Takasuke “Hawk” Kume

Status: Former ONE Athlete

Pancrase Lightweight World Champion Takasuke Kume began his martial arts journey with judo in high school. While he was at university, he joined the Nagoya-based mixed martial arts gym ALIVE, which he has represented ever since. He showed promise in the sport from the very beginning, winning the All-Japan Shooto tournament as an amateur before turning professional a few months later.

Kume went undefeated through his first 10 professional bouts, but missed out on gold in the 2008 Shooto Rookie Tournament after competing to a draw. After alternating a series of heartbreaking losses in championship bouts with dominant winning streaks, the Japanese warrior finally struck gold in September 2016.

He defeated fellow ONE Championship athlete Kazuki Tokudome via first-round TKO to claim the Pancrase Lightweight World Title, and stopped Tokudome again with an 81-second knockout in their December 2017 rematch to retain the belt. Kume has only been stopped once in a professional career spanning more than a decade, and he boasts a phenomenal finishing rate of over 70 percent with the bulk of those stoppages coming by way of choke submission.