Fabricio Andrade looks back on first meeting with Kwon Won Il: "Our fight was very quick"

Fabricio Andrade's ascent to ONE bantamweight MMA world championship challenger was cemented after upsetting Kwon Won Il in their June 2022 world title eliminator.

The now-reigning king of the 145-pound MMA division looked back on their first encounter in a recent interview with the world's largest martial arts promotion, saying:

"Kwon Won Il is a well-known guy, a guy I've faced before: Our fight was very quick, I managed to impose my strategy right at the beginning of the fight and managed to land a good kick that knocked him out."

Sending Kwon to sleep in just over a minute extended Andrade's winning streak under the ONE banner to five. He then challenged then-reigning John Lineker for the bantamweight MMA crown in October 2022.

However, only 'Wonder Boy' could win the gold after Lineker was stripped of it for missing weight. Their bout ended in a no contest as 'Hands of Stone' could not continue following an accidental low blow in the third round.

The pair's rematch over the then-vacant throne happened in February 2023, with Andrade claiming 26 pounds of gold via TKO.

The Evolve MMA and Tiger Muay Thai representative will be gunning to upend Kwon's hopes of becoming the next bantamweight MMA world champion at ONE 170 on Jan. 24, inside the Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand.

---

Fabricio Andrade confident he is living rent-free in Kwon Won Il's mind

Handing Kwon his first knockout defeat in ONE has Fabricio Andrade believing that he has never left the mind of the South Korean striker since that moment.

The 27-year-old said in an interview snippet posted on his Instagram:

"I knocked him out in the first fight, he should be more respectful after what I did to him. So I think the fact that he's talking a lot shows that he's not that confident."

ONE 170 is available via watch.onefc.com.