Cornerman's Pre-Fight Power Slap Backfires in Krush KO Loss

Corner advice is supposed to steady a fighter, not scramble him. At a Krush card in Tokyo, Kei's team went the physical route, delivering a full-blooded motivational slap to the head before he walked out against Soma Kondo. It did not have the desired effect. Kondo later caught him with a kick to an already-rattled head and put him away, prompting the winner to joke online that he thought he was the one who scored the knockout.

The clip's editing makes the slap and the finish look closer together than they were — the stoppage came minutes later, not seconds — but the sequence still landed hard enough to pull UFC featherweight Cub Swanson into the conversation. Swanson, 31-14 with 15 KOs and coming off a first-round knockout of Nate Landwehr, made clear he's no fan of corners getting that hands-on. The takeaway for Kei's team is simple: work the head game, not the headslaps.

Knockout of the Week Candidates

The real highlight came from Tyjani Beztati at Levels Fight League 24. The former Glory lightweight champion, now 4-0 since crossing into MMA in 2025, timed a textbook intercept knee as Daniel Kolasinski ducked into an overhand right. This wasn't a body knee that drifted north by accident — Beztati drove it straight up the middle and sent Kolasinski spilling the other way. For a guy still early in his MMA run, the striking transfer looks real.

Upsets ran the undercards. IMMAF product Alex Keogh walked in a -2000 favorite after a 24-second submission in his pro debut, then ran into Oliveira doing exactly what a massive underdog should: swinging for the fences. Oliveira stuffed a takedown, landed a clubbing right, and finished with hammerfists. On the amateur side, Derek Rayfield needed just eight seconds to flatten Oliver Moeckel at Tuff-N-Uff 157.

The grappling scene produced its own standout. Flyweight prospect Gabi McComb, a known name in competitive grappling, improved to 5-0 with a brutal face crank over Taylor Mauldin. At 28, she's one of the more polished prospects worth tracking. Over at an Ased FC show in Baku, Ummat Jafarov landed a clean three-punch combo that dropped Nihat Kerimov into an almost cross-legged sitting position — one more entry in the ever-growing catalogue of strange ways to hit the canvas.