Alexandre Pantoja defends flyweight title, submits Kai Asakura in UFC 310 main event

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to us tonight, December 7, 2024, for UFC 310, going down live from the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada.

Headlining the event was a 125 lb title bout between UFC flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja (29-5) and former two-time Rizin bantamweight champion Kai Asakura (21-5).

Pantoja came into his third title defense tonight following his claim of the title over former two-time champion Brandon Moreno (SD) and defenses against no. 1 ranked former LFA flyweight champion Brandon Royval (UD) and no. 8 ranked former EMMA flyweight champion Steve Erceg (UD).

Asakura on the other hand made his promotional debut tonight following the claim of his second Rizin title against former Bellator bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta (KO).

Continue reading to see how our flyweight championship main event of the evening went down:

Official Result: Alexandre Pantoja def. Kai Asakura via technical submission (rear naked choke) at 2:05 of round two

Pantoja ate a nasty flying knee in the opening seconds of the bout, soon after landing a heavy left hook that aided him in taking Asakura down. Asakura quickly got back to his feet and landed another knee to the body, Pantoja landing good boxing combinations, some of which were followed by body kicks.

Pantoja shot in on a double leg before tripping Asakura momentarily, nearly taking his back along the fence. Eventually Pantoja did take Asakura’s back, where he soon after locked up the rear naked choke for his first finish in a world title fight.

Click here to view finish.

Though Kai Asakura was unranked going into this contest, this being his UFC debut, he was a world champion coming in with wins over many other world champions (Manel Kape, Kyoji Horiguchi, Juan Archuleta), and Alexandre Pantoja made this look easy.

Alexandre Pantoja now holds three successful title defenses as the UFC flyweight champion, second to only Demetrious Johnson.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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