Fast facts
- Division: Flyweight (UFC)
- Record: 36-6
- Nationality: Japan
- Team/gym: American Top Team
- Notable wins: Darrion Caldwell (twice), Amir Albazi, Sergio Pettis, Manel Kape, Ian McCall, Kai Asakura, Shintaro Ishiwatari (twice), Hiromasa Ougikubo (three times)
Kyoji Horiguchi has run back more fights than most guys have had, and for 13 years the second meeting belonged to him. Ougikubo, Ishiwatari, Caldwell, Asakura, Pettis, Takahashi. He’d see you again, figure out what went wrong, and fix it. Then Manel Kape, a man Horiguchi submitted in a Rizin semifinal on New Year’s Eve 2017, stopped him in the third round of their UFC Fight Night 279 main event on June 20, 2026. First rematch Horiguchi ever lost the second time around.
So the Typhoon (Knockout Daily’s Cagefile data lists his nickname as Karate Kid, which honestly fits the origin story better) heads to UFC Qatar on November 21 to face Asu Almabayev. He’s 36 years old. He’s 36-6. And he’s trying to prove that June was a detour and the road still goes somewhere.
The kid from Tochigi
Horiguchi started karate at five and got good fast, winning full-contact competitions and a regional title. At 16 he watched a PRIDE event and the hook went in. After graduating from Sakushin Gakuin High School in Utsunomiya, he walked into the Krazy Bee gym run by Norifumi Yamamoto, the fighter everybody called Kid, at 18. His reason was simple and very teenage: he’d watched Yamamoto knock out bigger men and wanted that. Before his pro debut, he was Kid’s sparring partner, which is a little like learning to drive by riding shotgun with a getaway driver.
He debuted in Shooto in 2010 with a decision over Ranki Kawana, won the 2010 Shooto Rookie Tournament by stopping Seiji Akao early in Round 2, and flattened Yuta Nezu in the first round. The only early bump came against former champ Masakatsu Ueda in January 2012, who outwrestled him and nearly submitted him several times on the way to a majority decision. Horiguchi learned. He choked out Ougikubo in Round 2 to win the Shooto bantamweight title in March 2013, then defended it at VTJ 2nd against Pancrase champ Shintaro Ishiwatari by rallying with a fifth-round barrage when plenty of people had him trailing.
The UFC, and the longest night
He arrived in the UFC at UFC 166 in October 2013 and stopped Dustin Pague in Round 2. Then came wins over Darrell Montague, Jon Delos Reyes (first-round TKO) and Louis Gaudinot, and suddenly a 24-year-old was headlining UFC 186 against Demetrious Johnson on April 25, 2015.
He had a good first round. The rest belonged to Mighty Mouse, who finished him with an armbar at 4:59 of Round 5, one second from the horn. It went into the books as the latest finish in UFC history. Brutal way to lose, and a weird badge of honor: he made the best flyweight alive work every last second.
Horiguchi rattled off decisions over Chico Camus, Neil Seery and Ali Bagautinov, then in February 2017 chose not to renew his UFC deal. In Japan, he said, he felt more at home, and Rizin built shows around him. That’s a guy reading the room correctly.
Peak Horiguchi
The 2017 Rizin bantamweight Grand Prix is the run you show people who think flyweights can’t be stars. He knocked out Hideo Tokoro in July, then fought three times in three days’ worth of December chaos: a first-round TKO of Gabriel Oliviera on December 29, then on December 31 an arm-triangle on Kape in Round 3 and a knockout of Ishiwatari early in Round 2 to become the inaugural Rizin bantamweight champ.
2018 got sillier. He put Ian McCall away in nine seconds at Rizin 10, beat Ougikubo again, and lost a kickboxing-rules decision to Tenshin Nasukawa at Rizin 13 because apparently he likes saying yes to things. On New Year’s Eve, he submitted reigning Bellator champ Darrion Caldwell with a guillotine. MMA Sucka named him its 2018 Fighter of the Year.
In June 2019 he beat Caldwell again at Bellator 222 for the Bellator bantamweight title, making him a two-promotion champion. Two months later, Kai Asakura stopped him in the first round at Rizin 18. Then the knee went, and both belts went with it in November 2019.
The rebuild
After surgery and 15 months away, he ran it back with Asakura at Rizin 26 and stopped him in the first round. Going in, he’d said he wanted to kill the idea that an ACL ends careers, and he told reporters, “I’m about 100% recovered. I had to start from zero after the surgery and built back the muscles that have gotten weak.”
The Bellator stretch was rougher. Sergio Pettis knocked him out in Round 4 at Bellator 272 in December 2021 after Horiguchi had controlled most of the fight, and Patchy Mix outpointed him in the $1 million grand prix opener in April 2022. (Mix, for the record, just got cut by Rizin after an 0-2 run, MMA Mania reported, citing Dropkick. Fight careers move fast in both directions.)
Horiguchi’s answer was dropping to flyweight. He dominated Ougikubo for a third time on December 31, 2022, had a Bellator title fight with Makoto Takahashi end in a no contest after an accidental eye poke, then choked Takahashi out in Round 2 a year later to become the first Rizin flyweight champ. He beat Pettis in their 2024 rematch and defended against Nkazimulo Zulu. Then, in March 2025, he vacated and went back to the UFC.
Round two in the Octagon
The return was strong. He submitted Tagir Ulanbekov in Round 3 at UFC Fight Night 265 in November 2025 for his first Performance of the Night, then beat Amir Albazi by unanimous decision in February. That pushed his UFC win streak to five, tied with Deiveson Figueiredo and Tatsuro Taira for sixth longest in division history.
Then Kape. Third-round TKO, streak over, and a rematch he’d once won going the other way.
Where he sits depends on who you ask. The UFC’s Meta rankings, as published by MMA Mania on November 3, have him No. 7. Combat Press’s November rankings put him No. 5, right behind Kape. Our own Cagefile data has him at No. 3. My take: if your résumé includes two Caldwell wins, a Pettis revenge job and a five-round war with Demetrious Johnson, the number next to your name is a formality.
What’s next
He meets Asu Almabayev at UFC Fight Night 294 in Qatar, the card headlined by Jiří Procházka and Navajo Stirling. Almabayev sits at No. 6 in the Meta rankings, one spot above him. Albazi is on the same card against Alessandro Costa, so the flyweight middle is getting sorted in one night.
I love this booking. Horiguchi has never been a guy who ducks, and fighting the man directly above you after a loss is about as honest as matchmaking gets. Win on November 21 and he’s right back in the title mix. Lose, and the 35th birthday he already passed starts doing the talking.
