Japanese media outlet Encounter reported on the 8th, "51-year-old Yoshihiro Akiyama (Choo Sung-hoon) makes a surprise MMA comeback after about five years,,,,, his final fight against a UFC fighter." Korean mixed martial arts organization Black Combat Choo Sung-hoon announced that he will have his retirement match against former UFC fighter Chris Riven (46, USA) at 'BLACK COMBAT 17: VANTABLACK' at Seoul Gocheok Sky Dome on November 21. Choo Sung-hoon and Riben had already faced him once 16 years ago, at UFC 116 in July 2010, where Riben secured Choo Sung-hoon's tag with a three-fight choke late in the third round. It was also Choo Sung-hoon's first MMA match in a long time, His last official MMA fight was at the ONE Championship in March 2022, where Choo Sung-hoon won by TKO in the second round, and after about 4 years and 8 months, he returned to the MMA cage. This retirement fight is both Choo Sung-hoon's first revenge in 16 years and his final fight to end his MMA career, but Japanese fans who saw the encounter report expressed more anger or disappointment than congratulations through comments and other channels. Japanese martial arts fans have reportedly called this the 'Nurunuru incident' until now. In 2006, he faced Japanese martial arts legend Kazushi Sakuraba, but during the match, Sakuraba repeatedly complained that Choo Sung-hoon's body was too slippery. He repeatedly complained. In the match, Choo Sung-hoon pushed the sakura to win, but it was revealed that he had applied skin cream all over his body before the match. Choo Sung-hoon admitted to applying cream at the time , but stated that he had no malicious intent to foul, and apologized, saying, "My actions resulted in betraying the fans." In this retirement pre-release article, mocking comments such as "What should I put on my body this time?", " Let's just do lotion sumo instead," "Lotion player number one," and "Oil fight" were posted one after another.
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