Irakli Zirakashvili sweeps Yoshinobu Kanai in East vs West 24 prelims

Irakli Zirakashvili made a blunt case for himself in the East vs West 24 prelims, sweeping Yoshinobu Kanai 3-0 in a right-arm light-heavyweight match in Little Rock, USA. The result landed as one of the cleanest free-preview outcomes on the card and gave the division a sharp reminder that a meeting between No. 8 and No. 9 can still produce a real separation.

What made the win stand out was not just the score line, but the way it framed Zirakashvili’s control. A 3-0 sweep in a ranked matchup leaves little room for debate: Zirakashvili dictated the hand fight, set the tempo, and kept Kanai from finding a round that forced a meaningful reset. In a division built around 105kg, or 232lb, every small edge in hand dominance matters, and Zirakashvili held those margins long enough to turn the match into a one-way result.

The free prelim setting amplified the impact. East vs West opened its YouTube rollout with a prelim slate that also included Bob Brown vs Isaiah Jones, Courtney Huycke vs Nastasia Pastorkova, Ryan Belanger vs Jason Merlo, Auden Larratt vs Jeremy Parker, Adam Wawrzynski vs Peter Celes, and Tom Holland vs Justin Bishop, but Zirakashvili vs Kanai belonged near the top of that opening stretch because of the ranking context. EVW listed both athletes inside the right-arm light-heavyweight top ten, which made this more than a showcase bout and less than a random undercard pairing.

The main card later carried the title-level attention, including Ermes Gasparini vs Artyom Morozov, Todd Hutchings vs Bogdan Stoica, and Riekerd Bornman vs Alizhan Muratov, but Zirakashvili’s sweep still mattered to the division picture. EVW’s video page also pushed the matchup quickly into circulation, posting both a round-one clip and the full match in the recent upload cycle, keeping the result in front of fans as they worked through the East vs West 24 content stream.

For Zirakashvili, the win fit a wider pattern. EVW’s results archive already shows him beating Rustam Babaiev 3-2 in an earlier official event, proof that he has been part of the promotion’s higher-end division traffic for a while. This latest sweep did more than add another result: it suggested that, when the bracket tightens and the opposition gets stronger, Zirakashvili is still capable of making elite light-heavyweights look a step behind.