Kyoji Horiguchi knows he’s entering a situation with limited upside at the Bellator vs. Rizin event on New Year’s Eve.
Horiguchi (30-5), who is a former bantamweight champion under both the Bellator and Rizin banners, will meet Hiromasa Ougikubo (25-6-2) on the main card of the Dec. 31 card, which takes place at Saitama Super Arena in Japan and airs via tape-delay on Showtime.
Ougikubo is a familiar foe to Horiguchi, as they’ve met twice before. Horiguchi won the initial encounter by second-round submission under the Shooto banner in March 2013, then won the rematch more than five years later with a unanimous decision triumph at Rizin FF 11 in July 2018.
The results of the previous fights don’t have Horiguchi expecting that a repeat will be a lock, though. As his American Top Team teammate Kayla Harrison learned in her recent PFL Championship loss to Larissa Pacheco, holding two wins over someone doesn’t mean going 3-0 will be easy.
I beat him twice, but he’s better than before,” Horiguchi told MMA Junkie. “I need to show who is better again. … I am always taking (opponent) seriously, because it’s a fight. If he punch me in the face, of course it’s a knockout. It’s a complicated fight. I always focus.”
After going on a 13-fight winning streak from September 2015-June 2019, Horiguchi has struggled with his results in recent years. He’s 2-3 in his past five fights, including being bounced from the Bellator bantamweight grand prix by Patchy Mix in September.
Mix has advanced to the finals of the tournament, where he’ll challenge interim champ Raufeon Stots in the first quarter of 2023. Sergio Pettis will then fight the winner of the grand prix, and Horiguchi hopes in that time to do enough work that he’s back in the conversation to possibly regain the strap.
“I am focused just on the next fight,” Horiguchi said. “After this fight I will think about it. … I think Patchy Mix is going to win. He’s very good. He have a lot of confidence.”
