Arjan Bhullar not impressed by Anatoly Malykhin’s win over Reinier de Ridder: “Good for him”

Two-division ONE world champion Anatoly Malykhin turned a lot of heads with his crushing knockout of Reinier de Ridder at ONE Prime on Video 5 last year.

However, it appears that Arjan Bhullar is not impressed by the Russian’s ONE light heavyweight world title-clinching victory.

In less than 24 hours, these larger-than-life athletes’ long-awaited heavyweight world title unification bout will finally become a reality at ONE Friday Fights 22 at the iconic Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok.

In an interview with Nic Atkin of the South China Morning Post, Bhullar dismissed Malykhin’s latest win, claiming he’ll even do the same to him once they finally meet in the ring:

“That's what I'm going to do when I finish him. And then the same thing, yeah, he beat Reinier de Ridder, good for him. He's done all these things.”

Truth be told, ‘Singh’ has never been de Ridder’s biggest fan after they also exchanged some heated verbal assaults in the past.

In a previous interview, Bhullar even said ‘The Dutch Knight’ got caught up in his own hype.

As such, the Canadian-Indian superstar was not exactly quite high on RDR’s skills to begin with, and expected him to get annihilated by the bigger Malykhin.

Furthermore, Bhullar has made it clear that he’s an entirely different fighter from de Ridder and won’t fall victim to ‘Sladkiy’s insane knockout power.

The American Kickboxing Academy product has won 11 of his 12 career fights and has never been knocked out in his career.

Malykhin, on the other hand, has never met an opponent he could not finish. The 35-year-old bruiser is undefeated in 12 bouts and sports a ridiculous 100 percent finishing rate.

Something has to give at ONE Friday Fights 22, and we’ll see who will leave ‘The Mecca of Muay Thai’ as the sole ruler of the heavyweight ranks.

Watch Bhullar’s full SCMP MMA interview: