“A very interesting fight” - ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong announces Aung La N Sang and Yushin Okami bout

The highly anticipated matchup between mixed martial arts greats Aung La N Sang and Yushin Okami is finally set after ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong announced the bout in a press conference with Japanese media outfit ABEMA.

Aung La and Okami, regarded as two of the best fighters of their generation, will meet inside the circle at ONE 163: Akimoto vs. Petchtanong on November 19 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Sityodtong, who flew to Tokyo for the press conference, said the match-making process for Aung La’s bout against Okami was one of the easiest things he and his team did. Both fighters wanted to face each other, and it was only up to ONE Championship to hash out the details.

Okami and Aung La called each other out earlier this year and that alone generated enough hype for the match to be made official. In the press conference, Chatri Sityodtong said:

“When we decided to put Yushin Okami vs. Aung La N Sang, actually it was very easy because both called each other out, I think this makes for a very interesting fight. I believe it’s gonna end in KO. I believe that Yushin has the better wrestling.”

Aung La is considered an icon in his native country of Myanmar, and he took that distinction when he went on a gold rush in ONE Championship. ‘The Burmese Python’ captured the ONE middleweight world title when he beat Vitaly Bigdash at ONE: Light of a Nation in June 2017 in front of his Yangon faithful.

Barely a year later, Aung La added the ONE light heavyweight world title to his collection in his return to Yangon. The Burmese legend needed just one round to knock Alexandre Machado out at ONE: Quest for Gold in February 2018.

Okami, meanwhile, is an absolute legend in Japanese sports, having started his career with the iconic PRIDE promotion. He then traveled the globe and even challenged Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight world title. He joined ONE Championship in 2019 and is coming off a split decision win over Agilan Thani at ONE: Century Part I.

Catch the entire press conference below:

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Chatri Sityodtong wants everything to go right before staging a US event

Chatri Sityodtong may have his hands full with promoting the remaining shows of 2022, but he’s also getting ready for ONE Championship’s impending arrival on American soil.

ONE Championship’s partnership with Amazon Prime Video meant that the promotion will soon stage live cards in the United States. The organization has a full schedule until the end of 2022 with Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Manila serving as the host cities for its remaining events.

Sityodtong, in an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, revealed that the executives at Amazon Prime Video wanted to have the first ONE on Prime Video card in the US. Sityodtong and his group, however, pushed back and suggested that 2023 would be a better time for a live American event.

“So our first show we want to make sure to get it right and then we build momentum from there. And you know Amazon also, they’re new to combat sports so they’re building a whole team, and again they’re experts in sports you can just see it in their team that they’ve hired. But they’re still relatively new to combat sports, so you want the whole partnership on both sides to be a well-oiled machine before you go full steam ahead."