Who Is Rin Sakamoto? OSU’s Japanese Freshman Debuted against Iowa

Rin Sakamoto made a WWE-esque collegiate debut on Sunday night in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Sakamoto was a surprise weigh-in for Oklahoma State at 133 pounds alongside Reece Witcraft. It looked like the Cowboys waited until the match to decide who was going to wrestle at 133, as TV cameras lingered on a dressed-to-compete Witcraft in the tunnel before someone must’ve shouted “That’s Rin Sakamoto’s music!” and Sakamoto jogged into an arena filled with hostile fans to get his first taste of college wrestling.

Oklahoma State’s Rin Sakamoto faces Drake Ayala (Iowa) tonight. This marks the Japan National Champion’s first NCAA action to date. pic.twitter.com/NQgwU6RZa3

— Saturday Night Lights (@WrestlingSNL) February 24, 2025

It was a cool deal. The OSU bench was holding signs in Japanese to communicate with Sakamoto, who ended up dropping his bout with No. 2 Drake Ayala via an 11-1 major decision. But in his folk-style debut in front of 14,847 people cheering against him, Sakamoto didn’t make it easy for the reigning national runner up at 125 pounds.

So, who is Rin Sakamoto? Here’s some information about him. (A huge thanks to Jake LeForce, OSU’s wrestling SID, and this great article from Ken Marantz for helping me put this together.)

Sakamoto has been in Stillwater since the fall but didn’t officially enroll at OSU until the spring. He spent the fall at the English Language and Intercultural Center at OSU, designed to help international students learn English to prepare of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to get enrolled. So, during the fall he was solely training with the Cowboy RTC and didn’t officially join the team until the spring semester.

This past December, Sakamoto won the Emperor’s Cup All-Japan Championships at 57kg (about 125 pounds), which is a senior-level national title. According to Marantz’s article, the plan is for Sakamoto to return to Japan in the spring for the Meiji Cup All-Japan Championships in hopes of earning a spot at the World Championships, which is a big deal.

Sakamoto was a two-time Inter-High champion at Gakuen High School in Tokyo. He earned a spot on Japan’s u20 World Team in 2023, winning two of three matches at the Junior World Championships that August.

Wrestling also runs in the Sakamoto family. He has a sister, Yu Sakamoto, who wrestles at Northern Michigan. Yu won a National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships (NCWWC) regional title this past weekend. She won her first two matches via tech fall in less than two minutes before pinning her opponent in the finals. She’ll wrestle for a national title March 7-8. Yu won gold at the U23 World Championships this past October in Albania.