“It’s the hard moments that make you reconsider,” he told the Post in an exclusive interview. “A lot of people watch videos of knockouts and they imagine themselves being the one that’s doing the knocking out. We don’t want to imagine we are going to be the ones on the receiving end. When you finally are it can really change things.”

While injuries do occur during BJJ matches, most of the time both participants will emerge completely unscathed. It allows them to compete multiple times in a single day if necessary, but MMA is very different.

When fists, feet, knees and elbows are flying, damage is almost inevitable. Taking serious damage for the first time during the fight with Le actually made Tonon realise he was totally committed to this new career path.

“I think it was an important part of my career and a turning point where I now know for real that I’m interested in doing this because if I wasn’t that would have been a great time to quit,” he said. “That was a tough knockout loss and it didn’t feel good.”

Tonon said nothing he experienced during training could have prepared him for that moment, and thinks a lot of fighters would have walked away from the sport after such a devastating defeat.

“Maybe I could have decided this isn’t for me. It’s not like I didn’t encounter adversity during training but it’s a different thing. Your training partners aren’t trying to knock you out.”

It was 10 months until Tonon got to compete in MMA again, giving him plenty of time to reflect on the loss, even if the BJJ black belt did manage to get a couple of submission grappling bouts in during this period.

Tonon would end up winning two fights out of two for ONE Championship in 2023. He submitted both opponents and feels it was the perfect way to prove that he was still a force to be reckoned with in the featherweight division.

“It’s like, hey man, I’m right here, I’m still a heavy hitter in this division,” he said. “I’m still a contender for the world championships, to be the best mixed martial artist at this weight class and that’s what I’m looking to do.”

Having already faced adversity once, the 32-year-old expects to experience more of it in Tokyo this weekend. Nguyen’s right hand is a howitzer and the Australian has knocked out ONE Championship champions past, present and future.

Tonon’s game plan is always to submit opponents, while Nguyen is looking to knock them out, and the American thinks this makes for an exciting clash of styles.

“You are looking at two guys that like to finish fights, we just do it in different ways,” Tonon said, adding he did not expect the fight to finish quickly.

“Guys try to take him down and he does a pretty good job defending, so I anticipate it being rough and there being several attempts to take him down,” he added. “It might be the case that I have to wear this guy down with damage over time and get him to a point he can’t fight the submissions anymore.”

Tonon still believes he can win the title, but isn’t interested in taking short cuts. He is willing to fight all the top contenders at featherweight and sees former two division champion Nguyen as the ideal opponent.

“Any of the guys that are in the top five that I haven’t fought yet, it’s a matter of time and I’m excited for those fights. I won’t look at myself as truly the best until I have all those fights.

“One of the reasons I’m excited to fight Martin [Nguyen] is that’s what he did, he almost had three belts.”

If he does realise his dream of becoming the ONE Championship featherweight champion Tonon is sure to look back on the moment he was stopped by Le. It might have tarnished his perfect record but he learned some valuable lessons that day.

“I think that the first loss in my career was important. I had a lot of dominant wins, I took very little damage, it wasn’t like I got knocked down or anything,” Tonon said. “It’s pretty easy to say something’s enjoyable when you are not on the end of serious punishment.”