Will Saito reign supreme in 2023?

Japan’s new heavyweight sensation Tatsuru Saito is currently ranked No. 8 in the IJF World Rankings. But for the heavyweight, the rankings do not reflect who the real top prospects are.

Reigning Olympic Champion Lukas Krpalek (CZE), for example, is sitting at No. 10 although he surely is among the Top 3 prospects for Paris 2024 Olympic gold. The other top prospect, Teddy Riner (FRA), is at a lowly No. 20 because he doesn’t compete that often. The only top prospect who has a suitably high ranking is Guram Tushishvili (GEO), who is No. 2.

Saito will probably have to get past these guys – Krpalek, Riner and Tushishvili – if he wants to win gold in Paris. But so far, he has not fought any of them. How well would he fare against them? Let’s look at his performance so far for clues.

He has beaten the world No. 1 Temur Rakhimov (TJK) three times so far. He has also beaten Jur Spijkers (NED), the world No. 4, twice. Both of them are big players so we know Saito can beat the big boys. The question is whether he can beat the smaller – and faster – players. 

Saito has some big techniques, such as uchimata, osoto-gari and tai-otoshi, which he uses to good effect against the big boys. But can he get them to work against the smaller ones who can get out of the way faster?

At the 2022 Tashkent World Championships, he lost the final to Andy Granda (CUB), who was much smaller. What Granda did was fight strategically. He basically ran circles around Saito and put in enough attacks to make the big Japanese look passive. In the end, Granda game plan worked and he won by penalties.

Judging purely by Saito’s performance against Granda, one could imagine him having some difficulties with Krpalek and Tushishvili as well. Both are relatively smaller and unlikely that they could throw Saito but like Granda, they might be able to beat him through penalties.

Although Riner isn’t the player he used to be, he is still a top prospect and he too could prove to be a challenge to Saito dreams of Olympic gold. Riner’s big throws like uchimata and osoto-gari don’t seem to be working anymore but he still has a powerful sumi-gaeshi. Might that be enough for him to beat Saito? Or could Saito actually catch Riner with one of his big techniques?

One thing we can safely assume is that given his performance in the final of the World Championships, his coaches would have worked with Saito on how to deal with smaller players, who fight strategically. It would be interesting to see a rematch between Saito and Granda. One would imagine Granda would have a much harder fight, the second time around.

It’s quite likely we will be able to see Saito go up against Krpalek or Tushishvili in one of the IJF World Tour events early next year, as both these players do compete fairly regularly. Riner, on the other hand, barely competes. So, it might be a while before we see a Saito vs Riner match-up. But it will surely happen sometime next year. So, ahead of 2024, we should be able to get a sense whether Saito is indeed the top dog in this category.