Jackie Buntan says 4-ounce MMA gloves for Muay Thai make her strive for a "perfect" game plan

ONE Championship prides itself on having some of the best female martial artists on its roster and Jackie Buntan is definitely in that mix.

For a long time, women competing in Muay Thai wasn’t even a reality and now, within the ranks of the promotion alone, multiple superstars and high-level female competitors are plying their trade across various disciplines – MMA, Muay Thai, kickboxing, and submission grappling.

With her impressive run under the ONE Championship banner, Filipino-American Buntan has set herself aside as one of the key figures in the sport.

While she may have missed out on her ONE strawweight Muay Thai world championship rematch with Smilla Sundell at ONE Fight Night 14, the 26-year-old has arguably never been in a better place than right now.

Producing consecutive wins since her first encounter with Sundell last year, she is on the cusp of running it back with the Swede and in the process, has been continuing to evolve as a Muay Thai fighter.

One of the biggest differences about competing in Muay Thai compared to other striking arts is the smaller four-ounce gloves, the same ones that are used in MMA.

Completely changing both a fighter's offense and defensive capabilities, it only takes one shot to finish a fight and without the bigger gloves to block and parry, it becomes a game of inches.

In an interview with Alex Wendling, Jackie Buntan spoke about how she is still improving under this particular ruleset and how drilling a game plan is crucial to her success:

“With the smaller gloves, you have to make sure the game plan is perfect. Especially, with those MMA gloves. So we do a lot of drills before a fight, working defense, being able to rotate our shots, punch correctly, and stuff like that.”

Watch the full interview below:

North American viewers with an active Amazon Prime Video subscription can rewatch all the action from ONE Fight Night 14 via the free event replay.