Manel Kape enters Saturday’s UFC Fight Night main event on a three-fight winning streak, with Kyoji Horiguchi waiting in a flyweight rematch at Meta APEX. The winner moves one step closer to the top of a division that has been active and turbulent.
Manel Kape and Kyoji Horiguchi
The matchup brings together two top 5 flyweight contenders in a rematch from the semifinals of the Rizin World Grand Prix 2017. Kape has won seven of his last eight UFC fights, and five of those victories came inside the distance.
That recent surge is the sharpest run of his UFC career so far. He started his UFC tenure in 2021 with consecutive decision losses, then flipped the pattern into finishes and steady results.
Joshua Van and Alexandre Pantoja
The division around them is already moving. Joshua Van is assumed to rematch Alexandre Pantoja next, which leaves Saturday’s main event sitting just behind the most direct title path. That is the space Kape and Horiguchi are fighting to enter.
Horiguchi brings the cleaner recent resume in one narrow sense. He returned to the UFC and stopped Tagir Ulanbekov with a third-round submission, then followed with a unanimous decision over Amir Albazi in February to push his unbeaten streak to eight.
Navajo Stirling in the UFC
The undercard also adds stakes for another prospect. Navajo Stirling in the UFC polite request earlier in the year helped get his bout moving, and he backed it up by extending his record to 9-0 after defeating Bruno Lopes. Ion Cutelaba meets Stirling after Cutelaba beat Oumar Sy by first-round mounted guillotine choke.
Hyder Amil and Christian Rodriguez meet in a featherweight bout on the same card, but the main event remains the card’s clearest marker of where the flyweight division sits. Kape has been more dynamic under the UFC banner, while Horiguchi holds the earlier head-to-head win, and Saturday decides which version of that rivalry carries more weight now.
