Norifumi Yamamoto

Born in 1977, Norifumi Yamamoto is often referred to as the "Kid". Yamamoto is a professional Japanese fighter in mixed martial arts.  Norifumi Yamamoto is often associated with Purebred Tokyo as well as with Killer Bee. Yamamoto is popular in the Shooto organization mainly because of his aggressive style coupled with a well rounded fighting technique. He is also known because of his controversial nature. Norifumi Yamamoto has a mixed martial arts (MMA) record of 16 wins of which, 11 are by knockout and 2 by submission and 1 loss. Yamamoto is also quite popular for his peculiar and unique fighting technique of freestyle wrestling along with folkstyle wrestling. Norifumi Yamamoto competed at the following tournaments namely; K-1 - Hero's 11, K-1 - Premium 2006, K-1 - Hero's 5, K-1 - Premium 2005, K-1 - Hero's 3, K-1 - Hero's 2, Shooto 2003, Shooto - Treasure Hunt 10, Shooto - Treasure Hunt 6, Shogun 1 No Contest, The Top  2, 6 and 8 respectively.

Ikuei Yamamoto is Norifumi Yamamoto's father and is a well known wrestler. He also represented Japan in the wrestling category at the Olympic games of 1972. In fact even
Norifumi Yamamoto's two sisters namely,  Miyu and Seiko are champions in freestyle wrestling and have many victories to their name.

Norifumi Yamamoto completed his education in the US. As a freshman, in  Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, Arizona, Norifumi participated in many wrestling matches and even won three state championships in the third place. Master Choi Mu Bae, trained Norifumi. Norifumi then ,oved on to the  K-1 HERO'S. It was in the 2005 tournament that he participated and fought against  Genki Sudo. He won the match, however there was a controversy of his TKO, due to the punches.

Norifumi Yamamoto, is not ver tall, being only,  5 ft 40 inches, and maintains his weight to around 143 pounds or so. In spite of this, Norifumi participates in the lightweight division of 155lbs. Generally in this division, the fighters weigh about  165 to 180lbs. Norifumi competes and fights with opponents who outweight him by around 20 to 30 pounds or so. Nevertheless, Norifumi is able to have remarkable wins over his opponents.

In 2002, there was a controversial loss for Norifumi. He had a fight against Stephen Palling. In this match, Norifumi was hurt accidentally. He injured is forehead when he went in for a double-leg takedown. Here he hit his forehead on Palling's knee. With his usual ground and pound technique, Norifumi continued the match. Stephen Palling was announced as the winner, after the referee put a stop to the match as Norifumi was bleeding from his injury.

Norifumi Yamamoto was defeated by a knockout at the kickboxing match in 2005, at the
K-1 World Max tournament. He lost to  Mike Zambidis. Unfortunately the injury did not allow Norifumi from competing in the Japanese Olympic wrestling qualifiers.  When Norifumi returned to mixed martial arts, he defeated  Bibiano Fernandes, who was a Jiu-Jitsu champion. This was at the K-1's Hero's 11. Norifumi announced an indefinite leave of absence for this year, 2007. At the Beijing Olympics of 2008, he is said to compete in freestyle wrestling. He is training tremendously for this.