Yuki Takahashi has just carved out a piece of history for himself by becoming the first Japanese competitor to sign an exclusive contract with Polaris. Because Polaris are the biggest promotion in Europe, they have generally stuck to signing top European talent alongside a handful of elite grapplers from North America. They’ve been making some very big moves in the face of both ONE Championship and UFC Fight Pass Invitational continually signing elite competitors to their respective promotions though. This particular signing is a great example of Polaris managing to snap up an exciting talent before either of them are able to.
It’s worth noting that Takahashi’s contract with Polaris is only exclusive for European appearances though, so he is still free to compete anywhere else. That will likely come as good news to the fans of Finishers Sub-Only, as Takahashi is their reigning bantamweight champion. Heks already held that title for quite some time too, as he won it by beating Rey De Leon at Finishers Open 14 back at the end of 2023. He’s also been known to take advantage of other opportunities in the sport as well, and he even took a run at the Combat Jiu-Jitsu world championship 2023 at bantamweight previously too.
Although Takahashi has been on the radar as an exciting competitor with a pretty high potential, he really earned this contract with a single superb performance. He was brought over for a preliminary card match against promotional veteran Jake Goldthorpe at Polaris 31, and he grabbed the opportunity with both hands. He won the match with one of the best submissions of the night and it seems as though that was enough for the promotion to invest in him. This means he’ll be returning for a few more Polaris matches in the future and he’ll likely be making his way towards the main card soon enough.
Polaris announced the news that Yuki Takahashi had signed an exclusive European contract with them in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
