I said "arguably". How is Nobita not even in the discussion of the top pound-for-pound Japanese fighters right now in your mind? He's #1 in his division and has shown a more varied skillset against a wider range of styles than any other Japanese fighter right now, including Kyoji, who's like the only guy you can argue is ahead of him (and not by much).
Let's see:
Horiguchi:
25-2,
7-1 in UFC.
27 year old. Fights in flyweight and bantamweight with a large talent pool.
Naito:
13-1, have not fought in UFC.
34 year old. Fights in strawweight with a small talent pool
"
arguably ahead but not by much" uuummm...
Not "arguably", its definitively, by alot. Nobita is a good fighter but he is no way even near Kyoji in terms of his resume. Kyoji had DOMINATED and blasted everyone out of the water in his 10 win streaks so far, including the deep champion (with a record of 21-5, who was on a 10 win streak), pancrase champion (25-7, who was on a 7 win streak), and shooto champion (17-4, who was on a 7 win streak), and first round TKO'ed an undefeated FEATHERWEIGHT challenger who knocked out UFC vet Kawajiri who was ranked top 25 in the world. Kyoji is 7-1 in the UFC, with the only loss to Mighty Mouse (#1 p4p in the world), and if you look at the scoring board, he OUTSTRUCK Mighty Mouse on the feet (total strikes minus ground & pound). Since Mighty Mouse, he permanently moved to American Top Team and had became massively better at TDD. Shortly after, he outwrestled Ali Bagautinov, a two time Sambo/wrestling world champion. If you look at Nobita's resume, his opponents don't even have worldwide rankings (aka cans) and the guy who defeated him was a dude with a current record of 7-2... Meanwhile most of Horiguchi's opponents are ranked top 100 in the world and his only loss was to Mighty Mouse (27-3), and Masakatsu Ueda (26-6) when Kyoji had just started (was 6-0 at the time). Bottom line... Are we really comparing a 25 wins and 2 losses guy who is #3 ranked flyweight / #8 ranked bantamweight in the world (UFC inclusive) to a 13 wins and 1 loss guy who hasn't even competed in UFC?
In short, Nobita need wins against better competitions to be considered in the "best" discussion. Also he is not getting any younger. Think about it, how can you be world class without fighting world ranked fighters? Being #1 in a small pond is not good enough, especially when there isn't much MMA talent in men's strawweight to begin with. I personally think he should move up a weight class, I mean
Kyoji did in order to fighter better opponents... But at flyweight, it is highly questionable if Nobita can beat Yuki Motoya and Ulka Sasaki. There is very unlikely that he can beat Hiromasa Ogikubo (fyi the TUF finalist, beat first seed who is #8 flyweight in UFC). Consider this: If Kyoji fights John Lineker or John Dodson at bantamweight, the overall bets according to reddit will put Kyoji as the favourite. You can try this with Nobita at flyweight. Even against Wilson Reis, I'd bet people will put him as the underdog.