Pacio defends the strawweight title against Yamakita

Joshua Pacio defends the ONE strawweight title against Keito Yamakita on Wednesday, November 18, at EBARA WAVE Arena Ota in Tokyo. The fight is the main event of ONE Samurai 5. It is five rounds, and strawweight is 125 pounds (57 kg).

Pacio is 30 and 24-5-0, with one disqualification win, and nineteen of the wins are finishes. He is 15-5 in ONE, with 10 finishes, and Pacio has made two defenses in this reign. Pacio submitted Mansur Malachiev with a rear-naked choke at 4:23 of the first round at The Inner Circle 21 on July 10, 2026, in his last defense, and it paid a $50,000 bonus. Pacio is still chasing his first win in Japan. This is his third reign, and he is one of two men to hold the same ONE world title three times. Pacio won the first reign at 22, beating Yoshitaka Naito by unanimous decision in a rematch in September 2018. Yosuke Saruta took the belt in the first defense, and Pacio knocked him out to reclaim it the same year, and three defenses followed. Jarred Brooks took the belt in 2022. Pacio won the rematch in 2024, then unified the title against Brooks in a trilogy at ONE 171 in Qatar in 2025, and his ONE bouts average just over six minutes.

Yamakita is 30 and 13-1-0. Yamakita has won five in a row, and he is 6-1 in ONE, with six finishes. Yamakita submitted Koyuru Tanoue with a bulldog choke at 4:37 of the first round at ONE Samurai 2 on August 8, and he submitted Ryohei Kurosawa at 1:31 of the second round at ONE Samurai 1 on April 29. The streak includes former champion Alex Silva and Yosuke Saruta. Yamakita turned professional at 23 and was 7-0 before joining ONE in 2023.

The card

Ryujin Nasukawa meets Elmehdi El Jamari at strawweight kickboxing. Tatsumitsu Wada meets Jarred Brooks at strawweight. Masashi Kumura meets Ellis Badr Barboza at strawweight kickboxing. Yutaro Asahi meets Petchtanong Petchfergus at featherweight kickboxing. Ryugo Takeuchi meets Brandon Hashimoto at heavyweight. Yugo Kato meets Jurai Ishii at strawweight Muay Thai. Reiji meets Rui Botelho at strawweight kickboxing. Gump meets Shuto Inui at bantamweight kickboxing. Shosuke Kinoshita meets Takuya Shibamura at featherweight.

Start time

Doors are listed for 4 p.m. U-NEXT lists the Japanese stream from 4:30 p.m.

Japan Standard Time is nine hours ahead of UTC, and Sydney is on daylight time, eleven hours ahead of UTC.

5:30 p.m. in Tokyo:

• Tokyo: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday
• London: 8:30 a.m. Wednesday
• Sydney: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

In New York that is 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, and in Las Vegas that is 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. That is the card, not the first bell of Pacio vs. Yamakita.