Horie stops Usami, Erdogan goes 14-0: weekend results

Five cards went out on Friday and Saturday, and the best fighter on any of them did exactly what everybody expected, only slower. Shamil Erdogan is 14-0 after submitting Paul Elliott at 3:30 of the second round at ONE Fight Night 48 in Bangkok. The rest of the weekend belonged to the betting underdogs, the fight-day scratch list, and a Nagasaki main event that ended the one way its loser had never lost.

I previewed five of these cards on Wednesday, with one pick per headliner and a handful underneath. Six of the nine bouts I called that actually happened went my way on the winner. Two of the three I missed are the most interesting results of the weekend, so let's start there.

Nagasaki: Horie does it to the man nobody had done it to

I picked Sho Patrick Usami by knockout in the second round, mostly because of one number: five career losses, two by submission and three on the cards, none by strikes. Yoshinori Horie did not care for the number. He finished Usami with elbows and punches at 3:37 of the second round to headline RIZIN LANDMARK 16, and he is 16-6.

The market saw it before I did. Horie opened around -160 on Thursday and closed at -253, with Usami out to +210. When a line walks that far in less than two days and the result follows it, the honest thing is to admit the people moving it knew something about this matchup that I didn't.

Two more from Nagasaki that mattered:

• Viktor Kolesnik needed a win after two straight losses, including a 33-second stoppage by Rajabali Shaidullaev, and he got it with elbows and a soccer kick 20 seconds into the second round against Koyomi Matsushima. I picked Kolesnik by decision. Right man, wrong ending. He is 27-6-1.
• Hyuma Yasui beat Ryan Cafaro by unanimous decision as a +212 underdog. Cafaro opened at -220 and closed at -254, and in May he had submitted Matsushima, the same man Kolesnik just stopped. Yasui is 5-1. That is the result on the card that should change a matchmaker's whiteboard.

On to the rest of the RIZIN card, briefly. Kohei Sugiyama (+148) took a split decision over Kaito Oda at flyweight. Hidetaka Arato (+176) beat Ken Hasegawa on all three cards at heavyweight. Kyohei Takagi stopped Masatoshi Ueda with knees and punches at 3:26 of the first, and Alan Yamaniha took a kneebar on Seigo Yamamoto at 3:00 of the first. Two of those were underdogs winning on the cards, which is about the rate this weekend was running at.

Bangkok: Erdogan needed a second round, and that is the news

My pick was Erdogan by TKO in the first round, and I was relaxed about it. His previous three fights had lasted a combined 3 minutes and 32 seconds: Aung La N Sang in 28 seconds, Gilberto Galvao in 44, Ryugo Takeuchi at 2:20. Elliott had never won a pro fight any other way than by knockout, and both of his losses had come the same way.

So the result is the one I expected and the shape is not. Erdogan was in there for 8 minutes and 30 seconds, more than twice as long as his previous three fights put together, and he finished it on the floor, not with his hands. Elliott, who closed at +599 after opening the week at +600, is 7-3 and has now been submitted for the first time. The line wandered on the way there, from -1050 on Erdogan on Wednesday to -546 on Thursday and back to -948 at the bell.

I am not going to pretend a second-round submission win is a warning sign. It does mean the heavyweight who wins everything in under a round has now shown he can win later, a different way, which is a scarier thing for whoever ONE puts in front of him next.

The undercard:

• Antônio César stopped the previously unbeaten Joshua Perreira by TKO at the end of the first round. I had César by decision. He is 22, 15-2, and 2-0 in ONE.
• Parham Gheirati beat Nakrob Fairtex by unanimous decision in Muay Thai, the -166 side winning as it should.
• Elbrus Osmanov took a split decision over Yuxuan Yi in kickboxing.
• The strawweight fight I called the undercard pick, Lee Seung Cheol against Karen Ghazaryan, came off the card. So did my pick for it.

Friday Fights 173: Barrios at +307, and the main event that vanished

The billed main event at ONE Friday Fights 173, Buakaew Sor Sor Pakorn against Nat Khat Min, did not happen. It came off on fight day. Tonglampoon FA Group and Dionatha Santos Tobias moved up into the top spot, and Tonglampoon won a split decision at +135.

The biggest upset of the weekend by price came further down. Sheila Barrios knocked out Mia Trevorrow at 2:24 of the second round in an atomweight Muay Thai fight. Trevorrow opened at -300 and the money kept coming, all the way to -435 at the close, with Barrios out at +307. Knockouts do not care what the line did on Thursday.

Regian Eersel did what the line said (-410 at the close) in the lightweight Muay Thai title fight, knocking George Jarvis out at 1:40 of the fourth round. That is two knockouts of Jarvis in 14 months; the first took 1:23 in August 2025. I picked Eersel by decision because I thought Jarvis had learned enough to see the last bell. He saw three of them.

My upset of the weekend, Babar Ali by TKO, lasted 3:06. Imran Satiev submitted him in the first round, as the -255 favorite. That was a bad pick, and I would rather say so than bury it.

Also: Joanne La (+118) took a split decision over Yara Saleh, and Jongjun Park stopped Youssef Ramadan at 1:28 of the second in MMA.

Riyadh: Nada answers the ring-rust question

Mostafa Rashed Nada had not fought since January 2025 and Osama ElSeady since December 2023, and the headliner of PFL MENA 11 looked like it could go anywhere. Nada submitted ElSeady at 2:33 of the second round. I had Nada by first-round TKO with the least confidence of any pick in that preview. Right man again, wrong everything else. The line drifted toward ElSeady all week, from -272 on Nada to -220 at the bell, and it did not matter.

The miss that stings is Shadi Kabbani. He opened at -155 against Mehdi Saadi, I picked him by decision, and then the market turned on him in a way I have rarely seen on a regional card: Kabbani drifted to even money by Thursday night and closed at +137, with Saadi at -167. Saadi won the decision. I was holding the side the entire market had abandoned.

Elsewhere in Riyadh, Ylies Djiroun (26-9) stopped Assem Ghanem at 3:06 of the first, and Badreddine Diani submitted Hazem Kayyali in the second. Djiroun and Ghanem had not been booked against each other a day earlier. Both of their original opponents came off the card on fight day, along with Elias Boudegzdame against Islam Youssef, so PFL simply paired the leftovers.

Queensland: the main event left, Kuhne stayed

BKFC Fight Night Australia lost its advertised headliner, Haze Hepi against Sam Shewmaker, on fight day. Hunter Ioane against Nicholas Saragosa and Jay Tonkin against Asher Jack went with it. Half of the six bouts on the card earlier in the week were gone, and the new main event was Josh Kuhne against Shaun Curran.

Kuhne did what I said he would and stopped Curran in 58 seconds of the first round. It was the only pick in the preview I got exactly right, and it was for a fight that had been put together on Tuesday. Mark Flanigan, who had already lost two opponents this week, knocked out a third, Kaylib Heke, at 0:43 of the second. Mick Whitehead stopped Ryan Winnett in the fourth round of a near pick'em, and Ioane, re-paired with Luke Bampton, won by TKO in the first.

The tally

Six right on the winner out of nine fights that happened, one of them right on the method too, and the two picks that died (Hepi and Lee) died on the scratch list rather than in the ring. The market did better than I did on the three that mattered most: Horie, Saadi and Satiev all closed as favorites I had picked against in print.

There is one card left from that preview. ACA 208 goes Sunday in Grozny, where I took Tumenov by TKO in the third. If Saturday is any guide, the market is already a step ahead of me. Results land on the event page as they happen.