ONE Championship Dreams of Gold, RIZIN 18 Recap

We had two massive shows go down. ONE Championship Dreams of Gold in Bangkok and Rizin 18 in Japan. And of course, we have to talk about ONEs first open weigh-in and hydration test since switching to their no cutting policy. 

Let’s start things off here in Bangkok with ONE: Dreams of Gold. This was a kickboxing and muay thai heavy card, which ONE tends to do with their shows in Bangkok because that is what the local fans want to see. 

This was a great card from start to finish, But for me, the fight of the night, the one that blew away any and all expectations was Stamp Fairtex vs Asha Roka. This was only Stamps second MMA fight, but keep in mind she is already the ONE woman's atomweight Muay Thai and Kickboxing champion, so she is no stranger to the fight game. 

Stamp looked phenomenal in this fight. She took it to Roka and never stopped. She dominated everywhere this fight went. On the ground, where I had expected her to struggle she looked amazing. 

At one point Michael Schiavello on commentary had one of his best lines of the night, “Roka is being mounted more than a pummel horse”  because Stamp was just dominating on the ground. 

Stamp ended up putting Roka away with an RNC in the 3rd. And from what I saw the rest of her division needs to be on notice. 

I’m not sure if she is ready for the top of the division just yet, but it won’t be long. 

Another fun and entertaining fight on the card was a clash between Cambodian Chan Rothana against Cuban olympian Gustavo Balart. 

Despite having a massive size disadvantage Balart dominated most of the fight with his wrestling. other than the closing minute or so of the final round where Chan had a strong rally and came very close to finishing Balart, he controlled the majority of the fight.

Somehow, Chan took the decision victory. Decisions like this are just another reason I dislike ONEs methods of scoring the fight as a whole. There will be an in-depth episode about this in the future, but I think Balart got robbed in this fight. 

Sticking with ONE Championship they live-streamed their first weight-ins and hydration test since switching to a no-cutting policy after the death of fighter Yang Jian Bing in 2015 while he was attempting to make weight. 

ONE has taken a lot of criticism for their lack of transparency in a number of areas, weight cutting being one of the. 

Michael Fiedel over at The Body Lock has a fantastic piece up about this and the whole history so I will link to that in the show notes, I highly recommend you give that a read, it’s very strong work by Michael. 

I will say though, that I was very impressed with ONEs step towards transparency in this matter. Though I think it doesn’t go far enough. 

For starters, the weigh-in and hydration tests were conducted by ONE itself. There was someone who was opening and checking the specific gravity of the urine, which is a step in the right direction after photos surfaced on twitter last week of Former UFC Champ and ONE VP Rich Franklin and another ONE employee and former fighter Bashir Ahmed handling urine samples without gloves. 

After the test, the specific gravity and the weight we

We had two massive shows go down. ONE Championship Dreams of Gold in Bangkok and Rizin 18 in Japan. And of course, we have to talk about ONEs first open weigh-in and hydration test since switching to their no cutting policy. 

Let’s start things off here in Bangkok with ONE: Dreams of Gold. This was a kickboxing and muay thai heavy card, which ONE tends to do with their shows in Bangkok because that is what the local fans want to see. 

This was a great card from start to finish, But for me, the fight of the night, the one that blew away any and all expectations was Stamp Fairtex vs Asha Roka. This was only Stamps second MMA fight, but keep in mind she is already the ONE woman's atomweight Muay Thai and Kickboxing champion, so she is no stranger to the fight game. 

Stamp looked phenomenal in this fight. She took it to Roka and never stopped. She dominated everywhere this fight went. On the ground, where I had expected her to struggle she looked amazing. 

At one point Michael Schiavello on commentary had one of his best lines of the night, “Roka is being mounted more than a pummel horse”  because Stamp was just dominating on the ground. 

Stamp ended up putting Roka away with an RNC in the 3rd. And from what I saw the rest of her division needs to be on notice. 

I’m not sure if she is ready for the top of the division just yet, but it won’t be long. 

Another fun and entertaining fight on the card was a clash between Cambodian Chan Rothana against Cuban olympian Gustavo Balart. 

Despite having a massive size disadvantage Balart dominated most of the fight with his wrestling. other than the closing minute or so of the final round where Chan had a strong rally and came very close to finishing Balart, he controlled the majority of the fight.

Somehow, Chan took the decision victory. Decisions like this are just another reason I dislike ONEs methods of scoring the fight as a whole. There will be an in-depth episode about this in the future, but I think Balart got robbed in this fight. 

Sticking with ONE Championship they live-streamed their first weight-ins and hydration test since switching to a no-cutting policy after the death of fighter Yang Jian Bing in 2015 while he was attempting to make weight. 

ONE has taken a lot of criticism for their lack of transparency in a number of areas, weight cutting being one of the. 

Michael Fiedel over at The Body Lock has a fantastic piece up about this and the whole history so I will link to that in the show notes, I highly recommend you give that a read, it’s very strong work by Michael. 

I will say though, that I was very impressed with ONEs step towards transparency in this matter. Though I think it doesn’t go far enough. 

For starters, the weigh-in and hydration tests were conducted by ONE itself. There was someone who was opening and checking the specific gravity of the urine, which is a step in the right direction after photos surfaced on twitter last week of Former UFC Champ and ONE VP Rich Franklin and another ONE employee and former fighter Bashir Ahmed handling urine samples without gloves. 

After the test, the specific gravity and the weight were read off by and recorded by another ONE executive Ric Auty. 

Ideally ONE should hire a third party to conduct these weigh-ins, much like a commission would be the third party in a country with a commission. 

There is also the matter of this being just one of three weigh-ins and hydration tests that are supposedly done. 

So there is still lots of room to improve, but I think ONE got off to a good start. I hope they continue to improve this and truely move towards transparency.

UFC 241 was also this weekend, and while it didn’t take place in Asia, ROAD FC and Deep veteran Kyung Ho Kang took a split decision win over Brandon Davis. 

Moving over to Japan We closed out the weekend with Rizin 18. 

This was a really great card that even had a kickboxing match with John Wayne Parr, who dropped a split decision to Zanolini 

In other action on the main card

Manel Kape got a fantastic second-round KO over Mizugaki 

Victor Henry pulled out a 3rd round finish over Trent Girdham with a slick inverted triangle despite taking one of the worst cup shots I’ve seen in a very long time. 

Ayaka Hamasaki extended her win streak to 5 with a first-round submission win over Amp Boonsorn in a fight that was full of some very technical grappling. Amp spent most of the time in control on the ground until Hamasaki was able to get a reversal and secured an armbar. 

In the main event, we had an amazing display of striking when Kai Asakura earned a beautifully violent first round knock out over Kyoji Horiguchi. 

Asakura used his reach to his advantage and played it cool early on with Horiguchi being the aggressor. But about a minute in he hurt Horiguchi and the aggression came out, he chased him down landing everything in his arsenal before putting Horiguchi out cold. 

It was a fantastic main event to cap off a great card. 

That's all I have for you guys today

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Michael Fiedels Piece about ONE weight cutting at The Body Lock: 

https://thebodylockmma.com/one-championship/one-championship-live-streams-weigh-ins-following-criticism-of-closed-door-policies/ 

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Host: dana blouin

Producer: Emily Barner

Executive Producer: dana blouin