Kai Asakura won his first UFC fight on Saturday, knocking out Cameron Smotherman in 110 seconds at UFC Macau and pocketing a $100,000 Performance of the Night bonus. The former two-time RIZIN bantamweight champion got there back at 135 pounds, the division the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) skipped when it signed him in 2024 and pointed him straight at a title.
Eighteen months earlier the promotion had bet differently, dropping Asakura into a flyweight championship fight on debut. That call cost him two losses before he ever competed at a weight that fit. The check he cashed at Galaxy Arena was the reward for finally fighting where he belonged.
Asakura’s First Octagon Win Came the Hard Way
Asakura entered the cage in Macao searching for a result that had eluded him since he left Japan. He found it fast. The Tokyo native trapped Smotherman, an American bantamweight who spent the round on the back foot, against the fence and uncorked a left hook that ended the night at the 1:50 mark of round one. His professional record moved to 22-6.
The win snapped a brutal start to his UFC run. Asakura had lost both of his first two appearances by submission, and both came a full weight class below the one where he built his reputation in mixed martial arts (MMA).
The road to a single win ran longer than the win itself:
- June 2024: Asakura vacates the RIZIN bantamweight title he reclaimed by finishing Juan Archuleta and signs with the UFC.
- December 2024: he debuts in the UFC 310 flyweight title main event against champion Alexandre Pantoja and loses by submission.
- August 2025: he drops a second straight submission loss, this time to veteran flyweight Tim Elliott at UFC 319.
- May 2026: he returns to bantamweight and stops Smotherman inside two minutes for his first Octagon victory.
Three fights into his UFC career, the math reads 1-2. The lone win is also the only time he has fought at his natural weight.
Why Bantamweight Was Always His Division
Asakura never won a major title at flyweight. He won two of them at 135 pounds. The promotion’s choice to debut him a division lower, against one of its most decorated champions, asked a fighter to solve a weight cut and an elite title-holder in the same night.
His resume before the UFC made the appeal obvious. He arrived with a 21-4 record loaded with finishes, plus wins over UFC flyweight contender Manel Kape and former title challenger Kyoji Horiguchi. Those are names that move tickets in Japan and signal real ability anywhere.
The numbers behind the signing still favor the fighter, not the matchmaking that followed:
- 21-4 professional record entering the UFC, with 16 finishes.
- 13 of those finishes by knockout, the trait that showed up against Smotherman.
- 2 RIZIN bantamweight title reigns, both at 135 pounds.
- 0 bantamweight bouts in the UFC before Macau, despite that history.
Read together, the win at Macau looks less like a comeback and more like a correction. Put a knockout artist at the weight where he knocks people out, and he does it again.
How the $100,000 Bonus Checks Broke Down
The UFC handed out its standard four bonuses, and the payout structure rewarded violence on a card that delivered plenty. Performance of the Night went to Asakura and to headliner Song Yadong. Fight of the Night went to the co-main event, which means both fighters in that bout collected.
| Fighter | Award | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Song Yadong | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Kai Asakura | Performance of the Night | $100,000 |
| Alonzo Menifield | Fight of the Night | $100,000 |
| Zhang Mingyang | Fight of the Night | $100,000 |
That put four fighters on six-figure checks. Six more collected $25,000 finish bonuses, the smaller award the promotion pays out to fighters who score a stoppage without landing one of the night’s marquee honors. According to the UFC’s official Macau bonus coverage, those $25,000 winners were Sergei Pavlovich, Luis Felipe Dias, Cody Haddon, Rei Tsuruya, Rodrigo Vera, and Jaqueline Amorim.
Song Yadong Headlined a Card of Stoppages
The main event belonged to Song Yadong, the Chinese bantamweight contender fighting in front of a home-region crowd. He met Deiveson Figueiredo, a former UFC flyweight champion who has rebuilt himself at 135 pounds, and he ended the night on the canvas. As Figueiredo shot for a takedown, Song latched onto the neck and locked a guillotine choke for a second-round submission.
The result returned Song to the win column and reinforced his place near the top of a crowded bantamweight picture. The Performance bonus was the third he has earned in the division, and finishing a former champion the way he did at the full UFC Macau scorecard reads as a statement against anyone ranked above him.
For Figueiredo, the loss stalls a run that had positioned him for another title conversation. For the division, it tightens a logjam that already includes Asakura’s fresh knockout one weight class he never left this time.
The Prospects Turned Macau Into a Highlight Reel
Below the headliners, the card produced one of the busier finish nights of the year. Heavyweight contender Sergei Pavlovich set the tone with a 39-second knockout of towering Brazilian Tallison Teixeira, and the debuts kept the pace up from there.
The standout finishes outside the bonus winners and the main event:
- Sergei Pavlovich flattened Tallison Teixeira in 39 seconds for the fastest stoppage of the night.
- Rodrigo Vera marked his Octagon debut with a knockout of hometown fighter Zhu Kangjie in under two minutes.
- Jaqueline Amorim added another submission to her strawweight run with a first-round armbar over Loma Lookboonmee.
- Cody Haddon, the Australian bantamweight prospect, pushed to 2-0 in the UFC with a second-round technical knockout (TKO) of Aoriqileng.
- Rei Tsuruya, a Japanese bantamweight, returned with a first-round face-crank submission of Luis Gurule.
- Luis Felipe Dias debuted with a TKO stoppage of Yi Sak Lee.
The co-main event still produced the night’s Fight of the Night, with light heavyweight veteran Alonzo Menifield playing spoiler against rising Chinese contender Zhang Mingyang and closing the show with first-round ground strikes. On a card stacked with regional prospects, the veterans cashed the biggest checks.
What the Win Sets Up at 135 Pounds
Asakura leaves Macau with a knockout, a bonus, and a question answered about where he should have been all along. The bantamweight division is deep, with Song Yadong, Figueiredo, and a wave of contenders ahead of a fighter who is still 1-2 in the promotion. One first-round finish does not erase that.
It does reset the story. If Asakura keeps finishing opponents at 135 pounds, the weight class the UFC bypassed on his debut becomes the stage where his second act gets interesting. If the quick knockout proves to be a soft landing rather than a turn, his next booking will say so before the summer is out.
