Martin Nguyen no longer ONE Championship Lightweight Champ

28 SEPT.

As the world is preparing for MMA’s biggest fight this year this coming 6 OCT – at UFC 229 Conor vs McGregor….ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong dropped a surprising news for MMA in Asia.

He announced today via Facebook that two division champion Martin Nguyen has vacated his Lightweight title. This is due to a ligament injury to his knee.

Australian – Vietnamese won the title via a devastating KO of Filipino MMA idol Eduard Folayang, in Nov 2017. Making Martin the first fighter to became two division champion in ONE. He earlier in August 2017 using the same right hand, KO Marat Gafurov claiming the featherweight title.

In 2018, Martin decides to do the never before in MMA, vying for a third title. This time moving down to bantamweight by challenging Bibiano Fernandes. He lost a very close split decision.

Following that lost he goes back to his natural weight division to defend his featherweight strap against home town favourite & MMA prodigy – Christian Lee. It was a very cautious rematch fight between the two but Martin managed to edge a win by a split decision.

Two months later in July, he wanted to had another go at the bantamweight title. This time against Kevin Belingon. He lost the fight via unanimous decision.

All these time, the Lightweight title has been put on hold since Nov 2017. The lightweight division is usually the most stack division in any major MMA organisation. In ONE Championship it’s no different.

This Oct 6, Malaysian-Kiwi Ev Ting will battle it out against Japanese grappling sensation Shinya Aoki. This was announced earlier as a title eliminator, winner gets to challenge Martin. But now that Martin has vacate, it’s left to be seen wheter this can turn out to be a title bout or not. Maybe for interim title. If Martin comes back, maybe he can challenge the title holder to determine the undisputed lightweight king in ONE.

Ev Ting has racked 3 win since he failed to dethrone Eduard Folayang in Apr 2017. As for Shinya, he is also on a surge after moving up to welterweight challenging Ben Askren in Nov 2017, he won twice with a R1 finish. Most recently convincingly beat Thai contender Shannon Wiratchai.

“I was wrestling last Tuesday night, and I tore my PCL, MCL – a grade 2 tear – and strained my ACL.

“I don’t need surgery, thank the Lord. It’s going to be a long process, but I’m further along than I would have expected, so we’ll see what happens.”