ONE Championship: Eduard Folayang targets fights with ‘Sexyama’ and Sage Northcutt to ‘get closer to the title’
- After ONE X win, former champ wants a ‘legend versus legend’ fight against Yoshihiro Akiyama or a ‘karate versus wushu’ bout with Northcutt
- Filipino MMA pioneer aims to reclaim ONE lightweight title but admits ‘there is a lot of work to be done’ first
Former ONE Championship lightweight champ Eduard Folayang sees Sage Northcutt and Yoshihiro Akiyama as the best possible opponents for his next fight.
Folayang returned to action at the blockbuster ONE X event last month in Singapore, taking on retiring legend John Wayne Parr in a ONE Super Series Muay Thai contest. It was the Filipino Wushu specialist’s first fight under Muay Thai rules, but he rose to the occasion and defeated his legendary opponent by decision.
“I’m so happy with my performance,” the 37-year-old told the Post, looking back on his win over Parr. “Having the time with a legend makes it more meaningful. I really enjoyed the fight. John Wayne is a very good fighter and experiencing fighting him is a different kind of excitement.”
The win distanced Folayang (22-12) from a quartet of losses in his most recent MMA contests. And now that he is back in the win column, he is hoping to keep his momentum going with another big fight.
The Filipino veteran, who headlined ONE’s first event in 2011, broached one interesting possibility in his post-fight interview at ONE X, setting his sights on a Muay Thai fight with karate stylist Sage Northcutt (11-3).
Three weeks later, that is still a fight that interests him.
“I was supposed to fight Sage in MMA,” he said of a nixed plan to meet the 26-year-old UFC veteran in the ONE Circle. “In the [post-fight] interview, this idea popped into my mind: if I could be able to fight him in ONE Super Series. Karate versus wushu in a different world, so it’s 50-50. There’s no huge advantage for either of us.