Jiři Procházka put arms at his side and curled his lanky, 6-foot-4 frame into a bow. In front of him was a Shinto priest, wearing a white robe and traditional black cap, called a tate-eboshi.
It was October 2019, just days after Procházka had knocked out Fabio Maldonado on a Rizin Fighting Federation mixed martial arts card in Osaka, Japan. Following the fight, Procházka and his coaches took a train north to Kyoto to visit Sanjusangendo, the site of one of renowned Japanese swordsman and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi's most famous duels.
There, in front of a shrine, the Shinto priest offered Procházka, a follower of Musashi's principles, a blessing. He spoke only in Japanese. Procházka's coach, Jaroslav Hovezak, called the moving ceremony another landmark on Procházka's warrior path.
"It strengthened him on his way," Hovezak said. "It was a strong experience for our team."
Eight years ago, Hovezak gave Procházka a copy of Musashi's "The Book of the Five Rings," a text about martial arts and a guide for life. Since then, Procházka has followed Musashi's ideals almost religiously. His evolution has taken him from a self-professed "very wild guy" who engaged in over 100 street fights, was in a soccer hooligan club back home in the Czech Republic and once chugged vodka out of a motorcycle fuel line, to someone who patterns his life after Bushido, a Japanese moral code dating back to the samurais. And that discipline has led him to the cusp of UFC glory.
https://www.espn.com/mma/(...)-ufc-title-contender