ITSUKI HIRATA

Biography

Itsuki Hirata ( Japanese : 平田 樹 , Hepburn : Hirata Itsuki ; born August 24, 1999) is a Japanese professional mixed martial artist . She is currently signed to ONE Championship , where she competes in the atomweight division. Hirata trained in judo throughout childhood before switching to mixed martial arts (MMA) upon graduating high school. After winning the third season of the Japanese reality television series and MMA competition Fighting Agent War in 2018, Hirata earned a contract with ONE and made her professional debut in 2019. Following in the footsteps of her older brother Naoki, Itsuki Hirata started practicing judo at the Kodokan Judo Institute in first grade of elementary school at six years of age. With dreams of competing in the Olympics , she took third place in a national competition in fifth grade, and later won a prefectural judo championship in high school. Hirata had several surgeries throughout middle school and high school due to injuries she sustained in judo. She said she stopped thinking about the Olympics due to the amount of time these injuries sidelined her. It was during this time that Hirata started watching and became interested in mixed martial arts (MMA), which she thought looked fun and much freer than the "strict" rule-based judo. After graduating, she began training in MMA in summer 2018 under Kazunori Yokota at K-Clann gym in Tokyo.