ONE Championship: Aung La N Sang to defend middleweight title against Reinier De Ridder
- ONE CEO Chatri reveals return of ‘global stars’ with internationally based fighters set to feature again on ‘mega cards’ amid coronavirus restrictions
- ‘We’ve cracked the problem. So knock on wood there’s not some crazy spike that causes governments to crack down even more’
Aung La N Sang will defend his ONE Championship middleweight title against Dutch challenger Reinier De Ridder, as the Asian martial arts organisation gets back to using its internationally based stars, founder and CEO Chatri Sityodtong has told SCMP MMA.
ONE returned to action in Bangkok last month with the first in a series of shows at the Impact Arena in the Thai capital, but has been limited to using fighters based in the country because of coronavirus restrictions.
Like many of ONE’s MMA champions, N Sang lives in the US and has been sitting on the sidelines since the start of the pandemic but is now set to fight this year in Asia.
“Next week we’ll announce the return of our mega events. We’ll announce some big things happening in October. I think Twitter leaked some stuff out this morning, I’ll just say I don’t know how Twitter does it,” Chatri said, laughing.
“There’s some big things happening, we’ve been working with a lot of governments. You’re gonna see some really cool stuff coming out of ONE Championship in the coming weeks.
“Aung La will be defending his title. His first opponent he was gonna defend against before the pandemic was Reinier, the undefeated Dutch fighter, but he was injured from his last fight, and that’s why we went with Vitaly Bigdash.