Mashu Baker

Mashu Baker ( Japanese ベ イ カ ー 茉 秋 , Baker Mashu ; born September 25, 1994 in Chiyoda ) is a Japanese judoka . He was an Olympic middleweight champion in 2016.

The 1.78 m tall Baker won a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in Tokyo in 2013. In 2014 at the World Championships in Chelyabinsk he was part of the Japanese men's team that won the team championship. In 2015 he won the Grand Slam tournaments in Baku and Tyumen. At the 2015 World Championships in Astana, he lost to the Georgian Beka Gwiniaschwili in the quarter-finals . Baker won a bronze medal with victories in the round of hope over the Hungarian Krisztián Tóth and the Tajik Komronshokh Ustopiriyon . As in 2014, the Japanese men's team won the team title.

At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro , he prematurely won his first four fights including the semifinals against the Chinese Cheng Xunzhao through Ippon. In the final against the Georgian Warlam Liparteliani , Baker had to go over the full five minutes and won with a Yuko lead. Because of a shoulder injury, Baker paused the whole of 2017, at the beginning of 2018 he returned with a second place at the Grand Slam tournament in Düsseldorf. At the 2018 Asian Games he was defeated by South Korean Gwak Dong-han in the semifinals , and Baker won the bronze medal with a victory over Uzbek Shakhzodbek Sabirov .

Baker graduated from Tōkai University . He is the son of an American father and a Japanese mother.

Web links

• Mashu Baker in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Tournament results at judoinside.com

Footnotes

1. ↑ Match balance at judoinside.com
2. ↑ Mashu Baker hopes to win Olympic judo gold medal, give it to his mother Article in The Mainichi from August 10, 2016 (accessed November 11, 2018)