SPORTS
| January 9, 2019
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| New ONE lightweight world champion Eduard "The Landslide" Folayang is set to main event ONE's debut in Japan on March 31, 2019. (Photo Archive) |
2019
is shaping up to be a huge and busy year for ONE Championship as the largest
mixed martial arts (MMA) organization and most valuable sports property in Asia
is staging 45 exciting and action-packed events that will take place across different
parts of Asia throughout the year.
The
2019 ONE Championship events itinerary will be headlined by 24 officially
scheduled fight cards, 12 ONE Hero Series events, six ONE Warrior Series events
featuring aspiring fighters in and out of the continent and the first three ONE
eSports events where the best and the finest pro gamers are slated to compete.
Among these events is perhaps its biggest and most anticipated event of the year
where ONE is set to stage its premiere event in Japan on March 31, 2018.
Dubbed
A New Era, ONE Championship's debut in the Land of the Rising Sun will have a
highly-stacked card boasting of three huge championship fights headlined by ONE
lightweight world champion and Filipino MMA sensation Eduard "The
Landslide" Folayang defending his title against Japanese MMA star and
former champion Shinya Aoki in a rematch about two years in the making followed
by current ONE women's atomweight world champion Angela Lee of Singapore
challenging women's bantamweight world champion "The Chinese Panda" Xiong
Jing Nan of China with the ladder's title at stake.
Completing
the triple world championship treat that will be staged in front of a Japanese viewing
audience is ONE middleweight world champion and Myanmar's prodigal son Aung La
N Sang defending his title against Japanese MMA star Ken Hasegawa on their
second encounter. In case you have either watched or missed it, their first
encounter which took place last September 2018 in Myanmar was hailed as Bout of
the Year in the 2018 Global Martial Arts Awards.
Aside
from these awesome championship bouts, what makes ONE: A New Era in Tokyo more intriguing
for fight fans to enjoy is the highly-anticipated debut of two of the company's
biggest acquisitions namely Eddie Alvarez and Demitrious "Mighty
Mouse" Johnson. These two fighters are set to compete in the ONE Grand Prix
tournaments within their respective divisions and on their first foray Alvarez
and Johnson will be facing Yuya Wakamatsu of Japan and Timothy Nefchenko of
Russia respectively. These will surely be enough to make this one to watch out
for before the start of the summer season in the Philippines.
