r/judo • u/wowspare • Jul 23 '25

Competing and Tournaments 18 year old Lee Hyeonji absolutely mauls opponent in bronze medal match (+78kg)

276 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

68

u/counterhit121 Jul 23 '25

Is this like an open weight match for anything above 78kg? Looks like a substantial difference in mass and power here.

49

u/disposablehippo shodan Jul 23 '25

Yes. -78kg is the highest women's division before the open class. For men it's -100kg.

For me personally the women's open division is not very attractive to watch because compared to men's open division you have competitors that rely heavily (no pun intended) on the weight advantage more often.

The physique of a 120kg male can differ significantly depending on height, fat/muscle. You won't find a lean built 100kg woman (at least with testing for doping).

6

u/Zirator Jul 23 '25

I watch the IJF circuit on a regular basis. But outside of the matches with judoka's from my own country I don't watch the women's +78

12

u/jperras shodan Jul 23 '25

The "+" in a weight category means that there is no maximum weight limit.

And technically you can always compete in a higher weight category (e.g. a 57kg person could compete in +78kg if they wanted to), but it's unheard of at high level competition.

(not being snarky, btw, the notation can be confusing)

10

u/judo1234567 Jul 23 '25

Actually (at least in international competition) you can’t compete in a higher weight category. In the rules the definition is (for example) “Over 73.0 kg up to and including 81.0 kg”.

The exception is team competitions.

2

u/jperras shodan Jul 23 '25

ah, thanks for the clarification! I was going off the fact that at our national-level and continental-level competitions this is possible, but I don't have any knowledge of the rules of higher-tier competitions.

21

u/Icy_Astronom Jul 23 '25

Yeesh. That was hard to watch

31

u/wowspare Jul 23 '25

This was at the 2025 Asian Championships in Bangkok, April 27th.

Arai Mao is certainly not a pushover opponent, given Arai's record of being 2-time Tokyo grand slam champion. Despite that this fight turned out to be very lopsided.

Later at the 2025 World Championships, Lee lost to eventual world champion Kim Hayun and won bronze, while Arai won silver.

6

u/Icy_Astronom Jul 23 '25

What happened here do you think? Did Arai just have a bad day? Or a bad start?

4

u/EchoingUnion Jul 24 '25

No it's just that Lee is that much ahead of Arai. Lee easily beat Arai the first time they fought at 2025 Paris grand slam just a few months prior.

12

u/yellowjesusrising Jul 24 '25

+78kg is "open" for women. So size wins 95% of the times. Not very fun class to watch in judo.

3

u/EchoingUnion Jul 24 '25

Arai has beaten many women previously that are just as strong/big as Lee, so it's not just size/strength that Lee is using here to beat Arai. If that were the case, Arai wouldn't have the successful career she's had.

2

u/wowkss5628 Jul 25 '25

Arai is 85kg and Lee's 131kg 😂 no way in hell Lee would beat Arai pfp weight bully at its finest.

11

u/Uchimatty Jul 23 '25

Korean heavyweight is very strong right now

5

u/martial_arrow shodan Jul 23 '25

Yeah, but can they throw Uchi Mata? /s

5

u/Uchimatty Jul 23 '25

Of course not, they don’t do enough kuzushi

3

u/psi96 Jul 23 '25

It's very good

3

u/_BlackSwordsman shodan Jul 24 '25

That's crazy. Especially when her opponent is Mao Arai, 2x junior world champ and senior world medaillist

2

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

Does anyone know if Arai is related to the men’s Arai?

1

u/NajoC4 sankyu 28d ago

They are brother and sister

1

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '25

I feel like these guys aren't the same weight class lol.

1

u/Accomplished_Bet_781 Jul 24 '25

Even when we practise, I can notice a +/- 5kg difference. And 10kg is substantial. This looks like 20kg at least. Whats the point?

1

u/wowkss5628 Jul 25 '25

its infact a 46kg lmao

1

u/NajoC4 sankyu 28d ago

5kg is 10% weight of someone who is 50kg, while 5kg would only be 5% weight of someone who is 100kg. So that 5 or 10 kg difference is different as size grows.

1

u/LactatingBadger -90 kg shodan 28d ago

For those wondering why there aren’t more weight categories for women to compensate for this, the unfortunate reality is that there just aren’t enough women doing judo, and certainly not enough at these higher weights, to make brackets that would be meaningful.

My partner used to fight -78s, and they’d often combine categories with the overs due to lack of entrants. There was a 135kg woman on the circuit who cleaned up at every event.

I was sat around 110kg at the time and did randori with her…honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot of actual judo going on, she was just heavy and had never really had to learn much to win. The second she couldn’t use that trick she was shit out of luck.

But my partner, whose tachi-waza is stronger than mine, would just get flattened. Maybe one or two times out of ten she might get a win, but the risk of injury was massive and eventually she started turning down the fight to avoid getting hurt.

0

u/wowkss5628 Jul 25 '25

Arai is 85kg and Lee's 131kg 😂 45kg weight diffrence holy hell op is calling every Japanese gold medallist a fluke or got lucky why was I not supprised.

-5

u/SadAd3257 Jul 24 '25

Annnnnd that's why we pull guard in BJJ :)

-1

u/Deadpussyfuck Jul 24 '25

BJJ reminds me of a dog scooting its ass on the ground. In other words, nobody gives a shit.

-8

u/Successful-Area-1199 Jul 24 '25

Heavyweight judoka are a sad representation of an athlete save for a very few

6

u/Yamatsuki_Fusion sankyu Jul 24 '25

You really shouldn’t underestimate these players. They might seem a bit clumsy or slow, but they are far from unskilled or ignorant about Judo.