Anatoly Malykhin confident he can knock out Reinier de Ridder, Amir Aliakbari, ‘Reug Reug’ all at once

After becoming the undisputed ONE heavyweight world champion by beating Arjan Bhullar in their unification fight in June 2023 at ONE Friday Fights 22, Anatoly Malykhin is looking to welcome three challengers to his throne.

On November 14, 2023, Malykhin published a short video on Instagram doing a drill with two of his teammates at Tiger Muay Thai, where they are seen evading strikes among each other.

But the most interesting part of his post was the caption, where he virtually called out three fighters who are apparently on his list of potential opponents. The caption read:

“@onechampionship Ready to playfully drop three in one evening👊🏻@reugreug 👊🏻@amiraliakbari60 👊🏻@deriddermma 👊🏻”

This move by ‘Sladkiy’ indicates that he’s open to arranging a fight among them and is more than ready to turn back their world title hopes if they are willing to accept a clash with him.

Two out of the three fighters that the 35-year-old champion mentioned already received a beating from him, as Amir Aliakbari and Reinier de Ridder both suffered devastating first-round knockouts aganst Malykhin.

Aliakbari was flattened in September 2021 at ONE: Revolution, while de Ridder was sent to the shadow realm in December 2022 at ONE on Prime Video 5. Oumar ‘Reug Reug’ Kane is the only athlete that the two-division world champion hasn’t fought yet.

The Senegalese is coming off a unanimous decision win over Marcus Almeida from his latest match on August 2023, at ONE Fight Night 13, which improved his ONE Championship record to five wins and one loss.

It was also the 31-year-old’s third consecutive victory since suffering his lone promotional defeat at the hands of Kirill Grishenko in April 2021 at ONE on TNT IV.

Whoever is Malykhin’s next opponent should be ready to absorb his lethal strikes, especially his punches, because he possesses an enormous amount of power, as seen in his perfect ONE record of five wins with five finishes.