ONE Championship: Martin Nguyen returns to training with Aung La N Sang at Kill Cliff FC
- Nguyen, a former two-division champion, has lost three of his last four fights – all by knockout or TKO
- As he looks to get back to winning ways, he has returned to Kill Cliff FC in South Florida to train alongside friend and fellow former champ
Former two-division ONE Championship title-holder Martin Nguyen is back to training at Kill Cliff FC in South Florida.
The Vietnamese-Australian, 33, announced his return to the Sunshine State on Instagram this week – and hinted at a fight in eight weeks’ time.
“Home sweet home,” he wrote. “Back like I was never away. First day in the books was a success. I can’t wait to see the final product of hard work in 8 weeks time.”
Nguyen (14-6) was first introduced to the world-class training at Kill Cliff FC by fellow former two-division ONE champ Aung La N Sang, with whom he has formed a close friendship over the years. He has stayed with N Sang for most of his visits to Florida.
Despite being one of the most accomplished champions in ONE history, Nguyen has recently fallen on hard times, sandwiching a win over Kirill Gorobets between stoppage losses to Thanh Le, Kim Jae-woong, and Ilya Freymanov – the first of which marked the end of his reign atop the featherweight division.
On the heels of his loss to Freymanov – a first-round knockout – he was encouraged by N Sang to return to Florida, where he has access to higher quality training, and more importantly, world-class training partners.
“He needs to come back here and train – come live here in my house and train,” N Sang told the Post recently. “He needs to just clamp down a little bit and train.
“It’s part of the game. These young guys [he has lost to] are hungry. They start at such a younger age that we’re almost playing the catch-up game on our end.
“I’m not saying that we can’t do it, it’s just that we need to put everything into it. So it would be good for Martin to come back and train away from the family for a little bit.
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“As much as I don’t like him being away from his family and he doesn’t like being away from the family, he needs to make that sacrifice.
“Of course, a fight is a fight. Anything could happen. You could be the most prepared and it doesn’t go your way. But to minimise that we have to train good and put everything into the fight and preparation.”
Nguyen first got his hands on ONE gold in 2017, when he knocked out Marat Gafurov to win the promotion’s featherweight title.
In his next fight, he won the lightweight belt with a knockout of Eduard Folayang. He subsequently came up short in a bid to become a three-division champion, losing a close decision in a bantamweight title fight with Bibiano Fernandes.
ONE has not yet revealed who he will fight next, but a return to action in eight weeks’ time suggests he will land on the promotion’s January 14 stop in Bangkok, Thailand.
N Sang (28-13) is fresh off a first-round knockout win over Japanese veteran Yushin Okami at last weekend’s ONE 163 event in Singapore, and is set to head to Manila to corner bantamweight Tial Tang in a fight with Jeremy Pacatiw at ONE 164.
