Anatoli Malykhin is now double champion of the Asian league ONE Championship. Already ex-title holder in the heavyweight division Arzhan Bullar was hiding from a meeting with «Sweet» for a long time, and retribution for «non-champion» behavior overtook the Canadian.
Ghost champion One of the saddest topics for MMA fans around the world is the so-called » damn fights. The enmity between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson immediately comes to mind, whose meeting in the octagon the UFC wanted to organize five times, and all attempts ended in failure.
The disruption of the battle of the best lightweights of the Dana White promotion due to injuries and the coronavirus pandemic is not the only example. In boxing now they can’t bring (and probably won’t bring) Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury, as well as Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev. The answer to the question of who is the best heavyweight/light heavyweight in the world of boxing will not be received — everything will be limited to fan «snacks» in social networks and analytical articles in the media.
It's cool that one poster was saved from death. Interim and absolute ONE Championship champions Anatoly «Sweet» Malykhin and Arzhan Bullar finally met at the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok (Thailand).
No matter how hard the Canadian of Indian origin (since October 2019, he fought only once) from the Siberian, he still had to defend the belt in the main event of the ONE Friday Fights 22 tournament.
The chase for Indian gold is overNo one gave Bullar a chance. Due to his downtime, the Russian's perfect record, and Tolya's dominance, the Vancouver native opened with a total underdog. It was hard to imagine that Malykhin, with 12 early victories in 12 professional fights (only two opponents «survived» to the second round), did not digest the slower Bullar, who had been idle for two years.
And, as expected, it failed. The Canadian acted as the second number, almost did not attack, and from the middle of the second round he began to frankly fight for survival in the ring. Sometimes he even played dirty: he grabbed gloves, fell out of the ropes and frankly played for time, which the referee did not disregard and issued Bullar a yellow card. However, let's give Arzhan his due: he became the first opponent in Tolya's career who lasted until the third five-minute period — there Malykhin bombarded the hated fighter in the ground and ended the beating with a technical knockout.
Anatoly successfully unified the belts and, having kept zero in the «defeat» column, became the absolute champion of ONE Championship in two weight categories.
It's time to rewrite historyAt the moment, Tolya is the main heavyweight of Russian MMA. Sergei Pavlovich breathes in his back, who is one step away from the “title winner” in the UFC, and Vadim Nemkov, who is moving up to the heavy weight of Bellator for the second belt … His heart quickens when you imagine all our knockouts in the title race of the main MMA promotion of the world. However, Nemkov signed a long-term contract with Scott Cocker, while Malykhin remains loyal to the Asian company. In which he is — no doubt — is #right now the main asset. width=»100%» height=»100%» allow=»autoplay; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;» frameborder=»0″ allowfullscreen=»»>
And the management will definitely not refuse Tolya the opportunity to become the first fighter in the history of mixed martial arts to become a «triple champion». Sladky is ready to move down to middleweight to Reinier de Ridder and smash the Dutch champion again. Malykhin has already taken the light heavyweight title from him: in December 2022, it was all over in less than five minutes. If there are no problems with the weight race, in October Anatoly will throw poor de Ridder off another peak.