Watch: ONE Championship heavyweight champion Arjan Bhullar shows proficiency with evading leg kicks

ONE Championship's heavyweight world champion Arjan Bhullar is surprisingly crafty and technical despite his gargantuan size. The former UFC fighter and reigning ONE heavyweight king is not just a behemoth throwing boulders at his opponents.

The American Kickboxing Academy standout exemplifies high-level ring IQ and vision once he is inside the cage. It's one of the reasons why he is the champion. One such example of Bhullar's craftiness is his efficiency at defending leg kicks. In a video shared by ONE Championship, we see Bhullar defending leg kicks by sneakily getting his leg out of the way.

If you practice or follow Muay Thai, the fundamental technique to defend a leg kick is to "check" it. Meaning, one has to raise their leg just a bit off the ground and tilt it slightly towards the direction of the oncoming kick. That way, the kick will hit either your shin or your knee, which will hurt the attacker more than you.

Remember what Chris Weidman did to Anderson Silva?

The thing about checking leg kicks, however, is that there is still the possibility of the kick hurting the defender just a little bit. What's more efficient but more difficult to pull off is to make the kick miss your leg completely.

Since our legs comprise pretty much 50% of our body, making someone miss such a huge part of our anatomy requires excellent vision, timing, finesse and distance management. ONE Championship heavyweight champ Arjan Bhullar has those in spades.

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ONE Championship heavyweight champion Arjan Bhullar shows interest in capturing the light heavyweight belt

In an episode of Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour, Arjan Bhullar spoke about his new contract with ONE Championship, among many things.

The first-ever Indo-Canadian MMA world champion spoke about some details of his contract, which will allow him to compete in pro wrestling bouts as well.

The two also discussed the eventual title unification with interim champ Anatoly 'Sladkiy' Malykhin and an intriguing possibility in the future: Bhullar moving down to light heavyweight and challenging for the belt. The heavyweight champion said:

"This Russian I got [Anatoly Malykhin]. He's a knockout artist, he medaled in Russian nationals in wrestling, crazy boxer, he's a very, very tough, tough test. Very tough opponent. But it excites me. That's what I'm looking for. And to be honest with ONE also, their light heavyweight belt is only 225 [pounds]. It's not that low in terms of weight class. So that's something I got on my radar beyond this one fight. I wanna get two belts."

Watch the full interview here:

Since ONE light heavyweight and middleweight champion Reinier 'The Dutch Knight' de Ridder will be defending his 205-pound belt for the second straight time this year, perhaps it's time for him to defend his 225-pound one soon. Who better to challenge him in his first title defense than the ONE heavyweight champion himself? That's a bonafide mega-fight.