Anatoly Malykhin will look to reclaim the heavyweight title he misplaced earlier this yr.
ONE Championship has formally introduced that reigning ONE heavyweight champion Oumar ‘Reug Reug’ Kane will put his title on the road in opposition to the very man he took it from when the promotion heads again to Ariake Enviornment in Tokyo for ONE 173 on Sunday, November 16.
Kane claimed the title from Malykhin at ONE 169 in November 2024, narrowly defeating the previous three-division titleholder through a considerably controversial break up choice. ‘Reug Reug’ rides into The Land of the Rising Solar on a five-fight win streak, together with a first-round KO in opposition to Boucher Ketchup in his kickboxing debut final summer time.
In the meantime, Malykhin is coming off the primary lack of his skilled profession. Not solely did the intently contested loss to Kane price him his undefeated file, but it surely additionally ended his reign as MMA’s first and solely three-division champion.
Malykhin nonetheless holds the ONE middleweight and light-weight heavyweight titles, however with a scarcity of challengers in these divisions, ‘Sladkiy’ is targeted on one factor — avenging his lone loss and reclaiming the 26 kilos of ONE gold he surrendered to the Senegalese sensation.
Superbon vs. Noiri joins Malykhin vs. ‘Reug Reug’ 2 in Tokyo
Additionally introduced for the occasion was a unification bout between reigning ONE featherweight kickboxing world champion Superbon and interim titleholder Masaaki Noiri.
In March, Noiri shocked the world with a shocking third-round TKO of Tawanchai to win the short-term title, setting the stage for a scrap with one of many P4P greatest kickboxers on the planet.
Although he’s coming off a failed try so as to add Muay Thai gold to his assortment, Superbon remains to be one of the crucial feared fighters in eight-ounce gloves underneath the ONE banner, incomes back-to-back wins in opposition to Tayfun Ozcan and former three-time GLORY Kickboxing champion Marat Grigorian.
