Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes will shed a losing
streak at night’s end.
The UFC announced the
return of former Rizin Fighting Federation champion Kai Asakura
(21-6) on Thursday, who will be moving back up to 135 pounds after
suffering two defeats in the Octagon. He draws fellow skidding
combatant Cameron
Smotherman (12-6), who won his promotional debut and has since
dropped two decisions. The latter may be
more famously known as the one who made weight ahead of his UFC
324 match with Ricky
Turcios, only to faint and faceplant shortly after walking off
the scales.
Japan’s Asakura, 32, has not panned out since debuting with the
promotion in 2024. Coming off winning the Rizin bantamweight belt
against Juan
Archuleta at the end of 2023—where Archuleta missed weight by
over five pounds on fight night—Asakura was thrust into an
immediate title shot. Champ Alexandre
Pantoja throttled him in just over seven minutes, rendering the
Rings: Outsider expat unconscious for the first submission defeat
of his career. After over nine months away, Asakura came back
against Tim Elliott,
only to get submitted again. This prompted a relocation to
bantamweight, a division he previously competed at from 2018 to
2023.
The two will collide at
UFC Macau, also known as UFC Fight Night 277, which goes down
on May 30 at the Galaxy Arena in Macau, a special administrative
region in China. It will mark the first time that Houstonian
Smotherman has competed outside of the U.S. in his 18-fight career,
with the lion’s share previously taking place in his home state of
Texas. Smotherman picked up a win over Jake Hadley
when he debuted in 2024, as his appearance on the 2023 season of
Dana White’s Contender Series did not go his
way. He went on to rattle off three wins in Fury Fighting Championship to reach the Las
Vegas-based league, and has since fallen short on the scorecards to
Serhiy
Sidey and Ricky Simon
in 2025.
UFC Macau lineup:
Yadong
Song vs. Deiveson
Figueiredo – bantamweight
Mingyang
Zhang vs. Alonzo
Menifield – light heavyweight
Sergei
Pavlovich vs. Tallison
Teixeira – heavyweight
Kai
Asakura vs. Cameron
Smotherman – bantamweight
Alex
Perez vs. Su Mudaerji
– flyweight
Luis
Felipe Dias vs. Yi Sak Lee –
middleweight
Rei
Tsuruya vs. Jesus
Santos Aguilar – flyweight
Loma
Lookboonmee vs. Jaqueline
Amorim – women’s strawweight
Cody
Haddon vs. Qileng Aori
– bantamweight
朝倉海のオクタゴン3戦目決定📣
5月30日（土）📅
UFCファイトナイト・マカオでキャメロン・スモザーマンと対戦👊朝倉海🗣️「バンタム級転向1戦目、進化した姿を見せます。楽しみにしていてください！」
先行販売🎟️4/14から順次｜一般販売：4/17
今すぐ登録👉️ https://t.co/H0FZiQqFk7#UFCMacau
pic.twitter.com/dDcIkaxngK— UFC Japan (@ufc_jp)
April 2, 2026