Egan Inoue
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Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
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About Us
Egan Inoue was born on June 4, 1965, in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, a first-generation American of Japanese descent.
Growing up in the Manoa Valley, within a tight-knit Japanese community, Egan was introduced to martial arts at a very young age (3) through Shotokan karate. A martial art he practiced for many years under the tutelage of his grandfather Shoso Narikawa.
Throughout his childhood, Egan competed in a number of sports, mainly basketball and baseball. He found racquetball at 16 years of age in high school, becoming a state champion by the time he graduated (1983).
Dabbing between his studies at the University of Hawaii Lab School and his rapidly improving racquetball career for a while, Egan soon understood that he was wearing himself thin, opting to pursue a professional career in racquetball at the age of 20.
By 1986 Inoue had won his first world title in racquetball, being invited to be a part of the US Olympic team. He traveled on the pro-circuit for a few years, going on to become a two-time world champion in 1990. That same year Egan started his own racquet company (E-force), which quickly grew to be one of the leading racquetball manufacturing enterprises in the world.
In 1993 a serious knee injury forced Egan out of the pro-circuit. That same year he decided to abandon the racquetball world, selling his (now) multi-million dollar company. While recovering from his injury, Egan took on the sport of spearfishing, where in a few months he set a new world record by catching a 65lbs barracuda at an extraordinary depth. This is mentioned in the book “Hawaii Sports: History, Facts, and Statistics”.
Egan had started training jiu-jitsu at Relson Gracie‘s academy in the late 1980s with his brother Enson. After his racquetball career was over, Inoue decided to dedicate more of his time to this martial art, joining the Machado academy. The gym swap did not settle well with Relson, and the fact that Egan opened his own gym (Grappling Unlimited) in the Hawaiian archipelago in 1995 did even less to appease Gracie.
Training under the Machado brothers Egan earned his purple and brown belts, winning two jiu-jitsu World titles in the process, and becoming the first non-Brazilian world champion in the sport (1996 blue and 1997 purple). After the brawl at the 1998 Pan American Championship (more details on this subject at the bottom of the page), the Inoue’s were asked to leave the Machado gym. At the time Egan said of this matter in an interview to Onzuka.com:
“Basically, my move was made from the Machados to Nova Uniao because it goes back to that problem at the Kaiser High School [where the 1998 Pan American BJJ tournament was held]. The Machados are cousins of the Gracie’s and it’s not necessarily the Gracie’s that the problems are with, but it’s with Relson Gracie. And the bottom line was that they’re cousins and I didn’t want to jeopardize their relationship with their own cousins because of me and for my family.” – Source
Egan then joined John Lewis‘ gym (J-Sect), where he earned his black belt, by then fully embedded in his MMA career, where he fought in important promotions such as Pride, Shooto, SuperBrawl, and Luminex Cup.
In 2003 he retired from combat sports to concentrate on his family, a period when Egan was highly invested in regaining custody of his children in a very public trial. He decided to return to the ring 5 years later, at the age of 43. His return was slightly controversial due to the age difference between the two fighters (his opponent Hans Marrero was 23). Still, Egan proved his worth with a TKO in the 1st round. Since his last MMA match, Egan has maintained relatively active in Jiu Jitsu’s Masters circuit.
