Kai Kara-France Believes He Can KO UFC 310 Headliners Alexandre Pantoja, Kai Asakura

Kai Kara-France will be keeping a close watch on the upcoming title fight between Alexandre Pantoja and Kai Asakura.

Asakura will make his promotional debut, challenging Pantoja for the flyweight title in the main event at UFC 310 on Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Kara-France considers himself to be next in line for title contention and will be keeping a keen eye on the matchup.

Kara-France also believes he has the knockout power to shut the lights out on either Pantoja or Asakura. If Pantoja wins, “Don’t Blink” wants home crowd support to avenge his “Ultimate Fighter 24” loss against the Brazilian in 2016. Meanwhile, if Asakura wins, Kara-France wants to travel to enemy territory to challenge the Japanese flyweight.

“I feel like I could definitely knock out Kai or Pantoja,” Kara-France told Engage. “So that’s why I’ll be tuning in. Let’s say now if Pantoja wins, let’s fight in New Zealand. I’ll headline it, me and him for the title, in front of my people… There’s a story [if Kai wins] as well. I would love to go back over there, fight in Super Saitama Arena, in front of all the Japanese fans and fight for the title there. That would be awesome.”

While Kara-France spent a large part of his early career fighting in Asia, his only outing at the Super Saitama Arena in Japan ended in a unanimous decision loss against Tatsumitsu Wada. Kara-France is coming off a knockout win over Steve Erceg that saw him rebound from a two-fight slump.

Meanwhile, Pantoja is riding a six-fight winning streak that includes a title win over Brandon Moreno followed by defenses against Brandon Royval and Erceg. Asakura is a former Rizin bantamweight champ who has wins over the likes of Manel Kape and Kyoji Horiguchi and is currently coming off back-to-back stoppage wins.