Kai Asakura will be going straight for the jugular in his debut UFC fight.
The Japanese flyweight will challenge Alexandre Pantoja for the UFC flyweight championship at UFC 310 on December 7th in Las Vegas, UFC CEO Dana White announced on social media today. UFC 310 takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Asakura is perhaps the most highly-anticipated debutant out of Japan in UFC's history. Formerly the bantamweight champion of Japanese promotion RIZIN, the UFC clearly has high hopes for Asakura to allow him to leapfrog the rankings at flyweight to challenge directly for a belt.
Alexandre Pantoja is settling into his reign as flyweight champion, looking to defend the belt for a third time at UFC 310. After prying away the championship from Brandon Moreno at UFC 290, he's subsequently defended it against Brandon Royval and Steve Erceg. This fight against Kai Asakura will be his fourth UFC title fight in just a year and a half.
While Asakura may not be known to MMA fans outside the hardcore circles of Japanese MMA, he's arguably one of the most popular fighters in the sport today (his YouTube channel alone has around a million subscribers). The RIZIN bantamweight champion has beaten top bantamweights such as Juan Archuleta, Hiromasa Ougikubo, and Kyoji Horiguchi.
The main event of UFC 310 is welterweight champion Belal Muhammad defending his title against top Kazakh contender Shavkat Rakhmonov.
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