Karshyga Dautbek vs. Ren Hiramoto Preview | Super RIZIN 5
The official Super RIZIN 5 trailer sells the scale of RIZIN’s return to Kyocera Dome Osaka, but one of the card’s most interesting fights needs very little spectacle added to it. Karshyga Dautbek meets Ren Hiramoto in a three-round, 66-kilogram featherweight bout on September 10, pairing one of the division’s most dangerous punchers with one of Japanese MMA’s most closely watched returning stars.
Dautbek vs. Hiramoto is not officially billed as a title eliminator, but it sits directly underneath a changing RIZIN featherweight championship picture. Dautbek has already made clear that he wants the winner of the evening’s RIZIN-PFL double-title fight, while Hiramoto returns to MMA with a chance to immediately re-establish himself among the division’s leading names.
Karshyga Dautbek enters on his strongest RIZIN run
Dautbek’s 19-3 record tells only part of the story. Fifteen of his 19 victories have come by knockout or TKO, and he has not suffered a defeat since March 2019. His current RIZIN run has shown that the power still translates against increasingly serious opposition.
After returning to RIZIN Fighting Federation in 2024, the Kazakhstan-born featherweight knocked out Tetsuya Seki with a body punch and stopped Takeaki Kinoshita with another first-round KO. He then proved he did not need an early finish to win, taking decisions over YA-MAN and former RIZIN featherweight champion Chihiro Suzuki.
His December 2025 fight with Yuta Kubo ended in a no contest following an accidental eye poke, but Dautbek returned in emphatic fashion at RIZIN Landmark 15 in Hiroshima.
Against Kyohei Hagiwara, Dautbek spent much of the opening round operating from southpaw and measuring the distance before exploding forward with a left hand. Hagiwara went down, Dautbek followed with ground punches, and the referee stopped the fight at 4:08 of Round 1.
That performance matters for this matchup because Dautbek is not simply a stationary power puncher waiting to swing. RIZIN itself has emphasized his ability to mix grappling threats with heavy strikes. Against a technically polished opponent such as Hiramoto, forcing him to think about more than the left hand may be just as important as the power itself.
Ren Hiramoto finally returns to an official MMA fight
Hiramoto’s record is only 4-3, but his development has never followed a normal prospect timeline. He arrived in MMA after a high-level kickboxing career and lost his first two mixed martial arts fights, including his 2020 debut against Hagiwara. What followed was a gradual process of learning how to make his striking work when takedowns, clinches and ground fighting could no longer be ignored.
By the end of 2023, the improvement was much easier to see. Hiramoto beat YA-MAN by unanimous decision at RIZIN 45, mixing his usual sharp boxing with a more complete MMA game.
Then came the fight that changed his standing in Japanese MMA.
At Super RIZIN 3, Hiramoto faced Mikuru Asakura in one of RIZIN’s biggest domestic fights. Hiramoto hurt Asakura with his left hand, swarmed with punches and finished him at 2:18 of the first round. It remains Hiramoto’s most important MMA victory and his most recent official MMA fight.
A planned rematch with Asakura was later lost to injury. Hiramoto did return to the ring in May 2026 against Kouzi, but that was a special standing-rules bout with no official winner rather than a return to MMA. Afterward, Hiramoto said his recovering shoulder was around 80 percent.
Super RIZIN 5 is therefore the real comeback. More than two years after stopping Asakura, Hiramoto is stepping straight back into MMA against a 19-3 opponent with some of the heaviest hands in RIZIN’s featherweight division.
For a closer look at the personality and buildup surrounding his return, MMAtown’s Ren Hiramoto RIZIN Confessions feature follows the story beyond the basic fight record.
The common opponents make Dautbek vs. Hiramoto even more interesting
There are two obvious pieces of MMA history connecting these fighters, although neither should be confused with a prediction.
Hagiwara handed Hiramoto a stoppage loss in his MMA debut in 2020. Six years later, Dautbek knocked Hagiwara out in the opening round. Hiramoto is obviously a very different fighter now than the kickboxer learning MMA on the fly in 2020, but Dautbek’s ability to punish Hagiwara still gives a recent reference point for his power against established RIZIN opposition.
The other connection points in the opposite direction. Dautbek’s first RIZIN appearance came all the way back in 2018 against Mikuru Asakura, who beat him by unanimous decision. Hiramoto, of course, produced the signature win of his MMA career by stopping Asakura in 2024.
MMA math rarely survives contact with actual styles, but those shared opponents help frame how long both men have been developing. Dautbek is far more experienced and far more accomplished than the fighter who first entered a RIZIN ring against Asakura. Hiramoto is equally removed from the raw MMA newcomer who struggled against Hagiwara.
A dangerous striking fight without identical styles
The obvious description is striker versus striker, but Dautbek and Hiramoto approach striking very differently.
Dautbek carries genuine one-shot power. His record reflects it, and recent RIZIN opponents have repeatedly been forced to respect his left hand. He is comfortable allowing a fight to develop at range before suddenly covering distance with a committed attack. When he hurts someone, he has shown little hesitation in following them to the floor and finishing with punches.
Hiramoto is more concerned with positioning, timing and clean entries. His kickboxing background is visible in the way he manages distance and creates straight-punch openings, but his MMA improvements have allowed him to become less predictable. Against YA-MAN, for example, he was willing to incorporate takedowns rather than insist on winning every exchange as a pure kickboxer.
Both also spend significant time fighting southpaw, taking away some of the familiar open-stance dynamics that often shape southpaw-versus-orthodox matchups. The battle may instead come down to who controls the lead-hand exchanges, who gets his preferred distance and whether Hiramoto can make Dautbek reset before the heavier combinations arrive.
For Hiramoto, there is also the question that cannot be answered by old footage: how does he look after such a long absence from MMA? His timing against Asakura was excellent, but September 2026 is a long way removed from July 2024. Dautbek, meanwhile, fought less than two months before Super RIZIN 5 and enters directly from a first-round stoppage.
The featherweight titles are being decided on the same night
The placement of Dautbek-Hiramoto becomes even more important because the top of the card features Razhabali Shaidulloev vs. AJ McKee for both the RIZIN featherweight championship and the vacant PFL featherweight title.
That unusual championship arrangement is explained in MMAtown’s RIZIN × PFL CEO discussion on Shaidulloev vs. McKee. Whoever wins the main event will leave Osaka holding two belts, and Dautbek has openly identified that winner as the kind of fight he wants next.
A Hiramoto victory would create its own argument. Beating Dautbek after more than two years away from MMA would immediately add a 19-win contender to the résumé that already includes the Asakura knockout. RIZIN has not promised the winner a championship opportunity, but it is difficult to separate this matchup from the title picture being decided later in the same building.
Super RIZIN 5 is loaded around Dautbek vs. Hiramoto
The September 10 card goes well beyond the featherweight story. Former lightweight champion Roberto Satoshi Souza meets Shunta Nomura in Satoshi Souza vs. Shunta Nomura, while another important featherweight matchup pits Ryo Takagi against Vugar Karamov.
RENA also returns against Olympic judo medalist Natasha Kuziutina in RENA vs. Natasha Kuziutina, while Mikuru Asakura faces Japanese MMA legend Shinya Aoki and former featherweight champion Yutaka Saito meets YA-MAN.
For viewers coming into the promotion through this trailer, MMAtown’s guide to RIZIN Fighting Federation explains the ring, rules and presentation that separate it from most major MMA organizations. The top RIZIN fights also gives some historical context for the promotion’s biggest spectacles.
Two very different kinds of pressure in Osaka
Dautbek has the form, activity and finishing numbers. Hiramoto has the bigger Japanese profile and perhaps the more technically refined pure striking background. One arrives after flattening Hagiwara; the other returns to MMA carrying the memory of a first-round win over Asakura.
The stakes are different for each man. Dautbek is trying to convert a long unbeaten stretch and increasingly strong RIZIN résumé into a championship opportunity. Hiramoto is trying to prove that the momentum he created at Super RIZIN 3 survived the injuries and long absence that followed.
That makes Karshyga Dautbek vs. Ren Hiramoto more than another striking showcase on a huge card. It is a test of whether Dautbek’s power and recent activity can shut down one of RIZIN’s most precise counter-strikers, and whether Hiramoto can return after two years away from MMA and immediately perform against a contender who has barely stopped winning.
Super RIZIN 5 takes place September 10 at Kyocera Dome Osaka. After the Osaka card, RIZIN’s schedule continues with RIZIN Landmark 16 in Nagasaki on October 3.