Aung La N Sang happy to play "gatekeeper" at middleweight but says he might just get his "throne back"

Aung La N Sang has gone through some ups and downs in his career in recent years. At one point, ‘The Burmese Python’ was the holder of the middleweight and light heavyweight world championships, putting together one of the best runs ever seen in ONE Championship.

After losing both of his belts in back-to-back fights with Reinier de Ridder, Aung La has had to go away and try to rebuild himself.

With his defeats to de Ridder, his position in the division was questioned. Every weight class will have its gatekeepers, fighters who remain near the top of the division while stopping all but the very best fighters from moving past them in the rankings.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Aung La N Sang said that he is happy with being known as a gatekeeper. However, he pondered the question: what happens if the gatekeeper keeps on winning?

“Yeah, I’ve been keeping that gate. I’m the gatekeeper, if I destroy everybody coming to the gate I might as well go to the castle right? And get my throne back.”

Watch the full interview below:

Aung La N Sang returns at ONE Fight Night 10 on May 5, where he looks to make it three wins in a row in his fight with China’s Fan Rong.

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Aung La N Sang wasn’t surprised Anatoly Malykhin was able to out-wrestle Reinier de Ridder

Aung La N Sang wasn’t surprised by Anatoly Malykhin’s performance against Reinier de Ridder at ONE on Prime Video 5.

Malykhin was awarded ONE Championship’s Fighter of the Year award after closing out 2022 with his best win yet. In a battle of undefeated world champions, the Russian knocked out ‘The Dutch Knight’ in the opening round to become a double champ.

Aung La N Sang is no stranger to facing off against Reinier de Ridder, having lost to him twice. In fact, the light heavyweight world championship that Malykhin claimed with his win previously belonged to Aung La before his encounters with the Dutchman.

The narrative going into ONE on Prime Video 5 was that if de Ridder could take the fight to the floor, his grappling skills would be far too much for the bigger man. But many may have overlooked the Russian powerhouse’s wrestling credentials.

Unable to take his opponent down, de Ridder was forced to strike with the larger and more powerful man, which was always going to end one way.

In an interview with SCMP MMA, Aung La gave his perspective on Anatoly Malykhin’s performance and why he wasn’t at all surprised by the outcome of the fight:

“[De Ridder] doesn’t outstrike people, you know. He grapples them. He takes them down and grapples them. How is he going to grapple a high-level wrestler who is bigger than him and stronger than him and have really good Greco-style wrestling which is very much Reinier’s style, the body lock and such."