Super Rizin 5 picks: the money is moving to A.J. McKee

Super Rizin 5 runs Thursday at the Kyocera Dome Osaka, first bell at 16:00 JST. That is 03:00 Eastern on Thursday morning if you are in North America, which means this is a set-an-alarm card or a wake-up-and-avoid-the-timeline card, and I have never once managed the second one. In Japan it is pay-per-view at ¥6,500 or ¥6,900 through RIZIN LIVE, the RIZIN 100 CLUB, ABEMA and SKY PerfecTV!, and the how to watch page has the rest of it by country.

Nine fights. A featherweight title fight on top with an 18-0 champion and the best free-agent import RIZIN has landed in years, a 43-year-old legend in the co-main who probably should not be in there, and a prelim women's bout that is quietly the most one-sided price on the card. Let's go through it.

Rajabali Shaidullaev (18-0) vs A.J. McKee (25-2), featherweight title

Here is the thing that made me look twice. Across the three books we have prices from, A.J. McKee opened between plus 165 and plus 215. He is now plus 137 to plus 150. Convert that to implied probability and average it and the market has moved from 69.0 percent on the champion to 64.2 percent, a shift of almost five points. That is the biggest move on this card, and it is money walking in one direction.

I understand the instinct. McKee is 25-2 and the only two losses on the sheet are Patricio Pitbull in the 2022 rematch and a split decision to Paul Hughes in October 2024. He submitted Pitbull to take the belt in the first fight, submitted Darrion Caldwell before that, and, relevant to this specific card, beat Roberto Satoshi de Souza by unanimous decision on New Year's Eve 2022. He has won three straight since Hughes.

Here is the part the instinct skips: all three of those wins were unanimous decisions. Salamat Isbulaev in June, Ádám Borics in March, Akhmed Magomedov last July. McKee has not finished anybody since he submitted Clay Collard in February 2024.

Now look at what he is walking into. Rajabali Shaidullaev is 18-0 and 25 years old, and the last nine wins on his sheet are finishes. Four submissions, then five stoppages by strikes as he learned he could just hit people. Yuta Kubo twice. Juan Archuleta submitted. Kleber Koike stopped. And in December he took Mikuru Asakura, the biggest domestic draw RIZIN has, and TKO'd him.

The stylistic read is not complicated. McKee wants a fifteen-minute chess match he wins on the cards, and RIZIN's ring plus RIZIN's judges are not where you want to be relying on cards. Shaidullaev wants roughly six minutes of chaos. I keep talking myself into McKee, because the level of opposition gap is real and because a 25-2 fighter is a 25-2 fighter, and then I look at nine straight finishes against progressively better people and talk myself back out.

Prediction: Shaidullaev by TKO, round two.

Mikuru Asakura (19-6) vs Shinya Aoki (49-12), lightweight

Photo: SUPERADRIANME / CC BY 2.0

I want to be careful here, because Shinya Aoki is one of the ten most important fighters Japan has produced and I am about to write two paragraphs explaining why he is a minus 285 underdog's opponent. He is 43. He is 49-12. He has been submitting people at the highest level since the second Bush administration, and the John Lineker submission in January 2024 was genuinely one of the best things that happened in MMA that year.

He is also 2-3 in his last five, and the losses are the wrong kind. Mikey Musumeci submitted him in a grappling match in 2023, which is forgivable because Musumeci submits everybody. Cole Abate submitted him in December 2024, which is less forgivable, because Abate was a prospect and Aoki was still supposed to own that phase of a fight. Then Hiroyuki Tetsuka stopped him with strikes in November 2025. When a career grappler starts losing by TKO, the sport is telling you something it does not usually repeat twice.

Asakura is a strange fighter to be favored this heavily. He is 19-6, he has lost to Vugar Karamov by submission, been knocked out by Ren Hiramoto, been stopped by Ren Sugiyama, and been stopped by Shaidullaev nine months ago. That is four losses in his last seven, and every one of them a finish. What he has, and Aoki no longer has, is legs that work and a jab. If this fight happens standing for four minutes, it is over. Aoki's whole hope is a scramble in the first ninety seconds.

The market opened Asakura at 70.9 percent and moved him to 74.0. Nobody is betting the fairy tale.

Prediction: Asakura by TKO, round one.

Roberto Satoshi de Souza (20-4) vs Shunta Nomura (10-2), lightweight

Photo: Gyutan329pii / CC BY-SA 4.0

The best pure matchup on the card and the one I have the least confidence in. De Souza is 36 and 20-4, and before Ilkhom Nazimov stopped him last December he had won four in a row, three of them by submission, including Vugar Karamov on New Year's Eve 2024. He remains one of the two or three best grapplers in the promotion.

Shunta Nomura is 28, 10-2, and on a five-fight run that includes a unanimous decision over Patricky Pitbull at Super Rizin 4 in July 2025. That is the win that got him here, and beating a Pitbull brother on points at lightweight is not a thing that happens by accident.

De Souza sits at 64.5 percent, up from 61.7 at open. The case against him is age and the fact that a man who has been finished once will usually be finished again. The case for him is that Nomura has not fought anybody who can take his back.

Prediction: de Souza by submission, round two.

Karshyga Dautbek (19-3) vs Ren Hiramoto (4-3), featherweight

Karshyga Dautbek has won nine in a row and seven of them by TKO, most recently over Kyohei Hagiwara at LANDMARK 15 in July. He beat Chihiro Suzuki, he beat Ren Sugiyama, he beat Diego Brandão. He is 32, he hits extremely hard, and at minus 310 or so he is priced about right.

Ren Hiramoto is the guy who knocked Asakura out at Super Rizin 3, which in RIZIN terms is a permanent job. He is also 4-3 with a draw in his last outing against Koji Tanaka. That is a puncher's chance and not much else.

Prediction: Dautbek by TKO, round one.

Rena Kubota (15-6) vs Natalia Kuziutina (10-1), 108-pound catchweight

The most lopsided price on the card and, if you want a fight to actually watch, one of the two best. Natalia Kuziutina has won seven straight, the last of them a submission of Ayaka Hamasaki at LANDMARK 13 in April. Seven straight, at 37, against a mix of Titan, LFA and Invicta opposition and now a Japanese legend. She is minus 350 to minus 400.

Rena Kubota is 15-6 and was submitted by Seika Izawa last December. She is a kickboxer by trade fighting a career judoka at a catchweight the judoka will be the bigger woman at.

Prediction: Kuziutina by submission, round two.

The rest of it

Vugar Karamov (21-7) vs Ryo Takagi (11-3) is the best prelim, and Karamov at minus 160 to minus 188 is the price on this card I would argue with hardest. He has lost two of his last four.

Yutaka Saito (21-9-2) vs Ren Sugiyama has one book on it and Saito at plus 194. He has not fought since July 2024 and has lost his last two. There is a version of this where a 38-year-old veteran shows up sharp after more than two years away. I have watched enough of these to know which way it usually goes.

Noah Bey (6-4) vs Hide Meison Usami and Daichi Tomizawa (3-2) vs Ryo Kawabata round out the card.

Predictions: Karamov by decision, Sugiyama by decision, Usami by decision.

Full card, times in your own timezone and the country-by-country broadcast grid are on the event page. Set the alarm or do not. I will be up either way.