneebar from underneath after 22 seconds of the first round. In 2011 she was runner-up in the women's division of the All Japan open-weight kudo championship. The site of Daidojuku's Ochanomizu branch described kudo as MMA in a jacket, roughly judo plus karate, and the branch captain wrote a column about that final. He called Shioda a strong opponent who held the title of world's best at groundwork, and described how the winner, Kamiyama of Nisshin, kept the contest at a distance and near the edge of the area. In March 2013 she took silver in the women's under-60 kg class at the ADCC Asian Championship at Komazawa Olympic Park Gymnasium in Tokyo, behind Seiko Yamamoto and ahead of Takayo Hashi. Black belt Valerie Worthington, writing for Breaking Muscle about a Veterans Day weekend Women's Grappling Camp at Fifty/50 BJJ, named Shioda among the attendees, with Hannette Staack and Michelle Nicolini as guest instructors and Emily Kwok as organizer. A client testimonial page at GS Performance, a training studio in Tokyo, dated January 2018 on the studio's site, presented her as a licensed judo therapist, a personal trainer and a professional fighter. It listed a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and a second-dan black belt in Kodokan judo, said she had graduated from a vocational school for sports instructors, and gave her sports background as fifteen years of mixed martial arts and ten of lifesaving.

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