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. 

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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 

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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.

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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

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Thailand Based fighter Javier Trujillo discusses his upcoming fight at full metal dojo against Mostafa Ibrahim Radi from Monarchy MMA

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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