ONE Championship: Shannon Wiratchai gets quick return, buys wife wedding ring with bonus
- Wiratchai already heading back to Bangtao for fight camp following his triumphant comeback victory at Lumpinee Stadium
- The 34-year-old pioneer wants to show Thai MMA fighters ‘you can do it too – and go further than me’ after TKO and US$10,000 performance bonus
After two and a half years on the sidelines, Shannon Wiratchai was keen to get straight back to work following his triumphant return to the ONE Championship ring last week.
“I’m interested in all of the events. I always try to be ready for all of that, anything can happen,” he told the Post on Monday, just three days removed from a first-round TKO of Iran’s Pouriya Golpour at ONE Friday Fights 3 inside the famed Lumpinee Stadium.
“I’m already hearing about another fight in Lumpinee but I’m open for whatever is coming. More tuneups are good but I’m ready to get back there,” Wiratchai added.
Just days later, the Bangkok-based Thai MMA pioneer was packing his bags again for another training camp at Phuket’s Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA gym, with a quick turnaround set for another Friday Fights card in March.
It capped a whirlwind week for the 34-year-old, who also picked up a US$10,000 bonus – a large chunk of which he quickly spent on buying a wedding ring for his wife Fay Lee Wiratchai, who is also his manager.
The pair got married last October, while “OneShin” (11-6, 1 No Contest) – a ONE Championship veteran who has been with the promotion almost since its inception – was busy plotting his comeback after seeing his career inexplicably stall through no fault of his own.
So it has all been a nice reward for Wiratchai, who for so long was on the outside looking in while everyone else seemed to get an invite to the party, as he toiled away in Bangkok and Phuket, honing his skills in case that phone call to fight came.
That he came through it all was a ringing endorsement of some of the work he has been doing with George and Frank Hickman at Bangtao, the former of whom was in his corner at Lumpinee Stadium last week.
While Thailand is of course blessed with Muay Thai world champions, many of whom can easily transition to kickboxing, the martial arts-mad country is still bafflingly in its infancy when it comes to MMA – something Wiratchai hopes to change.
“Last year, I hadn’t fought in over a year, but I went to Bangtao and people like Topnoi [Kiwram, Road to UFC competitor] and other Thai fighters talked to me,” Wiratchai said. “I could speak to them a bit but it’s all words.
“But now I come back to fighting, I can show them – ‘Hey, I can do it. I can come back. Why are you guys gonna give up now?’ Telling by doing is the best. I always feel to help others is the best part.
“With a good performance, I can show them I can do it, and you can do it. Who am I? I’m not the best, but I can make it good enough, and you guys come from a real fighter background. Why can’t you go further than me?”
It’s not just the Thai fighters that Wiratchai wants to inspire.
He also took pride in showing the fans at Lumpinee Stadium – and those watching on Channel 7 in Thailand – that their country can produce more than just striking stars in Muay Thai and kickboxing.
His efforts last week also help land him a spot commenting on last night’s ONE Friday Fights 4 card for the local broadcast. “Thank you for the opportunity to spread some knowledge about MMA to the Thai fans,” he said on social media.
“I feel like for Thai people, they want to see the Thai MMA a bit more too,” Wiratchai added to the Post. “In ONE, we have some good MMA fighters from Thailand, but to be honest, they’re more Muay Thai fighters like Y2K [Yodkaikaew Fairtex], Stamp [Fairtex].
“They are so good, but you can tell they are Muay Thai fighters. But people like me, it’s a different kind of fighter I think it’s giving them. A different taste, a different flavour.
“They can say ‘wow, this is MMA’. I’m not making it look like one type is better, I’m just making Thai people realise that, for Thailand we produce good Muay Thai fighters that can fight in kickboxing and MMA, but also purebred fighters who train Muay Thai but do MMA too.
“In Thailand, we are capable of so many things. We have produced so many good things in the history of martial arts, that’s the feeling I get from the comments I’ve been reading.”
