UP-AND-COMING Filipino-American flyweight Mark Climaco suffered the first loss of his budding MMA career following a first round stoppage in the hands of Japanese Yuma Horiuchi on Nov. 6, 2021 (PH time) in Legacy Fighting Alliance (LFA) 117: Diaz vs. Tanaka at the Visalia Convention Center in Visalia, California.
Horiuchi stopped Climaco at the 1:52 mark of the opening round.
The 24-year-old Horiuchi got that much-needed win after losing an interim LFA flyweight championship fight to Charles Johnson in his last fight.
The 23-year-old Climaco was on a roll before suffering his first career defeat. He had three fights in 2021 and won back-to-back fights in the LFA cage over fellow prospects Pololu Nakanelua and Rodney Kealohi.
Climaco, whose parents are from Cebu, dropped to 6-1, while Horiuchi improved to 9-4.
Climaco fights out of the American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) in San Jose, California. AKA has produced some of the best MMA talents in the world – the likes of Khabib Nurmagomedov, Daniel Cormier, Cain Velasquez, BJ Penn, Luke Rockhold and John Fitch.