Garry Tonon responds to Shamil Gasanov’s call out for potential featherweight showdown

Shamil Gasanov made perhaps the biggest first impression of the night, delivering a dominant performance against No.2-ranked featherweight contender Kim Jae Woong at ONE on Prime Video 3 on Friday night.

Making his ONE Championship debut, Gasanov entered the bout with an undefeated record of 12-0 with eight of those victories coming by way of submission.

He had 15 minutes to get the job done against the streaking Kim Jae Woong, but the Russian monster barely needed two. After getting his hands on Kim 90 seconds into the bout, Gasanov rag dolled the South Korean multiple times before taking his back.

From there, it was just a matter of time. Gasanov snuck his forearm under the chin of Kim and put on the squeeze, forcing Kim to tap out just 2:09 into the very first round.

Following the bout, Shamil Gasanov took the opportunity to call out some big names under the ONE banner, including ONE featherweight world champion Tang Kai and former world title challenger Garry Tonon:

“Tang Kai, Garry Tonon, everybody. Everybody I smash anywhere! Just give me five minutes and I’ll smash everyone.”

Shamil Gasanov once again issued a challenge to Tonon before leaving the circle, saying:

“You see, I took a risk in my debut. I took the no.2 guy. Garry Tonon, I’ll give you one, I can do the grappling with him as well, it doesn't matter.”

It didn’t take long for ‘The Lion Killer’ to respond on social media:

“Heard I just got called out what’s the word.”

Check out the tweet below:

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Shamil Gasanov is the second Russian in the last month to enter the featherweight title picture

Though he just made his ONE Championship debut, Shamil Gasanov’s complete dominance of No.2-ranked Kim Jae Woong could immediately thrust him into the world title picture.

Just a few weeks ago, another Russian debutante made a big impression in U.S. primetime.

Ilya Freymanov stepped into the circle at ONE on Prime Video 2 in September against former two-division world champion Martin ‘The SItu-Asian’ Nguyen. Like Gasanov, Freymanov had no need to go past the first round, knocking out Nguyen at 3:33 of the opening round in spectacular fashion.

By next week, we will likely have two fresh-faced Russian juggernauts primed for featherweight division dominance. The rise of Ilya Freymanov and Shamil Gasanov could not have come at a better time for the featherweight division.

With Tang Kai sitting on the throne following his five-round destruction of Thanh Lee at ONE 160, the Chinese world champion is hungry for some new challengers. It looks like he will get just that with ONE Championship’s newest Russian duo of destroyers.