Stand and Deliver: Kai Asakura

Every fight matters, but some matter just a little more.

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A win is a win, and a loss is a loss, of course, but some of them feel bigger than others for various reasons. In some cases, the elevated stakes are easy to define. Picture the fighter on a losing streak who knows he or she is likely fighting for their job, or conversely, any title fight in a top regional organization, where the combatants know the big leagues are probably scouting them. At other times, a fight feels especially important for reasons that are harder to quantify but no less real. Whether it’s the unspoken weight of being a pioneer in MMA from one’s native country or the simple added spice of two fighters who genuinely hate each other’s guts, that fight means just a little more.

UFC 310

This Saturday, the final Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view offering of 2024 rolls into T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. UFC 310 weathered the loss of welterweight champ Belal Muhammad to a foot injury a few weeks out from fight night, and features 14 bouts that, while short on star power compared to some of the UFC’s other flagship events, may be the deepest lineup of the year. The undercard alone would make for one of the best Fight Nights in recent memory.

Among the 28 fighters slated to make the walk in Las Vegas on Saturday, we would normally feature two or three who are under extra pressure to perform, but at UFC 310, one name stands out above all the others.

Kai Asakura: No Dress Rehearsal, No Dry Run, No Do-Overs

This column generally avoids featuring main event participants, especially if said main event is a title fight. After all, the stakes don’t get much more obvious than when it’s your name on the poster, and you know you will be leaving the cage with or without a belt around your waist, depending on what happens in the next 25 minutes or less.

We make an exception for Asakura, who challenges Alexandre Pantoja for the UFC 125-pound strap in this week’s headliner. While the former Rizin Fighting Federation champ is one of that organization’s biggest stars and best fighters over the last five years, this will be his first time fighting in the Western Hemisphere, and his one opportunity to make a first impression on the significant majority of Saturday viewers who are UFC fans rather than followers of mixed martial arts as a whole. Win, and he’s a new sensation; lose, and he’s another overrated, overseas bust—especially if he loses badly.

As if that were not enough pressure on the 31-year-old knockout artist, UFC 310 will be Asakura’s first fight in nearly a year; he was last in action on New Year’s Eve, clocking Bellator MMA counterpart Juan Archuleta. That fight, of course, took place in a JMMA-style ring. While Asakura has spent significant time training in the US over the last few years and has presumably been clocking hours in cages, this will be his first time competing in one in a long, long time.

Most concerning of all, this will be Asakura’s first time fighting at flyweight in almost eight years. The last time he competed in the division was early 2017 in Road FC against Heili Alateng, who now plies his trade in the UFC—at bantamweight. All of Asakura’s bouts since the Alateng fight, including his entire star-making run in Rizin, have taken place either at catchweights or, most often, at 135 pounds. That includes his one-and-one rivalry with Manel Kape, who preceded Asakura to the UFC, also had a full year’s layoff before his debut, was immediately thrown into the pool of flyweight contenders, and unsurprisingly had serious issues making weight early in his UFC career.

UFC CEO Dana White, when asked about the wisdom of putting Asakura directly into a title fight, brushed the question aside, pointing out that “those Japanese guys all compete way above their weight anyway.” While still probably true to some extent, it was far more so 15 or 20 years ago when Kazushi Sakuraba was slaying giants in Pride Fighting Championships and Caol Uno was getting rag-dolled by the likes of Gleison Tibau in the UFC. It is now 2024 and Kai Asakura is a big guy by the standards of the division(s) in which he competes. If he makes 125 pounds—add “no one-pound allowance” to the list of nos in the header of this section—he will slot in immediately as one of the biggest flyweights in the UFC by the eyeball test.

It is no secret why Asakura is being thrust into this title fight in his debut. The loss of the Muhammad-Shavkat Rakhmonov title bout left Pantoja as the only defending champ on the card, and the Brazilian’s long UFC tenure means that he has already fought almost all the available challengers—sometimes twice or even three times. That is why Asakura will not be receiving any warm-up fights against fellow contenders, unlike fellow star transplants such as Michael Chandler, Mirko Filipovic or Anderson Silva.

For a more recent, highly relevant example, consider Kayla Harrison, whose situation was similar: a longtime former champion from a rival promotion who signed with the UFC and immediately moved to a weight class in which she had never competed for her previous employer. Harrison has, to date, received two bookings before a title shot. The UFC’s fast-tracking of Asakura is understandable, at least by its own accepted logic and customary practices, but the net impact is that Asakura will be under more pressure from more different directions than perhaps any other UFC signing since the Pride acquisition nearly two decades ago.