ONE Championship 163: Aung La N Sang returns vs Yushin Okami, Ham Seo-hee faces Itsuki Hirata
- Former two-division champ N Sang to battle Okami on November 19 in Singapore, as promotion stacks card with Japanese stars
- Shinya Aoki will meet Khabib Nurmagomedov protégé Saygid Izagakhmaev, with Yuya Wakamatsu also returning to action
Four high-profile MMA bouts have been added to ONE Championship 163 – including the return of former two division title-holder Aung La N Sang – with the martial arts promotion stacking the Singapore event with Japanese stars.
ONE 163 is set for November 19, in the promotion’s home city. The card’s main event, a bantamweight kickboxing showdown between Japanese champion Hiroki Akimoto and Thai challenger Petchtanong Petchfergus, was revealed last month, but the rest of the card had remained a mystery.
That changed at a ONE press conference in Tokyo on Monday morning, when four new fights were added to the bill. The event, it was announced, will be broadcast on pay-per-view on the Abema platform in Japan.
Chief among the new additions is the return of N Sang, ONE’s former middleweight and light heavyweight champion, who will take on Japanese veteran Yushin Okami at middleweight.
Japanese atomweight star Itsuki Hirata will also get back to action on the card, taking on South Korea’s Ham Seo-hee in a fight that could produce the next title challenger for the division’s champion Angela Lee.
A lightweight fight between former champ Shinya Aoki of Japan, ranked No 5 in the division, and fourth-ranked Russian Saygid Izagakhmaev was also added to the card. So too was a flyweight bout between former title challenger Yuya Wakamatsu of Japan and South Korea’s Woo Sung-hoon.
The 37-year-old N Sang (27-13), has gone 1-1 since losing both of his ONE titles to Reinier de Ridder, first knocking out Leandro Ataides, then coming up short via decision in a trilogy fight with Vitaly Bigdash.
