“Congrats to him and his team” - Former two-division king Aung La N Sang sings praise for triple champ Anatoly Malykhin

Like most combat sports fans worldwide, former two-division MMA king Aung La N Sang was thoroughly impressed by Anatoly Malykhin’s latest conquest at ONE Championship.

At ONE 166: Qatar on March 1, the Golden Team representative wrote his name into the history books as MMA’s first triple-world champion, a mission that began in February 2022.

From claiming the interim heavyweight crown against Kirill Grishenko to his beatdown of Arjan Bhullar to unify the strap and a pair of highlight-reel wins over Reinier de Ridder to add the light heavyweight and middleweight gold, ‘Sladkiy’ has moved head and shoulders above his peers.

Scarily, he doesn’t plan on slowing down, openly admitting that he would like to add a boxing or a striking world title.

For now, though, Malykhin is enjoying his latest achievement, and Aung La N Sang believes the unbeaten Russian fighter deserves to immerse himself after a stellar run in ONE.

‘The Burmese Python’ told ONE Championship:

“Anatoly is now a three-division champ. Congrats to him. It’s something that hasn’t been done in ONE Championship history, so congrats to him and his team.”

Long before Malykhin’s unprecedented feat, the Kill Cliff FC representative was one of the first few athletes, alongside his teammate Martin Nguyen, to toy with the idea of three-division dominance.

Unfortunately, a heavyweight world title match against then-kingpin Brandon Vera didn’t materialize, though the Filipino-American fighter admitted he’d have loved to defend his strap against the Burmese-American martial arts icon.

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Aung La N Sang keen to meet Malykhin for the middleweight crown

Despite praising Malykhin, Aung La N Sang believes his mission to reclaim the middleweight MMA world title is far from over.

The 38-year-old, who dropped his world titles to Reinier de Ridder in back-to-back fights, has picked up the pace with four victories from his last five outings.

Given his run of form, Aung La N Sang believes his chance at another run for gold is burning brighter than ever.

In the same interview, he concluded:

“That’s the only reason why I keep fighting – to be champion again. That’s the only reason why I’m fighting still. I could retire now, but it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be fun for the ONE Championship middleweight division.”