Kai Asakura Exits UFC Flyweight Division Following Back-to-Back Losses
After coming up short in his first two flyweight appearances under the UFC banner, Kai Asakura is ready to try his hand at bantamweight.
Stepping straight into a 125-pound title fight in his promotional debut last December, Asakura suffered a brutal second-round submission loss against reigning flyweight king Alexandre Pantoja at UFC 310. Eight months later, he’d suffer a similar fate in his sophomore appearance against Tim Elliott.
Now, the former RIZIN champion is making the move up to 135 in a bid to right the ship and finally get back into the win column.
“I’m going to move up a weight class, so I’m going to have to prepare properly and get my body in shape again,” Asakura confirmed on YouTube. “It might be next year or so, but I’ll definitely win my next fight. It’s not because someone told me to, but because I’ve always done things based on my own instincts. I want to win.”
It’s unclear if the weight cut was starting to become an issue for Asakura at flyweight, but if the goal is to get a win inside the Octagon, he couldn’t have picked a tougher division to try and do it.
Aside from the division’s reigning titleholder, Merab Dvalishvili, the UFC’s 125-pound weight class is chock-full of world-class talent, including Dagestani sensation Umar Nurmagomedov, the always explosive ‘Sugar’ Sean O’Malley, perennial and surging contenders Petr Yan and Song Yadong, and rising top-10 standout Mario Bautista.
Who would you like to see Asakura face in his bantamweight debut?
