In August 2003, Tamura fought judo medalist Hidehiko Yoshida in the latter's third MMA fight. Showing his experience, Tamura knocked him down with a left cross and worked through his guard before returning to their feet. Afterwards, the shoot wrestler landed continuous kicks to Yoshida's legs and body, also capturing his back once during a failed judo throw. Finally, Yoshida threw Tamura down and forced him to tap to a quick sode guruma jime. The strange sequence of the choke brought accusations of a fixed fight performed to increase Yoshida's popularity, but Dave Meltzer and other pundits considered it dubious, attributing it to Tamura's own inexperience with gi chokes.