The Tactical Guide to Kai Asakura vs Kyoji Horiguchi II
New Years Eve is always a “big” night in Japanese MMA. Sometimes that means you’re going to get a handful of freak show fights and old timers in a very pretty ring with some lovely production values. This year, however, something much larger and more meaningful plays out on Rizin’s December 31st card: the return of Kyoji Horiguchi.
The Horiguchi story only really begins after a pointlessly rushed title shot at Demetrious Johnson in April 2015. Like every other Johnson challenger of that period, Horiguchi was easily handled. In January 2016, Horiguchi moved to the United States to work with American Top Team and the results have been astonishing. A rudimentary grappler who did his work on the feet quickly turned into a wall walking machine whose striking continued to grow along with his confidence. Horiguchi’s most promising showing yet came against Ali Bagautinov in November 2016, but the UFC—always hot and cold on the flyweights—allowed Horiguchi to slip through the net as his contract expired.
Signing with the young Japanese promotion, Rizin in February 2017, Horiguchi wrought a path of destruction for the next three years. From his Rizin debut in April 2017 to June 2019, Horiguchi fought ten times in MMA without a loss. He ran through three men in a one night tournament to become the Rizin bantamweight champion. Former UFC contenders Ian McCall and Ben Nguyen were brought in and expected to offer a bit more of a challenge, and the surging Horiguchi sparked them both in moments. In 2018 Horiguchi was supposed to be a lamb to the slaughter in a kickboxing match against the great bantamweight Tenshin Nasukawa but gave a terrific account of himself. And through 2018 and 2019 Horiguchi defeated the Bellator bantamweight champion, Darion Caldwell twice: first under Rizin rules and then on Caldwell’s home court, becoming the Bellator bantamweight champion in the process. The Rizin bantamweight tournament, the best bantamweight kickboxer on the planet (spare Takeru), and the Bellator bantamweight champion: all in spite of truthfully being built for flyweight.
It was in August 2019 that Kai Asakura stepped out of the shadows and killed the magic. He was good, but assumed to be just another warm body against Horiguchi. In seconds he had caught Horiguchi diving in and sent him stumbling. Despite going the distance in his previous three against a mixed bag of competition, it took Asakura just sixty-eight seconds to stop Horiguchi.
It is with the simple stories that tickets are sold and cash is piled up in the fight game. There are few as easy to understand as The Fluke. A favourite, an underdog, a devastating upset and an emphatic finish. A result that shouldn’t have happened, which immediately splits the fans down the centre: half believe it would never happen under normal circumstances, and the other half believe the underdog just hit his stride at the right time and will make it happen again.
If you are a Horiguchi believer, it is very easy to convince yourself that he just got unlucky the first time around. Eleven fights over the course of three years resulted in an almost constant state of being “in camp”. The nagging injuries had to be building up and, ahead of a planned rematch with Asakura on New Years Eve 2019, Horiguchi tore right through his ACL and had to get surgery. And that’s not even to mention complacency which would fit with the strange way in which he fought against Asakura, or that Asakura just hadn’t been that kind of finisher in his recent contests. The fact that the sloppy and reckless Manel Kape—who Horiguchi had comprehensively handled—soon knocked Asakura out added more fuel to the fluke fire.
But for the Asakura fan there is also plenty of reason to suppose he could do it again. That loss to Kape aside, Asakura has been on an incredible tear since the Horiguchi bout, finishing everyone Rizin puts in front of him. He broke Ulka Sasaki’s jaw on the second punch he landed, and completely overwhelmed Hiromasa Ougikubo in under five minutes. He has his flaws, but he’s crafty, and sharp, and with his reach and height on Horiguchi he could easily draw the ATT fighter out of his game again.
The Styles
Despite their significant differences on the feet, Horiguchi and Asakura both stand out as strikers who can operate well in two “modes”. That is to say that both men have done great work on the lead, but also had performances where they take a step back and draw opponents onto the counter, and both can generally assess their opponent and adapt as necessary. For instance, both realized that the more pressure and volume they put on Ougikubo, the more he would shell up and take a beating.
But even when they are both carrying the fight to their opponent, the two men make a stark contrast. Asakura is a buzzsaw and the more punches he can get off the better. Asakura’s flawed but thrilling showing against Kizaemon Saiga in his Rizin debut would be a great example of just how dangerous Asakura can be when he forces an all out firefight. Horiguchi’s offence tends to be an in-and-out kind of effort, focusing on scoring his big blow and either stepping out the side door or pushing his opponent away. Horiguchi’s combination work is limited to twos and the rare three and a lot of his game revolves around the basic kind of one-two that carries Stephen Thompson—albeit over larger distances and with a bit more oomph behind each punch.
Then on the counter Horiguchi’s best work happens when he establishes the enormous distance that he can close with his bursts, but challenges the opponent to close them instead. Getting the read on the opponent over that buffer zone, what we term “forcing the extra step”, and then intercepting with the one-size-fits-all reverse punch. The idea of sen-no-sen or the intercepting counter drives much of Horiguchi’s counterfighting game. He’s attacking the movement and the offensive moment, not looking to slip and counter a specific blow.
Where Horiguchi is largely about straight hitting, Asakura is proficient with the left hook and the right hook. Where Horiguchi wants a car crash, Asakura often wants to side swipe his man as they move in on him. This is often the checking left hook that Asakura uses to pivot around his opponent.
But just as often this left hook is the opening shot in a counter combination, or is followed by Asakura diving back into the fray. The first attempt Horiguchi made to burst across space at Asakura was met with a swatting left hook which found his chin undefended and foreshadowed the knockout.
The cross counter / right hook is also a stellar weapon for Asakura. Sometimes he will time it across the opponent’s jab, other times he will be able to club them as they throw their right. The main thing about both counters is that they allow Asakura to continue hitting and swarming on his man.
Hypothetical Gameplans
The Kape fights give a window into where Asakura thrives and struggles. Even though Kape seemed to get off the bigger blows in both bouts, he tripped up in pure exchanges. As Kape reached for Asakura he was regularly countered with the right hand across the top of his left. When Asakura could move his head and hands freely and Kape was within range, Asakura tended to do well.
The first area in which Kape was able to get his good digs in was when Asakura overcommitted and tried to bite off too much in striking range. This is a common feature of Asakura’s game and part of what makes him so entertainingly chaotic—he always wants to hit more, and sometimes that makes him predictable, and other times it makes him overreach himself. In these instances Kape was actually able to land cleanly on the counter.
Most of the other key moments came when Kape was able to physically impose himself on Asakura and on the exchange. On the surface it seemed to be that the wilder the exchange was, the better Kape did. But in reality it was more that Kape did his best work when he was shoving or pulling or hanging on a collar tie and throwing off Asakura’s punching mechanics and movement.
This coincides with a feature of Horiguchi’s game that was absent in the first fight. When Horiguchi leads, he bursts in over distance and he prefers to overdo it. He flings the right hand and then crashes into the opponent with his shoulder, or shoves them back, or weaves out the side door if he falls a little short. But his actions serve to prevent the opponent from returning.
This combines with the very deceptive style of feinting he employs. Feints are a necessary part of Horiguchi’s game because they enable him to hide the large movements needed to cover so much distance. They also settle down dangerous counter punchers like Manel Kape.
The fight with Asakura was brief but was marked by Horiguchi being drawn onto the lead, while completely eschewing the things that generally keep him safe while doing so. For anything that might have been going on in Horiguchi’s head, that wouldn’t have happened if Asakura hadn’t feinted, back tracked, and drawn Horiguchi onto his counters instead of wading in to start combination punching. But more than that, Asakura’s height and length seemed to complicate Horiguchi’s task as he burst in and never came close enough to tie up or push away to keep Asakura off guard and wound up simply chasing instead. Yes, Asakura “Horiguchied” Horiguchi.
To avoid this in the rematch, Horiguchi could work to fight more on the counter; he could refuse to lead and have Asakura come to him. This is where Kape hurt Asakura, after all. In MMA the focus now is generally on taking the initiative and forcing the opponent to fight their way out of a hole. This match up, however, seems to reflect the somewhat old fashioned striking belief that the man who finally concedes to lead is at an immediate disadvantage.
But should Horiguchi want to work on the lead he could do more with less. More feinting, more work to establish a comfortable range before attacking, more kicking from range, and less legitimate bursts in to land blows to the head. Horiguchi’s skip up left kicks to the body are a terrific lead to score points and are trickier to fire counters over, but the best option might be the front kick that Horiguchi likes to leap into out of his bounce. You will remember this sending Darion Caldwell across the ring in a round where Horiguchi fought with a very low output.
Asakura had a lot of trouble with the front kick breaking his rhythm against Kizaemon Saiga and while Saiga used it to cut off Asakura’s combinations, Horiguchi could still use it to lead, score well with the judges, and mitigate the risk of a counter punch.
Asakura wasn’t lulled into a false sense of security in the first match and was able to overextend Horiguchi in spite of the enormous distances Horiguchi can usually cover. If Horiguchi wants to go on the lead, letting Asakura work himself to the ropes first would be a great idea. This isn’t typically Horiguchi’s game but you saw him do decently trying to corner Ougikubo—though obviously Ougikubo is half the threat on the counter that Asakura is.
For Asakura, unless he wants to try and catch Horiguchi cold out of the gate, there is little need to fix what isn’t broken. Horiguchi is far more dangerous when his opponent is coming after him, and seemed downright uncomfortable when Asakura gave ground so readily. This is a man who prepared for Tenshin Nasukawa’s sharp counter punching, but was agitated into overextension by a much less threatening striker feinting and running away. If Asakura can keep that up without hitting the ropes, it stands to reason it will irritate Horiguchi and take away his biggest weapon: the intercepting counter.
Should Asakura want to go on the lead—or be forced to by Horiguchi’s own desire to fight on the counter, he probably stands his best chance in exchanges beyond the first punch. In which case he has to try and kill as much of that distance barrier between himself and Horiguchi as possible. Walking the fight to the ropes is a big part of that, but coming in behind front kicks and knee raises will also make the effort to close a lot easier. Essentially Asakura’s ideal offensive fight is one where the closing of distance never happens: that is where he is in danger. On the inside of an exchange with Horiguchi he’ll probably do very well. The less of an event he can make the actual move to close—by closing the distance with ringcraft or coming in behind kicks—the more he likely he will be able to fight effectively on offense against Horiguchi.
The fluke angle is great for splitting the fanbase in half and forcing strong opinions about whether or not that result could ever happen again, but the other consequence of such a short, surprising fight the first time around is that we still know almost nothing about the match up. How the two compete in the clinch, whether Asakura can get up from underneath a quality wrestler, whether Horiguchi can even get him down. All the original questions are still there, with the added bonus that this is now a grudge match.