Walking Away From ONE Championship
Since the beginning of 2019, I was a huge fan of ONE Championship. “What is ONE Championship?” some of you might ask. Well, think UFC but marketed mainly towards a Southeast Asian audience. I preferred ONE over the UFC due their promoting of traditional martial arts values: honor, humility, respect, integrity etc. That and their lack of trash-talking to promote fights. For the past two years, I backed the organization every way I could. I bought every piece of ONE merchandise (clothing, accessories etc.) that caught my eye, liked every ONE social media post, and never missed ONE Championship event broadcast. The third part was probably a ritual I stuck to and was very proud of at the time. It was true… from February 2019 up until the date I'm writing this, I’d never missed a live broadcast of a ONE event. In fact, I saw my first ONE live event on August 16, 2019: ONE: Dreams of Gold. Were it not for COVID-19, I suppose the organization would’ve continued hosting events throughout the ASEAN region and I would’ve tried to catch another event or two in Thailand.
Horrible Judging
But since the beginning of September, I feel that I can no longer support ONE Championship the way I have for the past two years. They have messed up too many times. And I am done trying stand up for their mistakes as a fan. While the signs were there from the very beginning, things came to a head for me only this year. In combat sports, it’s not surprising when judges get the scoring wrong. But in the case of ONE Championship, it happens too often. And I’m talking blatant judging errors in which fighters who obviously won the fight ended up getting robbed. So far in 2021, I’ve personally witnessed 3 judging screw-ups in ONE events.
This is a huge number in mixed martial arts organization standards. And it’s not a good look for ONE Championship. Sure, ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong has publicly stated he would schedule a rematch for one of those fights. But nothing’s actually come to fruition. In any case, there’s just too much botched judging that ruins the reputation and credibility of the self-proclaimed “Home of Martial Arts”.
I decided to end my loyalty when a fighter representing a gym that the company I worked at sponsored was robbed of a victory in a tournament match. Considering the fight had high stakes, it was only fair that her fight was reviewed. This had happened before. Famed kickboxer Giorgio Petrosyan had a split decision loss overturned to a no-contest before getting a rematch in the semifinals of a ONE kickboxing tournament back in 2019. However, this fighter would not get the desired result when she filed her appeal and the loss stuck. That was the day I lost faith in ONE Championship.
Fighter Favoritism
In the first year I became a ONE Championship fan, I noticed that the organization promoted only a handful of fighters. And yes, these fighters happened to be the world champions. In the beginning, these fighters appeared dominant and unstoppable. I wondered to myself, “Why aren’t these guys getting more recognition?” Then in 2020, these champions lost their titles and looked like mere mortals. Looking back to their fights prior to their title losses, they had been fighting journeymen or opponents past their primes. Eventually, these fighters were destined to lose.
But there are still some of these fighters who are still world champions. One of them happens to hold the title in which the tournament was being held for. Initially, the champion was supposed to face the fighter from gym being sponsored by my place of employment. But then she was sidelined by a–get this–pregnancy. So the title fight was off and a Grand Prix tournament was held in place to determine a number-one contender. Were this any other fighter, one of two things would have happened:
The champion would’ve been stripped of the title. The title would be contested for by the number-one and number-two contenders.
The number-one and number-two contenders in the division would fight for an interim title while the champion went through the pregnancy. The interim champion would then face the main champion for undisputed status.
But this never happened. And we’ll never know the real reason why. But I would safely assume that ONE Championship is protecting the world champion for as long as possible. As for the pregnancy… let’s just say it came at a convenient time.
Another thing that sticks out to me is that the aforementioned world champion, as well as her younger brother, have spent their entire MMA careers fighting in ONE Championship. It makes me wonder how they would fare in other promotions and if what sort of treatment they would receive. At first, I didn’t mind that there was a degree of bias for certain fighters. But once got to a point where the bias affected the outcome of a high-stakes fight, I decided to turn my back on the promotion I had once been loyal to.
Lack of Respect and Integrity
Despite being relatively unknown in the mainstream MMA community, ONE Championship has really imprinted on its fanbase with its preaching of the martial values: honor, humility, respect, and integrity. For the entire time the organization has been in its existence, these values have been ONE’s selling point. But through the marketing and PR, I’ve come to see that they don’t practice what they preach. ONE does not respect its fighters. Professional fighters need to fight more than once a year–at least 2 to 3 times–in order to make a healthy income. In ONE Championship, the average fighter usually fights once a year. I’ve actually seen some fighters go 2-3 years without a fight. It’s insane!
And of course, ONE Championship lacks integrity. In the three years I’ve spent watching every ONE event, there has been the sketchy fight where I thought the decision should’ve gone the other way. Looking back, it was a blatant robbery on ONE’s part. One of the rules in the organization that annoys me the most are that, “there are no draws in ONE Championship”. In combat sports, especially in MMA or kickboxing, a draw is bound to happen. So every time I hear them announce a split decision or majority decision, the fight should have actually ended in a draw. And one fighter is about to get robbed of a potential victory.
Final Thoughts
I feel that three years has been a long time of being a loyal fan of ONE Championship but I believe that now is the best time to walk away from ONE. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop watching their shows. Every now and then, you could catch a good MMA fight, Muay Thai fight or kickboxing match on ONE Championship. As a whole, however, I can no longer support the organization. There are better promotions to watch: UFC, Bellator, ACA, AMC Fight Nights, M-1 Global, BKFC, BKB, Glory, K-1, RISE… the list goes on! Perhaps I was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I should just enjoy the fights and not dedicate myself to one promotion.
And so now I’ve decided to not exclusively follow one fixed promotion but instead watch fights from any organization that I can access. Given that I love all sorts of combat sports–MMA, kickboxing, Muay Thai, bare-knuckle boxing–there’s a plethora of promotions and events at the tip of my fingers, thanks to my subscriptions to UFC Fight Pass and FITE TV. Hell, there’s thousands of free fights on YouTube too. In the end, walking away from ONE Championship isn’t the end of the world. Rather, it’s the start of a new chapter for me.
