Noiri, Liu, Kaito, And Siasarani Headline Eight-Man Featherweight Kickboxing Tournament At ONE SAMURAI 2
The most loaded featherweight kickboxing bracket ONE Championship has ever assembled is taking shape, and the prize waiting at the end of it is a guaranteed world title shot.
An eight-man ONE SAMURAI Featherweight Kickboxing Tournament has been confirmed for ONE SAMURAI 2, broadcasting live and exclusively on live.onefc.com from Ebara Wave Arena Ota in Tokyo, Japan on Saturday, August 8.
The tournament winner earns a guaranteed shot at ONE Featherweight Kickboxing World Champion Superbon Singha Mawynn.
The first two quarter-final matchups confirmed are both rematches, each carrying its own unresolved narrative and its own specific score to settle.
Masaaki Noiri and Liu “Spirit Dragon” Mengyang meet for the second time after Liu claimed a dominant unanimous decision over the Japanese striker at ONE Friday Fights 92 in 2024, dropping Noiri with a right cross counter en route to the win.
Noiri has made good on the promise that loss implied he was capable of, stopping Shakir Al-Tekreeti with a calf kick TKO before orchestrating a stunning come-from-behind knockout of ONE Featherweight Muay Thai World Champion Tawanchai PK Saenchai at ONE 172 to claim the interim kickboxing crown.
His subsequent title unification loss to Superbon at ONE 173 was a setback, not a conclusion, and the 33-year-old Team Vasileus representative returns to Japan carrying the clearest possible motivation.
Liu, meanwhile, has spent his time since that first meeting building toward a Superbon title shot by taking down every significant name placed in front of him, most recently dismantling Gabriel Pereira at The Inner Circle after Superbon’s injury withdrawal. The tournament is his most direct route back to the gold he was denied in May.
Kaito and Mohammad Siasarani’s rematch carries a different kind of weight. Siasarani overwhelmed Kaito with forward pressure and volume in their first meeting at ONE Friday Fights 109 in what was a difficult promotional debut for the Japanese striker. Since then, Siasarani earned his six-figure contract with a knockout of Jo “Smokin” Nattawut and defeated Pedro “Guerreiro” Dantas in his main roster debut at ONE Fight Night 39.
Kaito, by contrast, has struggled to find his level, most recently suffering a first-round knockout loss to Marat Grigorian at ONE SAMURAI 1 in April. In front of the Japanese crowd at Ebara Wave Arena on August 8, under tournament pressure that eliminates any margin for error, both of them face the most important performance of their careers.
The remaining four participants in the eight-man bracket are yet to be announced.
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