Manel Kape Chases Derrick Lewis Record

Flyweights are not supposed to talk like heavyweights.

Manel Kape did it anyway after UFC Vegas 119, because subtlety has never really looked natural on him. One minute he was standing over the wreckage of an old loss, the next he was dragging Derrick Lewis into a conversation that usually belongs to men built like refrigerator doors.

The important part is not that Kape said something big. He does that. The important part is that he said it after flattening Kyoji Horiguchi in the third round, taking back a 2017 defeat, and moving his UFC knockout count to six, enough to sit on top of the flyweight pile.

Manel Kape targets UFC knockout record

Kape left UFC Vegas 119 with revenge in one hand and a bigger target in the other. Horiguchi had beaten him by submission back in 2017, before both men had taken the long road through different versions of themselves. This time Kape got the kind of ending that changes the sound around a fighter: a right hand in round three, a rush of follow-up shots, and Herb Dean stepping between them before Horiguchi could be asked for more than he had left.That finish gave Kape six knockouts under the UFC banner, a number that matters because the flyweight division is not built for easy stoppage accumulation. At 125 pounds, the margins are thin, the footwork is fast, and opponents tend to survive bad moments by turning them into scrambles. Kape is treating that reality like an inconvenience. His public target is not another flyweight. It is Derrick Lewis, the heavyweight standard for UFC knockouts.

Kape after Horiguchi revenge

At the post-fight press conference, Kape kept the message blunt: “I want to pass Derrick Lewis.” That is a wild sentence from a flyweight, but it lands better coming from him than it would from most. Lewis built his reputation by erasing heavyweights with single shots and late chaos. Kape is trying to stack stoppages in the fastest men’s division in the company, where clean contact is harder to trap and finishing windows close almost as soon as they open.

• Kape knocked out Horiguchi in round three at UFC Vegas 119.
• The win avenged Horiguchi’s 2017 submission victory over Kape.
• Kape now has six UFC knockouts, the flyweight mark referenced after the fight.
• He pointed beyond the division and named Derrick Lewis as the record he wants.

Joshua Van title picture changes

There was another name hanging over the room: Joshua Van. Kape was asked about the UFC flyweight champion after the Horiguchi stoppage, and he gave the kind of answer nobody had to decode. He believes he can knock Van out, and the timing could not have been cleaner. Van was in the building for the Horiguchi finish, so this was not a callout fired into empty air.Kape’s case is no longer built only on noise, which is where his career has sometimes lived. He has a revenge win over a former RIZIN champion, a four-fight UFC finishing streak, and a prior knockout of Brandon Royval already sitting in the recent file. Horiguchi was not a soft touch either; he returned to the UFC with momentum after beating Amir Albazi at UFC Vegas 113. The read from here is simple: if the UFC wants heat around the flyweight title, Kape has made himself hard to ignore. If matchmakers hesitate, it will not be because the story lacks a sellable edge.

Kape said he wants time with his family before returning, so the calendar is not settled. The facts after UFC Vegas 119 are: Horiguchi lost by third-round knockout, Kape avenged the 2017 submission defeat, and the flyweight title conversation now has Joshua Van watching a challenger with six UFC knockouts and no interest in aiming small.