ONE Championship end of year awards: top five fighters of 2022

All martial arts content – including ONE Championship coverage – has been made freely available. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. It was a career-changing year for a long list of fighters in ONE Championship. The Singapore-based organisation has promoted 20 events since the beginning of January, with new contenders emerging and new champions being crowned in all four of the martial arts disciplines it promotes: MMA, Muay Thai, kickboxing and submission grappling. As we near the end of the calendar, here are the ONE stars who made the biggest splash in 2022, and our pick for the promotion’s fighter of the year. You can also check out our picks for best submission, best fight, and best knockout in 2022. 5. Tang Kai China’s Tang Kai started 2022 as a solid but unspectacular contender in ONE’s featherweight MMA division. It was clear he was talented, but not many people were touting him as a future champion. Yet he will end the year with the division’s belt in his trophy case. Things started picking up for Tang at ONE X in March, when he was booked for a fight with No 1 featherweight contender Kim Jae-woong of South Korea. Kim was seen as the favourite heading into the match-up, but Tang did not get the memo, and flattened his South Korean foe with a volley of punches in round one. Thanh Le got CLIPPED 💥 Who'll be up first for the new ONE Featherweight World Champion Tang Kai? 🇨🇳#ONE160 #ONEChampionship pic.twitter.com/0a8WwWFVtc — ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) August 28, 2022 Tang’s win over the top contender – his sixth in a row in ONE – earned him a crack at highly-regarded champion Thanh Le at ONE 160 in late August. The Chinese fighter was full of confidence ahead of his fight, and once again proved his confidence was justified. While he was unable to knock Le out, he battered the champion to a unanimous-decision win to swipe the belt for himself, and become the first male fighter from China to earn a major MMA title. 4. Demetrious Johnson Flyweight MMA legend Demetrious Johnson closed out 2021 with a knockout loss to Adriano Moraes in a failed bid for ONE gold. To say he turned things around in 2022 would be an understatement. Johnson’s first fight of the year saw him collide with flyweight Muay Thai champion Rodtang Jitmuangnon in a special rules attraction at ONE X in March. The fight switched between Muay Thai and MMA rules, round by round, starting with former. AND NEW! 👑 @MightyMouse 🇺🇸 wins the ONE Flyweight World Title with a walk-off KO of Adriano Moraes!@PrimeVideo #ONEonPrimeVideo1 #ONEChampionship pic.twitter.com/A3G9dlesyw — ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) August 27, 2022 While the fight was certainly unconventional, it generated massive buzz, and when Johnson won it by second-round submission, it helped him move past his loss to Moraes. In the end, it also earned the American a rematch with the champion. He challenged the Brazilian again at ONE on Prime Video 1 in late August, and earned his redemption in highlight-reel fashion, stealing the belt with a punch and follow-up knee. It was a very similar sequence to the one Moraes used to beat him a year earlier, and it cemented him as one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. 3. Jarred Brooks “The Monkey God” Jarred Brooks made his ONE Championship debut in November of 2021, defeating Lito Adiwang by submission to immediately assert himself as a contender for the promotion’s strawweight MMA title. A little over a year later – and as many predicted – he is now the division’s champion. The American was one of the first ONE fighters in action in 2022, as he took on Japan’s Hiroba Minowa at ONE: Only the Brave on January 28 – the promotion’s second event of the year. It's all good 👍 @The_monkeygod#ONE164 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇹🇭🇬🇧🇸🇦🇧🇷 Live on ONE YouTube 🌍 Live on https://t.co/eBUfsOmxDL pic.twitter.com/drlHGuQljh — ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) December 3, 2022 After beating Minowa with a lopsided decision, Brooks was then booked for a No 1 contender clash with South Africa’s Bokang Masunyane at ONE: Reloaded in April. It was the toughest test of his ONE career to date, but he won it inside a round, tapping his rival with a rear-naked choke. The win over Masunyane set Brooks up for a clash with long-reigning strawweight champion Joshua Pacio. While there were some delays making the match-up, it finally went down at ONE 164 this month in Manila, the Philippines – the champion’s home turf. Pacio put forth a valiant effort, but Brooks ultimately won the fight by unanimous decision to close out 2022 with a 3-0 record and the first major championship of his career. Runner-up: Anatoly Malykhin All Anatoly Malykhin did this year was win ONE Championship titles. After scoring first-round knockout wins in his first two ONE bouts in 2021, the Russian started 2022 by battling Belarus’ Kirill Grishenko for the promotion’s interim heavyweight MMA title, which was created to keep the division moving in undisputed champ Arjan Bhullar’s absence. Flaunting excellent boxing and hand-speed and plenty of heavyweight power, Malykhin won the interim belt with a second-round knockout. NEW DOUBLE-CHAMP 👑👑 ONE Interim Heavyweight World Champion Anatoly Malykhin 🇷🇺 knocks out Reinier de Ridder to claim the light heavyweight throne!#WeAreONE #ONEChampionship #ONEonPrimeVideo5 pic.twitter.com/xp8YrVKd7R — ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) December 3, 2022 That victory looked like it would set up a title unification bout with Bhullar, but when the undisputed champ was unable to find his way back to the Circle, Malykhin set about slimming down to challenge champion Reinier de Ridder for the ONE light heavyweight title. Malykhin met De Ridder in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 5 this month in Manila. Both men started the fight undefeated, and with plenty of confidence, but in the end, the Russian stopped his rival with punches inside a round. It was one of the best knockouts of the year, and it made him a two-division MMA champion. Winner: Christian Lee Just like Anatoly Malykhin, Christian Lee spent 2022 collecting titles in ONE Championship. But unlike the Russian, he started the year with his back against the wall. In late 2021, the Canadian-American surrendered the ONE lightweight MMA title with a decision loss to South Korea’s Ok Rae-yoon. It was one of the most hotly debated judging verdicts of the year, and a rematch seemed like a certainty from the moment the decision was announced. It took some time to put together, but the rematch finally occurred at ONE 160 in late August. The second time around, Lee erased any doubt as to his superiority over the South Korean, reclaiming the lightweight title with a vicious second-round TKO. Christian Lee 🇺🇸🇸🇬 exacts REVENGE on Ok Rae Yoon to reclaim the ONE Lightweight World Title! 👑 @ChristianLeeMMA #ONE160 #ONEChampionship 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇹🇭 Watch live on ONE YouTube 👉 https://t.co/BiFG3Yw0fA 🌍 Watch live on PPV 👉 https://t.co/8MeKhRMtjy pic.twitter.com/UiD8ZU4PZC — ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) August 26, 2022 Having corrected what he saw as a gross injustice, Lee then set his sights on two-division glory. At ONE on Prime Video 4 in November, he climbed up to welterweight to challenge Kyrgyzstan’s Kiamrian Abbasov in a bid for a second title. Abbasov nearly knocked Lee out in round one – a more squeamish ref might have stopped the fight – but the lightweight champion surged back in round two, and ultimately stopped the fight himself in round four. Just like that, he was a two division MMA champion in ONE – quite an achievement considering the way last year ended for him.