ONE Championship has announced its highly anticipated return to the United States, and it’s bringing a pair of star-studded World Title fights along for the ride.
ONE 168: Denver will take place on September 6 in U.S. primetime, with Xiong Jing Nan defending her ONE Strawweight MMA World Title against atomweight MMA queen Stamp Fairtex in the main event at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.
Stamp became the first combat sports athlete in history to win world titles in three sports when she claimed the vacant women’s atomweight crown with a crushing victory over Ham Seo Hee this past September. After the win, Stamp declared that she had only one potential opponent on her mind.
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“Xiong Jing Nan [is who I want to fight next]. I feel like she is the only challenge I want to try right now,” she said. “My next goal is to move up to fight Xiong Jing Nan in her division. I want to challenge myself to see how far I can go.”
Now, she gets her wish against “The Panda,” who has reigned over the women’s strawweight MMA division since the World Title’s inception in 2018.
Another ONE Championship supestar moves up to chase glory against Jonathan Haggerty
Superlek Kiatmoo9 will also step up a division at ONE 168: Denver when he challenges two-sport ONE World Champion Jonathan Haggerty for his bantamweight Muay Thai crown.
“The Kicking Machine” successfully defended his ONE Flyweight Kickboxing World Title against Japanese superstar Takeru Segawa earlier this year and, after the bout, he told ONE that he wanted to move up in weight in search of a new challenge.
“Well, you know the answer [on who I want next], but I’d just like to clarify that it’s not that I have any specific target. I just really want to have a nice challenge to myself, to my career. So moving up to bantamweight, that would be a good challenge,” he said. “I think I would like to fight [Jonathan Haggerty], that would be great.”
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The pair have history. Superlek defeated Haggerty in 2018 before the pair made their respective ONE debuts. But recently, Haggerty crushed long-time bantamweight Muay Thai king Nong-O Hama before knocking out bantamweight MMA divisional ruler Fabricio Andrade for the vacant ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Title in what was a stellar 2023 campaign for the Brit.
ONE made a successful debut on U.S. soil in May 2023 with ONE Fight Night 10: Johnson vs. Moraes III surpassing even the promotion’s expectations by quickly selling out the 1stBank Center in Colorado.