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FWC: BEL v IRN, live 6.45am MondayKape continues UFC run, NZ's Stirling rises to win too
Reuters • June 21st, 2026 6:22 pm
Navajo Stirling hits Ion Cutelaba on his way to winning their light heavyweight bout | Photo: AP
Flyweight Manel Kape has stopped Kyoji Horiguchi in the third round in the UFC Fight Night main event in Las Vegas for his fourth successive victory.
Kape's TKO at 2:42 in the third of five scheduled rounds marked a transition period in a division whose champion, Joshua Van, successfully defended his title for the first time last month at UFC 328.
Kape (23-7 MMA, 8-3 UFC), a native of Angola fighting out of Portugal, exacted revenge against Japan's Horiguchi (36-6, 1 NC MMA) from their 2017 bout in RIZIN, when Kape suffered one of only two submission losses in his career.
Kape paid respects to Horiguchi, recognising that without him, his path to a potential title shot would look a little different, as he faced adversity in both fights.
There was even a bit of love between Manel Kape and Kyoji Horiguchi after their flyweight bout | Photo: AP
Kape did make one thing clear, though.
"I knew he was going to touch me at some point," Kape said after the fight about Horiguchi. "Because I felt his hand (speed) before. But, if I touch you one time, believe me, you're gonna be dead."
Kape, who has won seven of his past eight bouts, said he doesn't know if he'll get a title shot against Van immediately but was gracious toward UFC brass, including CEO Dana White.
The co-main event featured a pair of surging light heavyweights in New Zealand's Navajo Stirling and Ion Cutelaba of Moldova.
After surviving five takedowns and a few potentially fight-ending submission sequences, including a standing guillotine, Stirling railed to secure a brutal TKO against Cutelaba at 3:23 of Round 2.
Since making his promotional debut in 2024, Stirling (10-0 MMA) is 5-0 in the UFC with back-to-back finishes and 10 straight victories.
Cutelaba (20-12-1), on the contrary, is 3-3 in his last six UFC fights, having been a fringe top-15 contender in the division and remaining part of the promotion since 2016.
The finishes kept coming in a trio of featherweight bouts, as Christian Rodriguez's first-round head-kick marked the beginning of the end for Hyder Amil of the Philippines.
At 3:43 of the round, Rodriguez (13-4) successfully found an opening to secure a guillotine choke following the kick, after much of the fight was spent on the feet. The American has won four of his past seven, while Amil (11-3) fell to 3-3 in the promotion after three straight losses.
Featherweight Murtazali Magomedov added his name to the UFC history books with a modified twister submission 1:17 into the opening round against the usually durable Melsik Baghdasaryan.
Since the UFC's inception in November 1993, only three other fighters have successfully executed the combined version of a neck crank and a spinal lock: Chan Sung Jung (2011), Bryce Mitchell (2019) and Da'Mon Blackshear (2023).
The UFC Vegas 119 main card began with Brazilian featherweight Vinicius Oliveira securing a second-round TKO (4:56) against Andre Fili of the United States to secure his fifth win in his last six outings.
