Rich Franklin says Magomed Abdulkadirov cannot afford to leave a limb hanging vs. ‘tricky’ Tye Ruotolo

Even ONE Championship Vice President Rich Franklin is in awe of Tye Ruotolo’s virtuosic skills in the art of grappling.

As such, he knows that Ruotolo’s ONE Fight Night 16 dance partner, Magomed Abdulkadirov, should gear up for the toughest match of his career.

The inaugural ONE welterweight submission grappling world champion will be crowned this coming Friday. The ADCC veterans will clash for 26 pounds of gold inside the legendary Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok.

In a recent guest appearance on ‘Big' John McCarthy and Josh Thompson’s Weighing In Podcast, Franklin praised Abdulkadirov’s lofty credentials. Apart from his feared Dagestani wrestling background, the 32-year-old is also a multiple-time UWW World Grappling Champion and a European ADCC Grappling Champion.

‘Ace’, however, argued that all those achievements won’t matter much if the Russian would allow the sensational Tye Ruotolo to impose his brilliance on the ground.

“The problem is man, you can be a great wrestler but if you put a guy like Tye on the ground, he's automatically looking for D’arces and buggy chokes from the bottom. Just because you could put someone on their back and now you're not scoring points for it under ONE Championship’s ruleset."

The MMA great-turned-ONE executive thinks it could be a tricky fight for Magomed Abdulkadirov against Tye Ruotolo.

“You got to go and put them there and then you got to go pass guard or land in a superior position. And that's just not easy to do without leaving something hanging that he's gonna grab hold of. So it's a tricky game.”

So far, Tye Ruotolo has submitted three of his first four opponents in ONE, which includes Garry Tonon, Marat Gafurov, and most recently, Dagi Arslanaliev.

We’ll soon see if he can add Magomed Abdulkadirov to his list of victims on November 3.

ONE Fight Night 16 Haggerty vs. Andrade on Prime Video will air live on US Primetime free of charge for existing Prime Video subscribers in North America.

Here's Rich Franklin's comments from 1:51:50 below: