Asian MMA Podcast

ONE Warriors Code Recap, TFC, UFC Aukland Update - Asian MMA Podcast Let’s start off with a quick recap of ONE Championships Warrior’s Code And If you regularly watch ONE Championship be sure to check out the live-streamed commentary and breakdowns that I have been doing during the shows with John Ko of Kumite TV. They stream live on the Asian MMA YouTube Channel, Links are in the show notes.  This was a pretty good card, it had The main event was a Muay Thai title bout that saw Petch take home the strap.  Because that was the main event though this card was held in a ring instead of a cage which I am just not a fan of.  In the co-main Reinier De Ridder took a UD over Leanardo Ataides and positions himself as the top challenger for Aung La’s Middleweight strap.  In other action on the card, Luri Lapicus made easy work of Marat Gafurov earning a first-round submission win.  Koyomi Matsushima got a beautiful TKO win over a very powerful Jae Woong Kim  One of my favorite fighters Sunoto earned a UD over Nurul Fikri  The only woman's bout on the card saw Itsuki Hirata get a third round stoppage over Nyrene Crowley.  Itsuki looked fantastic, and she seems to be taking a page out of Stamps book with all of her between round dancing and really trying to put on a show.  I’m wondering if she's trying to angle for a match with Stamp, let’s see.  I’ll say tho, the stamp dance rolls off the tongue a lot easier than the Itsuki dance.  ONE Championship has also announced that they will be holding tryouts for ONE Warriors Series in Japan on March 8th in Osaka.  Without a doubt, ONE is looking to boost the number of Japanese fighters on the roster now that they are holding shows in the country.  In UFC news Thai woman's fighter Loma Lookboonmee has a new opponent for her fight at UFC Auckland on February 23rd as Angela Hill steps in to replace Hannah Goldy.  Pancrase strawweight champions Daichi Kitakata has broken his hand in training and will not be able to defend the strap at Pancrase 313, Adam Antolin. No word on when the fight might be rescheduled.   In other news, Korean promotion TFC has postponed its March 14th card due to the Coronavirus Outbreak, no news on a new date at this time.  However, this weekend in Thailand UFC Vet and the hardest working fighter in Asian MMA Will Choppe will host Thailand Fighting Championship 4 in Phuket. Certainly a show worth checking out.  And that is all I have for you guys today.  To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA  Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.  Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook:

Shinya Aoki Pipe Bomb Article Trashing ONE Championship Last week Shinya Aoki published an article that was a pipe bomb that trashed ONE Championship saying they would go out of business in 2020. It was then edited and republished as a much more ONE FC Friendly article. I discuss this and more with MMA Journalist Ant Walker  Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast  YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast  iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunes GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay  Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast  Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com   Follow Ant Walker: Twitter:  https://twitter.com/AntWalkerMMA  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCISghFUJelA6mcxfEQ7Wp5A   

On this episode of the Asian MMA Podcast I team up with JHK of Kumite Radio to go over everything that went down in Asian MMA this past year, and oh what a year it's been. We talk about RIZIN, ONE Championship, ROAD FC, Full Metal Dojo, TFC, OWS, Tiger Muay Thai, Battlefield FC, Korean MMA, Japan MMA and oh so much more. Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast  YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast  iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunes GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay  Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast  Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com 

ONE Championship Century Paywalled Typhoon Hagibis and a Shiny New ONE Grand Prix Belt   First things first, ONE Century isn’t just a stacked card, it’s two stacked cards back to back! That is just nuts! There are so many belts on the line! If you are not planning to watch these events just punch yourself in the face! Man! This is gonna be crazy.  But from an MMA business perspective, the big news about this event is that ONE Will be moving the second card behind a paywall in the US for the first time. Of course, they have their broadcast deal with Turner so the first card will air on TNT. So if you have cable you should be able to watch that.  The more interesting part of this is that the second part of ONE Century will move behind the B/R Live paywall, which requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to view.  If you don’t have cable or want to shell out the $9.99 you might want to google what a VPN is and give that a shot.  I’m going to link to a report on The Body Lock if you guys want to take a deeper dive into this it’s a great piece of work for you to check out. Personally, I think it’s a good time and the right market for ONE to give this a try. The US market is used to paying for premium MMA content, which this very much is. Though I think it is going to be a hard sell given the timing of the show in the states.  Despite ONEs consistently claims of billions of potential viewers for each show and the self hype of their unprecedented social media views they are still a fairly unknown commodity to all but the most hardcore of the US fans. So it will be interesting to see if they are actually able to move the needle being behind a paywall.  We can really only speculate about the motivation for the move behind the paywall, but it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that ONE is likely needing to generate some real revenue at some point. There have been more than a few sites that have jumped into the finances of the MMA promotion over the past few years showing that they are hemorrhaging cash every chance they get.  While the markets in SE Asia where ONE is the most established would not really support a PPV model, hell, even the UFC is on free TV here in Thailand, the US and Europe is another story.  If ONE Can create the expectation in those markets that consumers will have to pay for their live events then it could give them a path at least part of the way to profitability.  There live shows are on another level when compared to the UFC and I think that comes across well when watching it on TV. However, their approach to production, storytelling and to hyping up their own views on how great they are might turn off some casual western viewers.  If they do well in the market and drive subscriptions to B/R Live then we know the other big promotions like the UFC and Bellator have to keep an eye on ONE.  If they don’t, does it stall their advance to the US? Does it make their investors take a second look and question their bet on ONE?  We will have to wait and see.  Before I wrap up this episode I just want to touch on that new ONE Grand Prix belt. This belt

Malaysia Based Fighter Mostafa Ibrahim Radi - Asian MMA Podcast In this episode, I chat with Malaysia based fighter Mostafa Ibrahim Radi about his upcoming fight in Full Metal Dojo against Javier Trujillo. Mostafa trains out of Monarchy MMA in Kuala Lumpur Follow Mostafa:https://www.instagram.com/mostafaradi/ https://www.facebook.com/MustafaRadiMMA/ To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out. Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunesGooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com

Thailand Based fighter Javier Trujillo discusses his upcoming fight at full metal dojo against Mostafa Ibrahim Radi from Monarchy MMA Follow Javier here: https://www.facebook.com/JaviTrujillo.mma/  https://www.instagram.com/javitrujillo.mma/  Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.  Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast  YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast  iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunes GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay  Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast  Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com   

We had two massive shows go down. ONE Championship Dreams of Gold in Bangkok and Rizin 18 in Japan. And of course, we have to talk about ONEs first open weigh-in and hydration test since switching to their no cutting policy.  Let’s start things off here in Bangkok with ONE: Dreams of Gold. This was a kickboxing and muay thai heavy card, which ONE tends to do with their shows in Bangkok because that is what the local fans want to see.  This was a great card from start to finish, But for me, the fight of the night, the one that blew away any and all expectations was Stamp Fairtex vs Asha Roka. This was only Stamps second MMA fight, but keep in mind she is already the ONE woman's atomweight Muay Thai and Kickboxing champion, so she is no stranger to the fight game.  Stamp looked phenomenal in this fight. She took it to Roka and never stopped. She dominated everywhere this fight went. On the ground, where I had expected her to struggle she looked amazing.  At one point Michael Schiavello on commentary had one of his best lines of the night, “Roka is being mounted more than a pummel horse”  because Stamp was just dominating on the ground.  Stamp ended up putting Roka away with an RNC in the 3rd. And from what I saw the rest of her division needs to be on notice.  I’m not sure if she is ready for the top of the division just yet, but it won’t be long.  Another fun and entertaining fight on the card was a clash between Cambodian Chan Rothana against Cuban olympian Gustavo Balart.  Despite having a massive size disadvantage Balart dominated most of the fight with his wrestling. other than the closing minute or so of the final round where Chan had a strong rally and came very close to finishing Balart, he controlled the majority of the fight. Somehow, Chan took the decision victory. Decisions like this are just another reason I dislike ONEs methods of scoring the fight as a whole. There will be an in-depth episode about this in the future, but I think Balart got robbed in this fight.  Sticking with ONE Championship they live-streamed their first weight-ins and hydration test since switching to a no-cutting policy after the death of fighter Yang Jian Bing in 2015 while he was attempting to make weight.  ONE has taken a lot of criticism for their lack of transparency in a number of areas, weight cutting being one of the.  Michael Fiedel over at The Body Lock has a fantastic piece up about this and the whole history so I will link to that in the show notes, I highly recommend you give that a read, it’s very strong work by Michael.  I will say though, that I was very impressed with ONEs step towards transparency in this matter. Though I think it doesn’t go far enough.  For starters, the weigh-in and hydration tests were conducted by ONE itself. There was someone who was opening and checking the specific gravity of the urine, which is a step in the right direction after photos surfaced on twitter last week of Former UFC Champ and ONE VP Rich Franklin and another ONE employee and former fighter Bashir Ahmed handling urine samples without gloves.  After the test, the specific gravity and the weight we

  ONE Championship goes to Inda, SFC 8, UGB Rebirth, FMD, Fighters Give Back  Singapore Fighting Championship has announced their next show which will be September 28th at the FooChow building in Singapore.  That have not announced the full fight card yet, but when they do I will be sure to update everyone on the MMA matches.  SFC generally does cards with a mix of combat sports on them, MMA, Boxing, and Muay Thai. I watched the last event on their Facebook live stream and there were some really good fights. I would highly recommend checking them out. Link to their FB page will be in the show notes.  It’s been a year since we have seen a Full Metal Dojo show in Bangkok, but now it looks as though they will be putting on their next event on August 31st. There still isn’t much known, but friend of the show Javier Trujillo will be in the main event against Ibrahim Radi from Monarchy MMA in Kuala Lumpur.  Javier recently made the move from Bangkok to Chaing Mai so he could focus more on his training. Last time I spoke to him he said things couldn’t be going any better. Hopefully, I will have him on the show soon so discuss his upcoming fight.  Over to Manila where Underground Battle MMA has announced their next card coming up August 23rd. No details on the card yet.  But what I love about UGB is that they have fights that are also a blend of MMA and stick fighting. They are absolutely wild. I’ll put a link in the show notes to one of their trailers that gives you a little taste of what that looks like. But definitely get excited about this.  In Malaysia Octagon Asia MMA has announced the Season 2 finalist for their tournaments at Bantamweight, Lightweight and Heavyweight That kick off on September 14th.  There are some well-known names in the local scene in the tournament. At Bantamweight, you’ve got Effendey Kalai and Aaron Lo  At lightweight, you’ve got Joseph Yap  And at Heavyweight we’ve got Niker Tan  WIth 8 men per division, this could be anyone's game. Tournament style changes the dynamics, anything can happen.  In ONE Championship news, Chatri Sityodtong posted on his Facebook on August 8th that ONE Championship will 100% be going to India in 2020.  Of course they have a number of Indian fighters signed to the promotion and that being the second biggest market in Asia, it would make sense they want to begin to establish a base there.  ONE has also been making claims that they will hold a show in the US in 2020, that one I am far more skeptical about and will be interesting to see how ONE does they have to work within the confines of a regulating body like a commission.  Lastly, but surely not least. I was in Manila over the weekend for a charity event called Black Tie Black Eye Affair. I went there to watch my friend Bev, the Deisel Diva compete in a white-collar boxing match.  But what I want to bring some light to is how involved the local MMA scene was in supporting the event.  Both Brandon Very and Mitch Chilson

ONE Championship Dawn of Heroes recap, Pancrase 305 bouts added and Battlefield FC Update - Asian MMA Podcast  Over the weekend we had ONE Championship back in action in Manila.  But before we get into that we have an update on the Battlefield FC event I talked about last week. Several outlets are reporting that all fighters have been paid. That’s a move in the right direction, but it’s still going to be difficult for anyone to trust them going forward, two events and two PR nightmares.  Good sirs, might I suggest you move onto a different venture at this time?  There are two interesting matchups added to Pancrase 308 in September. Edna Oliveira will be stepping in to replace Nori Date against Emi Fujino in the strawweight Grand Prix semifinal.  We will also see UFC vet Issei Tamura try to get back in the win column against Katshshi Sugiyama who is on a two-fight win streak.  Both interesting fights I am excited to see. I am an old, old school Pancrase fan so I always get excited for their events  Moving on to ONE Championships Dawn of Heros that went down in Manila over the weekend.  This was a good event, the card was stacked and it was headlined by two title fights.  The very first fight on the card was one I was excited for because we had Muhammad Aiman taking on Sunoto. I’ve been following Aiman since his amateur days in MIMMA.  Aiman looked fantastic against Sunoto, I had him winning every round easily and he just looked fantastically dominate.  Aiman is just 24 years old, he’s got 9 pro fights under his belt and he keeps looking better and better. I am excited to see how he develops over the next few years.  My only criticism against Aiman at this point is that since he turned pro he hasn’t been finishing a lot of his opponents as he did as an amateur. I would like to see him get back to the high finish rate he had in MIMMA where all but one of his wins was a finish.  On this card we also saw Yushin Okami in his second outing with ONE Championship, unfortunately for him, it was another unsuccessful attempt as he dropped a decision to a very game, very tough James Nakashima.  This was pretty much a one-sided fight, Nakashima controlled it from start to finish.  Here’s one of those little quirks you see in ONE Championship. In the first round, Nakashima had Okami in a choke, that definitely wasn’t the best position, but he didn’t look like he was close to taping, but a lot of times in ONE when fighters are in bad positions similar to this, This particular ref will stand over the fighter and yell at him to give up.  It’s strange to me because I can’t remember any other ref doing that and to me, it seems like the most inappropriate way to give instructions to a fighter during a fight. Especially when they're in a bad position. Moving up to the main card we had Demetrious Johnson take home a decision win over Tatsumitsu Wada. To me, this fight was a lot closer than it probably should have been.  Hats off to Wa

Will Chope Interview - The Most Active Fighter in Asian MMA Will recently had a dust-up on social media with the CEO of ONE Championship, Chatri Sityodtong over a post WIll penned about the lack of drug testing in Asian MMA and his opinions on ONEs policies. Chatri would go on to say he agreed with most of what Will said in his post right before sending his staff out to get wills contact info and having ONEs corporate lawyer send a letter threating to sue him if he didn’t take the post down.  You can follow Will Chope here: https://www.facebook.com/Lanky.Madness/  https://www.instagram.com/asiawillthekill/  https://twitter.com/AsiaWillTheKill  To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA  Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.  Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsianMMAPodcast  YouTube: http://bit.ly/AsianMMA_YouTube  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianMMAPodcast  iTunes: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_iTunes GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_GooglePlay  Spotify: http://bit.ly/AsianMMAPodcast_Spotify  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/asian-mma-podcast  Website: http://www.AsianMMAPodcast.com  Host: dana blouin Producer: Emily Barner Executive Producer: dana blouin

RIZIN 17 Results, Battlefield FC 2, ONE Championship and WADA Before I get into Battlefield FC, and believe me that is going to be a big part of what we talk about today.  Before that, though I want to talk about RIZIN 17! Oh man was that a hell of a card. I love what RIZIN is doing and the approach they take to the sport. Some great Asian MMA matchups going on over there,  This was a big card, I want to talk about a few of the fights. One of the womens fights early in the card which all of a sudden has implications for the regional scene was ROAD FC Champ Seo Hee Ham in her debut absolutely destroying Tomo Maesawa with brutal knees in the first round.  After the win she called out Miyuu Yamamoto, they had a little moment in the ring and that fight looks to be official for RIZIN 19 as a title eliminator. In other woman's action on the card, Stephanie Egger came away with a Unanimous Decision win over King Reina.  We also saw Jake Huen get the win over Vitaly Shemetov due to a cut in the 3rd round.  Undefeated Russian Ivan Shtyrkov put everyone in his division on notice with a brutal second-round TKO finish of Hook Kim  And in the main event, we had an absolute war between Mikuru Asakura and Yusuke Yachi that saw Asakura walk away with a unanimous decision.  Before I get into the absolute shit show that was Battleground FC 2. Just a quick update on the whole ONE Championship and WADA testing situation. I know a lot of you might be aware of the defamation letter that ONE sent to Thailand based UFC vet Will Chope after he posted about ONEs testing policies and even after the ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong replied to his post saying he agreed with a lot of what he said.  I’ll actually be interviewing Will soon, that should be the next episode that drops later this week. So we will dive into all of that.  But one of the interesting things that came out of all of this was that WADA pretty much came out and said they are not working with ONE in any way, and just using WADA labs does not mean you are doing WADA testing.  It’s another really interesting development in the whole Asian MMA drug testing saga.  Personally, in my opinion, I think ONE should have never brought it up. It was pretty much a well-known secret that a lot of fighters in Asia, in just about every promotion are on some type of PED and promoters don’t test for it.  It’s not a ONE issues, it’s a sport issue. But if you don’t talk about it then no one really cares.  Look, I’m not sure I’m on the right side of this argument, I know a lot of people disagree with me, but that’s where I stand.  Ok, Let’s get into Battleground FC 2 and the absolute shitshow that it was. Or is turning out to be. The story is still developing. I am also going to be linking in the show notes to articles from Bodylock MMA because they have done a fantastic job of covering it.  So some of you guys might remember Battleground FC 1 that took place in Korea back in 2017. It had a pretty good lineup, much like Battleground FC 2 did, but was plag

A few weeks back ONE Championship announced that they have appointed Plai Asdamongkol as the President of ONE Championship Thailand.  While on the surface this might seem like a fairly run of the mill appointment in the industry, this could actually have a fairly significant impact on MMA across Asia.  Now, first off, I have to say I know Plai, I like Plai, he’s been on the show before. If there was a single person who has done more for MMA in Thailand I can’t think of them. He’s also a super nice, honest and upfront guy, which I’ll get into why that makes this situation more confusing in a bit. You guys might remember a few episodes back I talked about that very strange deal between ONE Championship and a new organization called GAMMA where Chatri was claiming he was going to work with GAMMA to bring MMA to the Olympics.  In that episode, I talked about the important role that IMMAF has actually played in amateur MMA.  Well before joining ONE Championship, Plai was the president of TMMAF the Thai chapter of that organization and was a key player in bringing the IMMAF Asian Open to Bangkok.  Plai had done a lot of work with the sports authority of Thailand to help sanction and regulate MMA in the kingdom and he had worked with his counterparts in the neighboring countries.  He’s sort of good like that.  Under Plais leadership of TMMAF, MMA, especially at the grassroots level came a long way in Thailand.  We haven’t seen anything change just yet in Thai MMA, but I am sure it is just a matter of time before ONE starts trying to force out IMMAF, which again, is a legitimate organization in MMA and force in GAMMA to further their own agenda.  But getting back to Plai actually being a nice guy and why that is worrying.  I have heard from a number of ONE employee about how alpha the company culture and I have a very hard time seeing someone like Plai fitting into a culture like that.  I would hate to see someone who has been so good for the sport to become a casualty of it.  The flip side to that coin and the one I am really hoping for is that Play becomes a catalyst for positive change within ONE and is able to push ideas like a partnership with IMMAF or being more transparent, or perhaps even getting away from the conflicts of interest I’ve covered before.  I think that is unlikely, but let’s see what happens.  This is a smart move by Chatri, he was able to negate a strong player in the ecosystem and get them under his control.  From a business perspective, I can’t argue with it. But as a fan of the sport, it hurts.  To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA  Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. Check it out.  Follow Asian MMA Podcast Everywhere: Facebook:

We start this recap in Japan which will be the same place we finish it with Pancrase 305, and then we have some interesting news bits to cover from Rizin and Deep Jewels. Pancrase 305 was a really good card, I’ve been watching Pancrase since back in the day so I really enjoy their shows on a nostalgia level. I’m going to put the full results up at AsianMMAPodcast.com so you can check that out there. First I want to talk about the main event where we saw Isao Kobayashi unify the featherweight strap against a game intern champ Nazareno Malegarie. This was a 5 round banger that had me on the edge of my seat. I had both men winning two rounds going into the 5th This is where Kobayashi turned it up and put on a pressure to win the round and secure the victory to unify the belts. Talk about a fight to cap off a great card, this was it, this was the fight you wanted to have. The back and forth, the drama, the story that emerged. This is what fighting should be. The other fight on this card that really stood out to me was between two legends of the game, Yuki Kondo and Akihiro Gono. Both have careers spanning back to the 1990s and have fought in the biggest organizations in the world, UFC, Pride, Shooto, Deep, K1 and of course Pancrase. Just what an epic match to have on the card. This one went all three rounds and saw Kondo take the unanimous decision win. And it was the pressure and work rate from Kondo that made the difference in this fight. Fantastic fight, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it. Moving on This coming weekend we have RIZIN 16, which looks to be an awesome card. For sure I’ll be covering that in next weeks weekend update. But they also announced that RIZIN fighter Rena Kubota will be facing Lindsey VanZandt at Bellator 222 June 14th at MSG. This will be Rena’s first time fighting outside of Japan, so it will be interesting to see how she does. That time shift can be difficult going in both directions. But hopefully, that won’t be a factor. In other news from Japan, we now know that UFC, Rizin and Pancrase veteran Rin Nakai will return after more than a year away from the sport at Deep Jewels 24 on June 9th. Her opponent will be 0-2 Thai fighter Kaew Prachumwong. Both of her previous fights have been in Bangkok based promotion Full Metal Dojo, Here’s and odd fact, I reffed her last fight back in 2017 which was a losing bid against Cambodian fighter Tharoth Sam. I hate to say she’s just being fed to Rin as a tune-up, but that’s sort of how it seems. To stay up to date with all things Asian MMA Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Follow Asian MMA Podcast Ever

Today we are talking about the odd occurrence of so many fighters from big gyms outside of Asia are repping Evolve MMA when they fight in ONE Championship. For those of you who don’t know Evolve MMA is a Singapore based gym founded and owned by Chatri Sityodtong. Just in case you don’t know, that happens to be the same Chatri Sityodtong that is the founder, chairman, and CEO of ONE Championship. Blaring conflict of interest aside, given the size of Evolve and its location in Singapore giving it proximity to ONEs HQ, it would make sense that we would see a lot of fighters from their stable in the promotion. Then we take into account that the promotion and the gym have the same owner, again, conflict of interest aside, and of course, we realize it becomes more commonplace to see Evolve fighters on the roster. And surely we are not surprised if we see many of them moved up the ranks and getting title shots or favorable matchmaking. All of that, under the veil of Asian MMA you can sort of understand. But what really gets me, what really makes me scratch my head is why so many fighters who come over from prominent gyms outside Asia come into ONE Championship and rep Evolve alongside their own gym. Just in recent history, we have seen this with Ben Askren who repped Rufusport and Evolve, We saw this with Demtrious Johnson who repped AMC Pankration and Evolve, Garry Tonon repped Renzo Gracie and Evolve and most recently Sage Northcut who repped Alpha Male and Evolve, and even walked out in an Evolve T-Shirt. And of course, two of the fighter the promotion pushes more than anyone else Angela Lee and Christian Lee, both of whom fight out of United MMA and Evolve MMA. All of this really raises some questions for me, I have to wonder what the motivating factors are for a fighter to come out repping a gym that is not theirs. Is this more of a sponsorship that is giving some fighters extra money to just toss the name of the gym out there, sort of like how it worked with Gary Goodridge being paid to rep “Kuk Sool Won” at UFC 8   It’s all such a shmooze, A lot of this comes back to that full blown lack of transparency that ONE is so famous for. To anyone who has followed the sport for any amount of time, this whole dual gym thing would be strange, and even more so when you realize that the gym and promotion have the same owner. Of course, any reasoning I come up with is pure speculation, but I’m a speculating man so I’ll have a theoretical go at it. At first, I thought it might be part of the cost of entry for well-known fighters looking for another run in a big organization. But the numbers for that don’t add up as there are some notable names who have not done the whole dual gym thing, Yushin Okami and Eddie Alveraze to name a few. That leads me to think that it’s much closer to the whole sponsorship idea, that Evolve MMA wants to have high caliber fighters under their banner and if they can leverage contracts with ONE Championship to make that more possible then it’s certainly an easier way to go about it than developing championship fighter

Asian MMA Podcast weekend update for May 17tth -19th of 2019 ONE Championship Enter the Dragon and ROAD FC 53 This is your Asian MMA weekend update for May 17tth -19th of 2019 We had two massive events this weekend with ONE Championships Enter The Dragon in Singapore and ROAD FC 53 capping off their lightweight tournament and awarding the million dollar prize. And Don’t forget to subscribe to the Asian MMA Podcast so you don’t miss out any Asian MMA Goodness. Let’s start things off in Singapore with ONE Championship, which put together an amazing card. And before I get into the fights from that night, I want to highlight Michael Schiavello calling the fight cage side for injecting some of the best Game of Thrones references and just slipping them in at the perfect time. It really added some fun audible moments. For some reason, Mei Yamaguchi vs Laura Balin was on the prelims, Yamaguchi came out strong and made quick work of Balin with an armbar finish at 3:45 of the first round. I love watching Mei fight, I think she is one of the most talented women on the ONE roster. Her fighting on the prelims is really a crime. We also had Garry Tonon back in action against Yoshiki Nakahara. Tonon is an absolute beast! He came out strong like we have seen him do in every fight, and he dove for a heel hook and had it locked up and Nakahara tapping in less than a minute. Tonon is just unstoppable right now and making short work of people. Kicking off the main card we had Miao Li Tao get a highlight real finish over former ONE Strawweight Champ DSA. It was a nasty KO. DSA just wasn't getting his hands up and Tao saw that opportunity and put him to sleep. In other action, we had Dagi make short work of Amir Khan who got a second shot at moving ahead in the lighweight grand prix, but Dagi had his number and his striking was just too much and too powerful for Khan as a series of uppercuts and hooks crumpled Khan against the ropes The first of the two fights we absolutely have to talk about is Sage Northcut making his debut against Cosmo Alexandre. Before I get into the craziness of this fight, did anyone else notice that ONE announced Sage as a 77-time world Karate Champion? Despite the fact that he is 23 making that seems a bit difficult. I went and looked this up anyway and it turns out they were referring to the youth championships he has won in Karate. I’ve got to give ONE a yellow card for that attempt at subterfuge. On to the fight. Sweet Mother of Science, I did not expect it to go down like this. For some reason, Sage thought it was a good idea to stand with Cosmo, a multi-time Muay Thai and kickboxing champion. This is a guy who has shared the stage with some of the greatest fighters of this generation, he has wins over John Wayne Parr and Mark Holst. Cosmo had not fought MMA in almost 3 years but has been active in kickboxing and Muay Thai in that time so one would think that Sage would have had a better game plan then to stand with a killer. Well, it only took 29 seconds for Cosmo to absolutely crush Sage with a single punch, causing 8 fractures in his face in the process resulting in Sage needing a 9-hour sur