Sinsamut Klinmee Seeks Redemption Against K-1 Champ Matsukura at ONE SAMURAI 4 in Tokyo

Thai knockout artist Sinsamut “Aquaman” Klinmee will attempt to arrest the worst slump of his career when he faces former K-1 champion Shintaro Matsukura at ONE SAMURAI 4 on October 17 at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena, the promotion announced Thursday.

The lightweight kickboxing bout headlines a card streamed live on U-NEXT in Japan and globally via live.onefc.com. For Sinsamut, 30, the assignment carries existential weight: he enters on a 1-4 skid that includes a brutal first-round knockout loss to Dutch legend Nieky Holzken in March — a reversal of their 2022 meeting where Sinsamut stunned Holzken on his promotional debut.

Matsukura, 34, arrives with a decorated résumé built largely outside the ONE ecosystem. A longtime staple of the Japanese kickboxing circuit, he captured the K-1 welterweight title in 2018 and has shared the ring with the country’s elite. Until recently, he had transitioned into a corner role at Team Vasileus, guiding stablemates Takeru Segawa and Masaaki Noiri — both former ONE interim world champions — before the competitive itch pulled him back.

“I’ve studied his tape. He’s technical, he’s experienced, and he fights smart,” Sinsamut told ONE Championship. “But I’m not here to survive. I’m here to finish.”

The matchup pits two contrasting trajectories against each other. Sinsamut’s Muay Thai pedigree — he won a Thai national boxing title and sparred with Olympians before crossing over — gives him heavy hands and a pressure style that once made him a ONE lightweight Muay Thai title challenger. But the transition to kickboxing rules has exposed vulnerabilities: the Holzken knockout came after Sinsamut walked into a counter right hand while hunting a finish, and a subsequent unanimous-decision loss to George Jarvis in March showed he can be outworked over three rounds.

Matsukura, by contrast, has spent his prime navigating the rhythm-and-timing demands of Japanese kickboxing, where low kicks, clinch restrictions, and scoring nuances differ sharply from Bangkok stadium Muay Thai. His Team Vasileus affiliation — a gym that has produced multiple ONE champions — suggests he will enter with a game plan tailored to exploit rule-set adjustments.

Ariake Arena, a 15,000-seat venue built for the 2020 Olympics, adds another layer. It has become ONE’s Tokyo home since 2023, hosting cards that blend local stars with international talent. Sinsamut called fighting in Japan a “bucket-list moment” after years of cornering teammates there, but the partisan crowd will favor Matsukura.

The card also features former ONE bantamweight Muay Thai champion Nabil Anane and rising contender Mohammad Siasarani, giving Sinsamut a familiar support structure in hostile territory. He has grown out his beard — dubbing himself “Sinsamut-daev” in a pact with flyweight champion Asadula Imangazaliev and bantamweight contender Abdulla Dayakaev — as a superstition-tinged reminder of the brotherhood traveling with him.

For ONE Championship, the bout serves a dual purpose: it tests whether a once-feared Thai striker can reinvent himself under kickboxing rules, and it imports a proven Japanese name to deepen the promotion’s domestic roster. A win for Matsukura would instantly slot him into the lightweight title conversation; a win for Sinsamut would prove his 2022 breakout was no fluke and that the Holzken knockout was an outlier, not a ceiling.

Weigh-ins are scheduled for October 16 at the Ariake Arena hotel. The main card begins at 6 p.m. JST.