"He's going to try to kill me" - James Yang expects all-out war against Keanu Subba

James Yang has one simple expectation for his second fight under ONE Championship and that is a pure barnburner against Keanu Subba.

Yang and Subba’s mixed martial arts match will kick off ONE 156: Eersel vs. Sadikovic on Friday, which will be broadcast live from the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Yang, who is Demetrious Johnson’s protégé at AMC Pankration, said he’s expecting an all-out slugfest against Subba in their featherweight contest. He pointed out that both of them are sure to look for an explosive finish in their three-round contest.

During ONE Championship's virtual media day, James Yang said:

“He’s going to try to kill me. [There’s going to be] a violent finish.”

The 32-year-old made a rousing ONE Championship debut in September 2021 when he dominated Filipino veteran Roel Rosauro. Yang used a superior wrestling game to grind out Rosauro before earning a technical knockout win in the second round.

Subba, meanwhile, has an impressive 100% finishing rate with four of his seven wins coming via submission while the other three are via knockout.

Despite his opponent’s offensive pedigree, Yang isn’t bothered one bit. He added:

“I know he's had a lot of competition, but he also has a lot of mileage, you know, in the ONE circle I always say this, like, unless that guy has like three arms and four legs, he's not gonna pose a threat that I've never seen or felt before. I've been attacked by multiple people, like three, or five guys jumping on me, and I had to fight them off. Nothing's going to be worse than that. Yeah, one person, one man has not given me enough to like, make me feel like ‘Oh, my God, I've never seen this or felt this before.’”

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James Yang says learning under Demetrious Johnson is always fun

Fun may not be a suitable adjective to describe mixed martial arts, but James Yang begges to differ. He said that he always wants to create a light atmosphere whenever he trains with Johnson, and ‘Mighty Mouse’ is the same with him.

The training partners also make sure to never spend all of their time in the gym and that they should enjoy life as much as possible. Yang said:

“We're always looking to help each other out, and get better. And you know, what I do for him was to make sure he was relaxed, happy, and having fun. He's doing the same thing for me."

Yang added that he and Johnson even went out to watch Jared Leto's action-adventure film Morbius in the middle of his fight preparations.

"Last night, we went and watched Morbius, the new Sony Marvel movie, and then that movie was not, I mean, I don't want to talk s*** about it. But I mean, everyone was telling us how bad it was. And we're like, ‘no, it can't be that bad.’ You know, it was only going up from here. And we watched it. And like that was not good. It wasn't pretty. It was pretty bad.”