Watch: ONE Championship featherweight world champ Thanh Le talks about Garry Tonon and cross-promotional fights

On March 11, at ONE Championship: Lights Out, ONE featherweight world champ Thanh Le will defend his title in the main event of an ultra-stacked card. His challenger, Garry 'The Lion Killer' Tonon, will be his most difficult task yet. Tonon is a multi-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion and is currently undefeated in his MMA career.

In an interview with South China Morning Post, the heavy-handed champion spoke about his upcoming title bout against the grappling phenom.

It's no secret that the champion has not fought in over a year due to various reasons. He has taken the time, however, to fix a couple of things in his game, including some much-needed surgeries.

In the interview, Le explained how the lengthy time off helped him prepare for his upcoming battle:

"The longer I get to prepare for somebody, the worse it is for them. I'm sure Garry feels the same way so it's really cool to be able to get the best Garry in that cage and he's definitely gonna get the best Thanh. And I'm excited to see how it turns out."

The humble champion has tremendous respect for the grappling specialist in Tonon but understands that this matchup is not black-and-white. Le sees that Tonon is not a slouch on the feet and he himself is not a slouch on the ground either.

It's not a classic "striker vs. grappler" affair, and Le won't look past Tonon's developing striking arsenal.

Watch the entire interview here:

---

ONE Championship featherweight champ Thanh Le: "We need to do cross-promotion stuff"

The current ONE featherweight champ also touched on possible cross-promotional bouts in his future.

While he is not looking past Tonon, Thanh Le is seeing potential fights not just in ONE Championship but in other organizations as well. He believes the the UFC doesn't have the monopoly on the best fighters anymore and cross-promotional battles could prove this resoundingly:

"Everybody's trying to get all these cross-promotion stuff going, but nobody's pulling the trigger because we're all kinda looking up at the American market and the UFC, and man, leave those guys out of it. Let's get Bellator, PFL, all these other organizations involved. Let's all do a tournament. Let's beat the hell out of each other to see who's the best featherweight in the world. And then if the UFC wants to throw some guy in the hat, we'll fight that guy too but we don't need them to prove who's the best. We need to do this, we need to do these cross-promotion stuff to set the standard so it can be the new norm."

If and when he gets past Tonon, a bout between Thanh Le and Bellator champion AJ McKee will surely be a massive superfight. However, that will have to wait as Le needs to solve the puzzle of 'The Lion Killer' first in order for him to gain the promotional leverage to branch out of ONE Championship.

Tune in on March 11 to watch the action and drama unfold.