ONE Championship’s ‘Sexyama’ Choo Sung-hoon reflects on Netflix Physical 100 exit – ‘old men, we can still do it’
- MMA legend Choo, aka Yoshihiro Akiyama, was one of the biggest stars of Netflix’s hit reality competition
- ‘I wanted to prove people in their 40s and 50s like me can beat young people if they work hard,’ he says after loss in penultimate challenge
ONE Championship star “Sexyama” Choo Sung-hoon has reflected on his exit from the hit Netflix show Physical 100.
The 47-year-old Choo was one of the stars of the Korean reality competition, which debuted on the streaming platform in January and pitted 100 contestants who are in top physical shape against each other in a series of gruelling challenges.
CrossFit and snowboard athlete Woo Jin-yong ultimately won the cash prize of 300 million South Korean won (US$230,000), beating Olympic cyclist Jung Hae-min in the finale, which aired in late February.
But Japanese-Korean mixed martial artist Choo – also known as Yoshihiro Akiyama – was one of the most popular contestants among fans of the show.
Choo made it all the way to episode 8, falling in the penultimate challenge, “The Punishment of Sisyphus”, which involved repeatedly rolling a 200-pound boulder up an incline.
Following his defeat, Choo showed his class in an exit interview. “It’s a pity, but this is a competition and that’s the fun of it,” he said.